Americans have learned through bitter experience to associate trouble in the Middle East and the Muslim world with pain at the gas pump--from the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and oil embargo to the 1979 oil shock after the Iranian revolution and the price jump that followed Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
This time it's different.
Following a brief spike in the oil markets after Sept. 11, the benchmark price of Brent crude has slipped from around $29 per bbl. to between $21 and $23. Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a leading source of industry analysis, is forecasting a fourth-quarter average price of $23.75....