Joe wrote:
Isnt it great to see democracy spreading throughout the Arab world!


Yep. It will be even nicer if those democracies become secular (ie
non-religious) constitutional (ie following consistant written law)
states with good respect for human rights... doesn't automatically
happen, but there's a good chance.


There is good news in what we are witnessing in Lebanon - tens of
thousands of young men and women, Christian and Muslim alike, bringing
down the pro-Syrian government of Lebanon. This show of democratic
strength harkens to recent successful efforts in Ukraine. It could be
another "tipping point" in democratizing the Arab world.


Could be. OTOH it would have been nice if the Bush Administration had
paid attention to Lebanon 4+ years ago... the Syrians were occupying for
decades... shucks I went there 'way back when I was in the Navy...



.... Key
Arab leaders, including President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King
Abdullah II of Jordan, asked Syria to leave Lebanon and comply with
U.N. Resolution 1559.


There's that darn UN thing again... tell us Joe, are you for it, or
agin' it??


Syria is completely isolated

Funny thing... up until a short while ago Syria was a key U.S. ally in
the region... they have a secular & stable gov't with little or no
vulnerability to fundamentalist pressures... and were providing good
cooperation on counter terrorist intel & ops... we detached them from
the alliance against Israel and replaced all their Soviet bloc weapons
with our stuff (for a profit, of course).

But hey, that was then, this is now... the key message here is that Bush
& Cheney can make friends with whomever they like, then turn on them in
an instant. Sounds good, huh?



Even the most authoritarian regimes who have managed to quell their
internal dissent must take into account this fact: The United States is
next door in Iraq.

And counting the minutes until we can leave.


To bad the liberal whiners are not under the thumb of a Saddam type or
Assad type. Bet they would change thier tune in a heart beat.


Yeah! If we could only torture them all, then they'd change their minds.
Those dadgum libby-rulls need to see who's boss, huh?

BTW Joe where did you cut-n-paste the above article from?

DSK