October 22, 2005, What's the worst that can happen?
Our overdue return visit to our comrades at Pravda leads us right to this take on Syrian criticisms of the United Nations' report which places clear blame for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri... that report, of course, prepared by a German examining magistrate, concludes that Syria was in it up to its eyeballs and those of Syrian President Bashir Assad's brother in law.
The Pravda piece also lets us know that Syria needed some help from Lebanese officials, up to and including, of course, the services responsible for guarding dignitaries like Mr. Hariri, who, evidently, had made himself a huge pain in the ass to Syria by being so damned outspoken about wanting Syria to withdraw its troop contingent from Lebanon (which, after massive protests following his death and anti-Syrian parties prevailed in parliamentary elections, eventually happened.)
The tzuras has not been wasted stateside, as our President, still reeling after the Summer of Cindy, Katrina and Valerie, welcomed a possible major international crisis to get his mind off of things that devastated his approval rating, and Bush called for Security Council action regarding the report.
How will this turn out? I have no idea; in some sense, "the market" had already assumed Hariri could not possibly have been taken out without Syrian help at a minimum, so we're not in too much of a different position. Obviously, even without its troops in place, Syria continues to wield some level of influence on its seaside neighbor.
Given how unstable Iraq is these days, I'm not sure a destabilization of Syria at the moment is the greatest of ideas... Then again, I'm not sure it's not... all we can be reasonably sure of is that however the Bush Administration approaches this, it will do so in its usual half-assed self-defeating manner...
Oy...