Well, obviously the US is not ignoring the Hariri assassination. We have recalled our ambassador. While we haven't blamed the Syrians directly, the implication is certainly there.

And then there is this: Iran, Syria to form 'united front'.

Iran and Syria, who both are facing pressure from the United States, said Wednesday they will form a "united front" to confront possible threats against them, state-run television reported.

You don't say.

I ended up taking the new job. All looks good. More pay is always good. Significantly less travel is good, too. That means my gallivanting about the country is over for the near future. It also means increased responsibility - I won't be a lone cowboy consultant going out to solve the problems of the customers anymore, I'll be a director of an IT shop - I am looking forward to it. New job starts the 28th.

The best part is that this promises to be a travel gig from Hell. Starting with Dulles being absolutely packed, and then my flight is delayed. A great way to wrap things up.

So, anyone in Savannah, Georgia?

I am always convinced that everyone has read Steyn's latest by the time I get to it. Haven't seen much on this one, so maybe not.

Not exactly the same argument, but much the same conclusion:

It's an open question if the West will survive this twilight struggle: Europe almost certainly will not; America might. On the other hand, the psychosis to which much of the culture is in thrall may eventually reach a tipping point into mass civilizational suicide.

Steyn is usually described as "irrepressible." He seems kinda repressed in this one.

An interesting take on the assassination in Lebanon today - Batchelor has a guy on - Naji Najar (sp?) - who is talking about the bombing. Batchelor described the bombing as part of the couterattack on democracy in the Middle East. Najar is emphatic that the assassination is aimed at the US - even though Hariri is not tied strongly to the US - and that our response to it is very important in the GWOT, much like the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks.

I don't know that I agree to that degree - the US not taking any action in response would not be as powerful a message as our withdrawal from Lebanon was then. But I do think that it is a part of the GWOT - the strategic part. I still think Syria is "next on the list" - if there were a list - and that the Iran/North Korea craziness is strategic to draw heat away from Syria.

Loftus will be on shortly - I wonder what he'll have to say.

Interestingly, I heard on Fox earlier that the group that claimed "credit" for the bombing was some previously unheard of jihad group, and that their stated reason was the ties Hariri had to the Saudi regime. Noone seems to be buyiong that, and they are all pinning it on the Syrians.

UPDATE: Loftus update is quite interesting. He echoes Najar, that this is the counterattack beginning. He implicates the Iranian as being behind the Syrian assassination of Hariri. And he has this bombshell - the Iranians are planning to assassinate Khaddafy. The story on that is that Khaddafy will spill the beans on the Iranian nuclear program, through the AQ Khan network. He doesn't come right out and say it, but he suggests that the current Iranian craziness is meant to draw attention away from the counterattack on democracy.

But wait, there is more. He suggests that the new Iraqi government may invoke the right of self-defense against Syria and Iran in the UN.

Tonight, I heard Michael Savage going on about how the Shi'ites winning in Iraq means that radicals will rule, just like in Iran, and that makes the whole Iraq war lost. Savage soured on the war a while ago, and he's a lunatic, but he should at least have a better understanding than this.

Feel free to email or leave a comment with further examples of this "reporting."

Today in the Washington Post:

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.

I could have written this article by Robin Wright weeks ago. In fact, I did:

Likely Sistani's slate will do very well, and Allawi will not be the new President of Iraq. This will be reported as a huge defeat for the US, and Sistani's Shi'ites will be compared to Iran's. Don't believe either.

An opposition politician - opposition to the Syrian occupiers - is assassinated in Lebanon. In The Corner, some insight:

"Last fall a car bomb – almost certainly planted by Syrian intelligence agents in Lebanon -- missed one of his allies, a Druze former minister. In September 2004, the United States and France introduced UN Security Council Resolution 1559, calling for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. Hariri supported the resolution. Media in Lebanon yesterday quoted French and Western sources warning the Syrians not to harm Hariri. Today, sources from the Lebanese opposition charge that the Syrian regime was behind the assassination.

“Other sources have said that Hariri endorsed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ plan to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It is known that Hezbollah, a close ally of Syria, has vowed to support the radical Jihadists against Israel, and against any settlement between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

“This assassination may trigger a significant confrontation between the Lebanese opposition and the Syrian military occupiers.”

This must be why Syria needs cover by Iran - and North Korea.

Seems to me that the Left has gone looney on Gannon not so much because he isn't a "real journalist" (surely someone that is - or was - actually in the pay of campaigns while "just a blogger" would not go down that avenue), but because his point of view is sympathetic to the President's. If hostility to the President's positions is the sole accreditation for being in the White House Press Corps, wouldn't Clinton press conferences have been empty except for Brit Hume and Lester Kinsolving?

Results of the Iraqi election are out. No party has a majority, but it seems rather unlikely that Allawi - whose party got a small portion of the vote - will be the new Prime Minister. And, as predicted, this is being called a failure for the United States. But I am surprised at who the first winner of this prize is - Michael Ledeen:

The Allawi list was outvoted five to one by its major opponents, even though Allawi commanded a treasure chest vastly greater than that of the others. Ambassador Negroponte, Secretary of State Rice, and DCI Goss should tell their "experts" to admit error, and cease their efforts to install a president and prime minister who reflect the consensus of Foggy Bottom rather than the will of the Iraqi people. If they persist in attempting to dictate the makeup of the new Iraqi government, and continue to meddle in the drafting of the new Iraqi constitution, they will turn the majority of Iraqis against us. Despite countless errors of judgment and commission, we have, for the moment at least, won a glorious victory. We should be smart enough, and modest enough, to accept it.

I think that this is wrong for the same reason that the MSM will get it wrong when the leadership is announced - I think that this has always been the expected outcome. Just looking at demographics, it is the most likely outcome, so I am not sure why we would be expecting anything differently. Maybe the folks at State who want "stability" and the CIA that is obviously not all that good at gathering and analyzing intelligence expected something different, but they were not driving the train in Iraq. The President was. And as in the "Palestinian situation," the President seems to have "gotten it" in ways that plenty of wise people on the topic haven't.

The rest of this Ledeen piece is pretty good, though for those who are convinced of neocon evil, this will be considered a climbdown: "The instrument of their destruction is democratic revolution, not war, and the first salvo in the political battle of Iran is national referendum." But this has always been Ledeen's position. And I think that it is also the President's position. I think the current attention on Iran is a sideshow designed to distract from Syria - and the Iranians are behind that design.