Lebanon

[Lunar]

I'm reading From Beirut to Jerusalem right now, pretty powerful stuff on Lebanon.

As long as Syria has its hand in Lebanese affairs, they will remain blatantly corrupt and nothing will be solved.  Syria will try its hardest to remain a presence and will likely succeed without some damn strong political pressure.

[Lunar]

If Syria won't bow down to pressure, I'd think it'd be fun to threaten to seriously arm the anti-Syria Shiite and Christian militias.  That would make the pro-Syrian militias scared to hell (not to mention the Syrians), they'd then proceed to dump their own pressure on Syria to get the hell out.

You have to understand the politics there.  Everyone wants control.

The problem with actually arming the anti-Syrian militias is that they would end up slaughtering each other and thousands of civilians.

[Lunar]

It's revealed, after the capture of Saddam's brother-in-law, that Syria's been harboring Baathists and protecting leaders of the insurgency in Iraq.

To be fair, NixonNow is a Baathist himself (one party Baathist state in Syria).