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Assad Defiant About Pullout (Megan K. Stack, March 6, 2005, LA Times)

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Saturday announced a phased withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, drawing the immediate ire of U.S. officials, who had called for a complete and immediate evacuation of Syrian soldiers and agents from the country they have come to dominate.

Speaking to the Syrian parliament in Damascus, a defiant Assad seemed determined to display Syrian imperviousness to foreign pressure, refusing to say how soon the soldiers would pull out. The troops would first move to the Bekaa Valley, a strip of villages and farmland near the Syrian border, the president said. Then the Syrians and Lebanese would negotiate a move to the frontier between the two countries, but Assad didn't say which side of the border they would occupy.

In a downtown Beirut plaza, thousands of jeering and anxious demonstrators gathered to watch Assad's speech live on massive television screens. They hooted with laughter when the Syrian president coughed and booed his claims that Syria wanted to protect the Lebanese. But a rowdy cheer swept the crowd when they heard Assad say that the soldiers would retreat.

Couldn't the CIA have hacked into the broadcast and surreptitiously inserted a pile of yellowcake on the lectern?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 6, 2005 10:28 AM