WHO WILL BE THE FIRST PUNDIT TO BLINK?:

Syria bows to pressure, moves its troops in Lebanon (SAM F. GHATTAS, March 5, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times)

Trying to ease incessant Arab and international pressure and the risk of isolation, Syrian President Bashar Assad is moving to pull his troops in Lebanon back toward Syria's border. But the step, short of a full withdrawal, was bluntly rejected Friday by President Bush.

Assad was expected to announce the pullback in an address to parliament Saturday in Damascus, a Syrian diplomat said Friday. The speech comes after a rough week for Assad, beginning with the resignation of his allied government in Lebanon and ending with the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah telling him face-to-face to get all his forces out of Lebanon quickly.

But a redeployment -- moving Syrian forces to eastern Lebanon, closer to the Syrian border -- would likely not satisfy Arab leaders. Bush dismissed it as a ''half-measure.''

''When the United States and France say withdraw, we mean complete withdrawal, no halfhearted measures,'' Bush said in New Jersey.

Bush said he wants Syria's 15,000 troops and its intelligence agents out of Lebanon by May, when Lebanese parliamentary elections are to be held. ''This is nonnegotiable. It is time to get out,'' he said in an interview published Friday in the New York Post.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this regime change is the notable absence, thus far, of Kaplanesque arguments that we should negotiate with the dictator.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 5, 2005 8:18 AM