The "uprising" marches on:

Opposition deputies said on Wednesday they would seek to topple Lebanon's Syrian-backed government in parliament and called for a one-day national strike next week. The deputies, riding high on mass protests over the past week, called for an international investigation into last week's assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and wanted security chiefs sacked and put on trial.

"Opposition MPs confirm that they will seek a no-confidence vote in the government during (the Feb. 28) general assembly meeting" called to discuss the assassination, they said in a statement after a meeting of 38 MPs in the mountain house of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. The statement called for a strike on Monday, the day the parliament meets.

Walid Jumblatt is a recent and rather startling convert to President Bush's policy of peace through asserted liberty, telling interviewer David Ignatius that "this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," and likening the eight-million-strong Iraqi electoral procession to the Berlin Wall's tumble.

The president's democratic allies have themselves been emboldened. President of the umbrella group Reform Party of Syria, Fadrid Ghadry, has advocated in the Washington Times sandwiching Damascus between dissent inside Syria as well as its Lebanese conquest:

The next U.S. step, following the withdrawal of the U.S. ambassador in Damascus, must be to open a front against the Syria Ba'athists in their own backyard. Not a military front, far from it, but a popular civilian offensive. The United States should aim to create the same disequilibrium in Syria that the Syrian Ba'athists so readily encourage elsewhere.

Mr. Ghadry is slightly concerned about Bashar Assad's inclination to violently resist the popular tide to his southwest. But if the last ten days have taught us one lesson, it's that a thug shrinks from daylight. Though President Bush will be behind closed doors in Bratislava, an observation point has been added to the collection already tracking Syria, its scope trained on Beirut. Bush is no Eisenhower, Beirut no Budapest. There is surely hell to pay if Lebanese patriots come to harm by Syrian hands. And we should have some faith in the Martyrs' Square tent city; if they follow the Orange Revolution with their own Red and White, their representative counterparts, ready to fit in legal terms the shouts from outside, are not far behind Kiev — and seeking to win for themselves much more. (Hat tip, Robert Mayer.)

FEINT: Bashar Assad's regime has released a statement promoting "commitment" to withdrawing its 15,000 troops from Lebanon. No explanation or time window was offered, and we should remember that on Monday it was "soon" — as it was in 1989. The dominative mind is not an awfully creative one; Damascus' gesture is probably a probe of Washington. If not rebuked and rejected by a distrustful White House the Ba'athists would do best to wait as long as possible before ordering any significant force movements. The longer the delay, the more tempting Damascus will find a roll-up to be.

But via Jim Geraghty, some are convinced that the Bush administration does not intend to let the Lebanese be silenced. And, helpfully enough, strange bedfellow Walid Jumblatt called the statement "a new farce."

WHAT EVERY TYRANT FEARS IS UNDER HIS BED: Syria's democrats.