Mainstream press agencies are reliably, if insensibly, carrying abroad the Syrian imputation that the three car bombs intended for independence demonstrators reflect on the Lebanese themselves. The presumption is in repetitious narratives that spare all parties but Lebanon itself for the civil war enabling Hafez Assad's slow constriction of the modest country. But for all the "chaos" and "turmoil" and "fears" from self-appointed wailers of Lebanon's "plunging" to the violent depths of its oppressor, the Cedar Revolution has faced down intimidation and murder while enduring weeks of political arm-wrestling. Prevented early on from simply flattening the telegenic uprising, Bashar Assad has been forced to test 20th-Century Arab fascism under conditions for which it was not intended and has discovered that it is, like any dolled-up thuggery, a method over ninety-nine parts per cent fear and killing, cinched up with just a bit of picked-over quackery. And not working for him.

Nine days ago Bashar Assad was secure enough in a lull. His puppet government in Beirut could still check the pro-democracy opposition, almost in spite of the Cedars' matched enthusiasm and anger. Two car bombs had gone off in Christian neighborhoods, hurting and then killing people, with no sharp reaction from Washington or the rest of the world. A few thousand Syrian troops had since left Lebanon; most remained encamped in the Bekaa Valley. Damascus didn't have much to help preserve its rule in Lebanon, least of all support or sympathy or a reasonable doubt as to its intentions, but was quietly granted a dictatorship's initiative to brutality and deceit. When Bashar Assad said he'd "would rather break Lebanon over the heads" of Lebanese patriots than give up his father's prize, it was to Rafiq Hariri — dead six weeks now.

Two days later, Thursday, March 24, whatever Damascus was planning would have been raked from the table. Most observers were shocked by the firmness and clarity of a United Nations probe into Hariri's murder, released that day. Reason magazine's Michael Young wrote in his now well-read account that "it is an indictment of the Syrian-dominated order in Lebanon. And...it is a proposal to dismantle that order." Who killed Hariri? Under Chief investigator, UN Deputy Police Commissioner Peter Fitzgerald, the report put it this way: Syria and its Lebanese appendages were the most capable of the murder and the most culpable for providing the killers their opportunity. Even if a crack demolition commando unit of Maronite Nuns had cut the former prime minister down, Fitzgerald's team found that reports of crime scene neglect were correct. And nobody suspected nuns.

Reuters got one right with a Friday headline reading "Lebanese Officials on Back Foot Over U.N. Report." Beirut's Assad cronies accepted the international probe they'd rejected a month before just as the Cedars demanded, again, for the government's "security chiefs" to resign. Syria was suddenly forced to contend with a furious Lebanese population, a glowering free world, a skeptical neutral world and an impending probe that meant to uncover much more than Fitzgerald had. A third car bomb did nothing to shake the Cedars. Commentary on Hezbollah and civil war paused for most everyone to wonder how on earth Bashar Assad thought he'd get away with all this.

Patrick Fitzgerald has a respectful professional record as investigator, though not such a particular one that the White House's public diplomacy with Syria might have been tempered through most of March because the Bush administration anticipated the incredible advantage the Cedar Revolution would gain from the United Nations indicting Damascus. But what once seemed a puzzling deference to Syria's attempt to capsize international cooperation may have been the time needed for Washington to deploy its own team of sappers. Beginning Saturday, March 26 a Saudi newspaper, then the Washington Post reported American interlocution with Syrian dissident groups; in the Post story Jacques Chirac was said to have predicted, in effect, Lebanon's independence to shatter Syria into a hundred political parties, ready for democratic elections. By Tuesday, umbrella groups were speaking to reporters. Monsieur Chirac may have been repeating the obvious. Said Farid Ghadry's Reform Party of Syria:

[T]he call for democracy in Syria is a matter that is being taken seriously at the highest levels of the (George W.) Bush administration. ...Like the majority of Lebanese who are no longer afraid, soon most Syrians will drown the voices of the government-supported opposition. ...Democracy is the common denominator uniting all Syrians, no matter what their political or religious views are.

It's now that we can suggest a turning point for events that have transformed what was a steady course to victory in Lebanon in the short term only into a force that, if indeed guided by Washington, could fell the last Ba'athists. Condoleezza Rice is featured prominently in this ninth exchange; when domestic critics called Rice a "loyalist" during her installation process, even they might have underestimated how startlingly fast the State Department would come about and begin working in earnest for progressive rightists. The Bush administration has since late 2001 valued diplomacy with belligerents on its success with disarmament and not placation. Colin Powell's Foggy Bottom was a sort of second Congress, blunting directives and forcing the White House to act as sole executive, sometimes holding the team's reins from inside the coach. How many times did Powell's agency meet with Syrian dissident groups in broad daylight — even without the Iraqi ballot victory? Condoleezza Rice even confided to reporters the difficulty of keeping pace with an event sequence she had no intention of slowing. "We're going to look at all the possibilities and talk to as many people as we possibly can," she said. Nobody wants to be blindsided, was her cautionary, perhaps knowing that her predecessor's department was routinely ambushed by stationary objects — Bashar Assad's Syria one of them. No, sappers have been digging under Damascus' surly walls; "predict" is Rice's word, which could mean charges have been or will soon be laid, to be set off by liberty's torch.

Lebanon's revolution is glowing. In Beirut, proxy Prime Minister Omar Karami has said that having found no acceptable coalition cabinet he might resign again. Fine, the opposition's answered; take your president and brownshirt heads with you, and don't touch that election calendar. Journalists meanwhile have found it possible to report on Syria's sly reinsertion of a fifth column in Lebanon, not two weeks after Damascus conspicuously withdrew its intelligence services. Having bungled what he couldn't help, Bashar Assad has made clear to the world what it might have been satisfied only to suspect.

At least he's consistent.