The reshuffling of Syrian troops, which no one but Damascene clients and one White House reporter has taken seriously, is trolling along. Whether we hear directly from a leading official today or not, Press Secretary Scott McClellan, when asked, confirmed to a less presumptuous member of the press corps that the administration's demand for Syrian "action, not words" is one it has placed on itself, too:

Q Okay. Now, my Syrian question is, you say that the administration demands that Syria withdraw its troops completely and immediately from Lebanon. Syria, obviously, does not plan to do this. How are you going to make them do it?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we're continuing to work with the international community. You've seen comments from Chancellor Schroeder and President Chirac and comments from Russia, comments from Saudi Arabia, strongly stating their support for the United Nations Security Council resolution that calls for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon.

So we're continuing to talk about these matters with our partners, and we're continuing to look at the way forward, if Syria does not act. We need to see Syria act. They've made some commitments. We still view those as half-measures. But we ultimately want to see them speak by acting to comply with Resolution 1559. And that's what we expect.

Q And everything is still on the table. All options are still on the table.

MR. McCLELLAN: You know the President never takes options off the table.

He probably does. Might Bashar Assad?

Undeterred by a dictator's ridicule and heavies' intimidation, some 100,000 Lebanese demonstrators returned to Martyrs' Square — shouting, admonishing, celebrating, hoping.

Two nods, one to Wretchard and the other to J.R.R. Tolkien:

Ah! the wind and the whiteness and the black branches of Winter upon Orod-na-Thôn!
My voice went up and sang in the sky.
And now all those lands lie under the wave.
And I walk in Ambaróna, in Tauremorna, in Aldalómë.
In my own land, in the country of Fangorn,
Where the roots are long,
And the years lie thicker than the leaves
In Tauremornalómë.

With President Bush having made himself clear on Lebanon's autonomy before the weekend, White House departmental statements released since Bashar Assad's speech are a prelude to the Bush administration's joining of the seventh exchange, where Syria will stand to lose more than it ever has. A senior official, Condoleezza Rice or the president himself should be speaking before the day is out, and I'll wait for that.

Following a link to Power Line on Bashar Assad's speech, I noticed that weblog author John Hinderaker excerpted President Bush's warning to Syria, made Friday, in a manner that suggested those words were the president's response to Bashar Assad. Knowing that Hinderaker's intention was not to confuse, I read the Associated Press article myself and found that the author, lacking any personally delivered speech response from the White House (the only known return at post time and date is a press release from the State Department), decided to simply use material from Friday. The reporter did indicate that statements from President Bush and White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan were a day old but still left readers with a conversation of global proportions where incomplete response "B" preceded stringent demand "A."

We know that the president made clear his expectations for full withdrawal, and that they were non-negotiable. But the Associated Press has assumed that if Syria simply refused, the White House would reply with boilerplate. In fact, the State Department's response could very well lead to a severe American posture, from sanctions to troop deployment.

Elsewhere, reporter Ed O'Loughlin of Australia's Age commits a bald factual error (emphasis and transoceanic grammatical changes mine):

With Lebanon's political crisis into its fourth week, high-level statements in Washington and Damascus — including a Syrian proposal to withdraw troops from its neighbor — have done little to resolve tensions. US President George Bush has rebuffed what appears to be a proposal for only a partial withdrawal from Lebanon, saying all Syrian forces should be out before planned May elections.

Mr. Bush also accused Damascus of supporting terrorism, "a key obstacle to peace in the broader Middle East."

His remarks came hours after Syrian President Bashar Assad made a carefully worded address to his parliament saying Syria would eventually withdraw its 14,000 troops in Lebanon to the "Lebanese-Syrian border areas."

As of this entry time and date, President Bush has not offered a personal statement. The State Department communiqué could be considered more or less from the president's desk but departmental actions are usually credited to administrations, not individuals. What cannot be debated is the time of the president's weekly radio address and its relation to Bashar Assad's speech in Damascus: the radio address was delivered a few hours before, yet O'Loughlin decided it was good enough for a few hours after. Given that Assad has spit in Washington's eye, the context shift has enormous implications.

Sparing the leftist media our recorded history of their intent to obfuscate in Iraq, we can soundly claim that in Lebanon they suffer from a mixture of impatience and carelessness. Because the observation and evaluation of Lebanese events depends on the work of journalists, we ought to be careful about what we choose.

ELSEWHERE IN OZ: The Australian Near East correspondent seems to have a preference for fresher news. More commentary as events occur.

The sixth exchange over Lebanon's independence, begun yesterday, is complete. The world has Damascus' second response. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad intends to jabber in perpetuity, to render obligation meaningless, to keep Lebanon as his misbegotten own:

President Bashar Assad, responding to weeks of intense pressure, announced Saturday that Syria would move its troops to the Lebanese-Syrian border in a two-step pullback that he said should satisfy international demands for a complete pullout.

...In a cleverly worded address to parliament, Assad said, "We would not stay one day if there was Lebanese consensus on the departure of Syria," failing to state that Damascus wields decisive influence with Lebanese officials.

"Disdainfully" is more appropriate than "cleverly." No crueler joke is played on people under tyranny than when their oppressors and foreign enablers jeer, "if you want to be free, why don't you say so?" By all means, climb down from the cross. Design or habit, the Ba'athist declaration was received by a pointed mockery of the spontaneous, popular demonstrations in Beirut:

Plainclothes Syrian security agents stood outside the two-story People's Assembly building in Damascus' downtown Salhiya neighborhood as police towed away cars parked on streets leading to the legislature. Two large screens and loudspeakers were installed outside the building to allow people outside to follow the speech.

About 3,000 Syrians gathered outside ahead of the afternoon speech, many carrying pictures of Assad and his father, the late President Hafez Assad, or Syrian flags. They shouted slogans, including: "Oh God Almighty, safeguard Bashar our leader!" and "Sharon listen, the Syrian people will never bow!" in reference to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Syria's archenemy.

The article does not specify whether images of Syria's Emmanuel Goldstein appeared on the People's Jumbotron during appropriate speech passages, or if Newspeak dictionaries were available to the handpicked spectators for throwing.

Withdrawal will initially not even be considered. Insisting that he is not stuck, the son of Hafez has publicly wagered the United States' word to be worth what it has always been through the Assad reign: nothing. Denouncement in the "strongest possible terms," an envoy to be kept waiting on the runway, an agreement to be violated immediately; nothing. The Syrian dictator believes he'll play his tricks anyway, the stalemate will solidify into an impasse, the Lebanese will lose heart and Syrian brownshirts will close in.

But that's only what reigns in Bashar's mind. He escapes only if he can convince President Bush that Syria — prone and splayed — is not, in fact, pinioned. Assad's in quite a lot of trouble; Bashar's statement is an insult to the demands placed and doubled on him, and without the slightest pretense of compromise it is, ironically, an impatient man's delay. As I considered six days ago, a proroguing Damascus should meet an incisive White House.

The sixth exchange has begun with President Bush finally imposing the established deadline Syria's Bashar Assad would not acknowledge:

President George W. Bush said in an interview published on Friday that Syria should pull all of its troops out of Lebanon by May to clear the way for fair elections. "The subject that is most on my mind right now is getting Syria out of Lebanon, and I don't mean just the troops out of Lebanon, I mean all of them out of Lebanon, particularly the secret service out of Lebanon — the intelligence services," Bush said in an interview with the New York Post.

"This is non-negotiable. It is time to get out. ... I think we've got a good chance to achieve that objective and to make sure that the May elections (in Lebanon) are fair. I don't think you can have fair elections with Syrian troops there," the president said.

As before, the president is in no mood for partial compliance:

"When the United States says something, it must mean it. That's what I meant when I said, 'Remove all your troops,' not remove 94 percent of them," the president said.

Asked if there was a threat of military action if Syria refused, Bush told the Post: "No. The 'or else' is further isolation from the world. You know, the president should never take any options off the table, (but) my last choice is military."

Until now, the most senior White House official to flatly guarantee the show or use of force in event of Syrian defiance was the secretary of state. Now it is the President of the United States, who has made war everywhere he said he would. Bush has also confiscated Syria's bag full of tricks, spelling out every dupe and decoy Damascus planned to drop into play. Another level of Congressional sanctions is in preparation, and though Damascus could find ways to wriggle around economic and political conviction, this White House's sanctions are means and not ends. In this meeting, maybe penultimate.

President Bush has invited the break from the last three weeks' circumstances just as they were becoming repetitious and perhaps turning to Damascus' favor, and in fact written most of Assad's Saturday address for the dictator. Where does Assad take his troops? Nowhere but home, where he is sure to soon face a Syrian imitation of Martyrs' Square and Independence Square. Only his weakness will be foremost on the minds of those within and without his crumbling fief.

That day will be something to behold. It must be a terrifying moment when an operator finds himself without the druthers, the lies, the back hatches, the escape chutes, the power built on intimidation and the rule drawn from whim — through which he has lived his entire life — suddenly staring at the gavel and the noose. An evil man shatters as he realizes the people he once took as credulous were simply decent; and, though aware of his heartfelt fear, don't confuse compassion with justice. Bashar Assad should have known that President Bush was among those people.

THE CONSUMMATE SHADE: Tony at Across the Bay relates a Syrian democrat's report of Bashar Assad's henchmen rounding up known or suspected dissidents in an effort to cut the hamstrings of any revolt. "Not likely to generate much notice abroad" is how it's put, and it smacks of a coward who stalks the alleyway: Bashar Assad tolerates the Cedar Revolution only because it's visible to all and enjoys a guardian far more powerful than Syria. Diminutive as he is, this is how Assad would prefer to work. A pity Syrians need suffer additionally: the Ba'athists can't cow them all, and without Lebanon, Syria will lay open.

Following his remarks at a press conference Tuesday, President Bush on Wednesday sharpened his message to Bashar Assad's Syria:

Bush applauded the tough get-out message sent to Syria a day earlier by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier at a joint news conference in London.

"Both of them stood up and said loud and clear to Syria, 'You get your troops and your secret services out of Lebanon so that good democracy has a chance to flourish,'" the president said. "The world is speaking with one voice when it comes to making sure that democracy has a chance to flourish in Lebanon," Bush added in a Maryland speech as his team put its strongest pressure yet on Damascus.

The president is not speaking figuratively. Statist Russia, as reliable an enabler of despots as in its Soviet era, is publicly advising Damascus, Moscow's good arms customer, to at least honor its obligation to the 1989 Taif Accords:

"Syria should withdraw from Lebanon, but we all have to make sure that this withdrawal does not violate the very fragile balance which we still have in Lebanon, which is a very difficult country ethnically," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the BBC late on Wednesday.

Lavrov finished with a left-handed endorsement of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559: to wit, Moscow joined China, Algeria, Pakistan, Brazil and the Philippines in abstaining from the September 2004 question but deep down the motherland knows that process is process and Syrian troops must go home. Bashar Assad got the right hand from Cairo earlier today, where the foreign ministers of twenty-one dictatorships and one democracy agreed that Hafez al-Assad would have meant what he put in writing sixteen years ago, and his son should duly make up for Syria's unfortunate military distention across Lebanon. Too bad for Bashar, who was on his way to court the Saudis, and probably steer the conversation towards how Damascus can show the world it has released Lebanon without actually ending its military seizure.

While the Lebanese revolutionaries from Michel Aoun to Walid Jumblatt work out how best to shear the political slug keeping Beirut cold-riveted to Damascus, statements and events today and tomorrow should tell us what Syria thinks of solidarity in righteous indignation on Martyrs' Square and inside state executive offices.

American commitment to the protection of Lebanese citizens is evident, and only strengthened by global assent to the Cedar Revolution. Whether Bashar Assad is desperate, knowing that permanent loss of Lebanon is the introduction to his end; or rash, or stupid, is a course running independent of foreign intentions. The Lebanese will have their guardian; the question is whether they might truly need it. Jonah Goldberg at National Review found a snippet from an unofficial intelligence information transit:

Sources in Beirut report Syria has reinforced units deployed on hills overlooking Lebanese capital. DEBKAfile’s military sources have also sighted unusual Syrian military movements in the last 24 hours in Lebanon and Syria.

The source has a spotty record for accuracy, yet the rumor would follow in line with Syria's apparent latest word on its week-old withdrawal pronouncement:

Ahead of a round of Arab meetings Thursday, Syria told Arab countries it insists on keeping 3,000 troops and early-warning stations inside Lebanon to maintain its security, an Arab diplomat said. But Arab leaders said the proposal is unworkable.

...The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Syria still wants to keep about 3,000 troops in Lebanon "for the time being" — without giving a timetable — and to keep "early monitoring stations" in eastern Lebanon. The Syrian army already operates radar stations in Dahr el-Baidar, on mountain tops bordering Syria.

Diplomacy between Damascus and Beirut's international cooperative is mid-stride to its sixth step since the murder of Rafiq Hariri. The Lebanese can keep neither political nor popular assembly intact with Syria in the room; withdrawal may be fatal rather than ameliorating to Damascus, caught by a Syrian revolution inspired by Lebanon; and President Bush can hardly go further in reproach. If Bashar Assad is as impetuous as thought to be, no more than three future exchanges should take place before one party moves to break from concentric circles.

DON'T COME AROUND HERE NO MORE: Saudi Arabia slapped away the tin cup, and it's unlikely that a United Nations agent dispatched to Lebanon will be the retardant to events that Damascus seeks.

So said a Lebanese man-on-the-street — referring to his country's independence from Syria — to freelance Near East journalist Jennifer Griffin, shown on Special Report with Brit Hume. He's likely repeating what he hears among his companions, bearing witness to what the world learned as they watched Iraqis claiming their birthright.

In his National Review diary for today, Dave Frum elaborates on points I raised yesterday. Put simply: despite unprecedented scrutiny from the world's superpower and Damascus' French colonial stepfather, as well as Washington's clearly articulated promise to shield Lebanon from Syrian subduction, Bashar Assad's most expedient utility is force and his agents are as embedded in Lebanon as they are in Iraq. Frum also believes that Lebanon is more important to Assad's power in the short term, and that Assad may not have the patience nor the acumen for a drawn-out game of long ball.

Frum concludes with fair confidence in the White House's resolve to grapple with Assad, alluding to an argument Wretchard offered this morning, insofar as terrorism against Lebanese or inserted Allied security forces will likely be as effective as it has been in Iraq — where Iraqis demonstrate against an enemy who appears increasingly spent. At the same time: does it all fall to Washington? What about Jerusalem and Baghdad, their charges against Damascus, and their right — as capitals of democracies — to take action in defense of the people?

Finally, Frum magnifies the absurdity of Syria handing over Iraqi Ba'athists whose whereabouts and activities could not possibly have gone overlooked, let alone for up to two years. Most on the right begin debate with the understanding that Syria may be hiding military or WMD equipment; almost certainly incubates Saddam's stolen cash to fund sedition in Iraq; and is by its own admission a country-wide safehouse for fugitives. But we should savor the twist when a suspect wanted for illegal arms possession hands over Slim Jims, switchblades, forged identification cards and a few stolen personal items, none of which he said he had — all in a show of "good faith."

Everyone's got the bug:

The emir of Qatar, on the eve of a visit to Damascus, hailed the Lebanese people for forcing the resignation of their Syrian-backed cabinet, but also praised the Beirut government for stepping down.

Forgive me, but a Near East dictator would not be hailing the premonition of his own downfall if he weren't being watched closely by a greater power none too fond of his unmerited rule.

The Lebanese don't seem to have required any lessons in ecumenism; common sense and goodness were instruction enough.

Robert Mayer has Lebanon's day in print.