It’s disgusting to watch Assad, knowing that he’s going to lose in the end, as he continues to kick and scream all the way to the graveyard. Yet the man just can’t help himself. You have to wonder how some “experts” can still consider this guy a reformist when he is doing every thing he can to make sure that the progress being made in Lebanon. For that, he still has his goon in place, dearest President Lahoud, who continues to veto every single cabinet line up presented to him by the Premier-Designate.

President Lahoud and Premier-Designate Fouad Seniora were seen locked in irremediable discord over a majority government to lead Lebanon out of Syria’s orbit as parliament braced for a historic meeting Monday to vote Lebanese Forces commander Samir Geagea out of prison.
The Lahoud-Seniora deadlock was dramatized by a Bush administration attack on the pro-Syrian Lebanese President, squarely accusing him of preventing the ‘will of the people of Lebanon as expressed in the May-June polls from being carried out.’

The .U.S. has also accused Syria of scheming to ‘strangle Lebanon politically and economically’ by closing its border to wipe out Lebanon’s transit trade with the rest of the Arab World and by using Lahoud as the cat’s paw to scuttle Seniora’s efforts to put together a new Lebanese cabinet.

Lahoud signaled his discontent with the latest Seniora blueprint during a visit the president made Saturday to his son-in-law Elias Murr at Serhal Hospital in suburban Rabweh, where the outgoing defense minister is recuperating from wounds he suffered in an a car-bomb assassination attempt five day ago, An Nahar reported on Sunday.

The President came out squarely against the 24-member cabinet Seniora submitted to him on Friday, saying “the cabinet formulas presented thus far do not measure up to the standards of confronting the perils surrounding us.”

Lahoud insisted that Gen. Aoun and his 21-strong bloc in parliament would be represented in Lebanon’s new government and Aoun should be allowed to name his own cabinet ministers, a demand that Seniora and his 105 backers in parliament would not be able to swallow.

Seniora, who is willing to give Aoun a cabinet share that is determined only by the parliamentary majority, not by the president or Aoun himself, said Saturday the cabinet blue print now with the president was final.

“This is the only harmonious lineup with which I can cooperate to cope with threats facing Lebanon. All other formulas have been exhausted,” Seniora told reporters after a meeting with Sunni Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Kabbani Saturday.

And like sand through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives. So dramatic! Seniora has been presenting new cabinets of various makeups almost every other day for the past couple weeks yet Lahoud just isn’t satisfied. Why is that? Does he have a mansion in Damascus waiting for him? Like all other Syrian-allied politicians, Lahoud is bought by Bashar. His interests obviously aren’t with Lebanon, and faced with a government made up of the same people who tried to oust him outright, he can extract even more pleasure out of throwing them off the deep end.

Now, mix Lahoud churning the internal turmoil with overt Syrian maneuvers, and you have what I call undeclared war.

MASNAA, LEBANON-SYRIA BORDER ???????? When Iraqi teenager Nihad Rahim was allowed to accompany his truck-driver father, Ayad, on a trip to Beirut, it was supposed to be a reward for passing his school exams.

But instead of being a break from his war-torn homeland, Nihad and his father have become caught up in a border crisis between Beirut and Damascus that has left hundreds of truckers stranded for a week on a remote seven-mile no man’s land between the Lebanese and Syrian customs posts.

“It usually takes two minutes to drive from one to the other, but I have only moved a few inches in a week,” Ayad Rahim says.

The dispute, which is estimated to be costing Lebanon some $300,000 a day in lost business, underlines the difficulties the two countries face in trying to build a new equal relationship following the end of Syria’s 15-year domination of its small Mediterranean neighbor.

Damascus blames the delays on increased checks to prevent weapons and explosives being smuggled into Syria. But many Lebanese say Syria is acting out of spite after having been forced to relinquish its grip on Lebanon in the wake of the assassination in February of Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister .

Syria is making a “political statement that it is a strong adversary, if not an ‘enemy’ of the ‘new Lebanon’ that came out of the ballot boxes after the era of Syrian tutelage,” wrote Nassir Asaad, a columnist for Lebanon’s Al Mustaqbal newspaper.

The trade war is now going into week three, with trade between the two estimated to be about $400 million a year. An important thing to note about a large amount of the exports being blockaded is that they are agricultural products, which eventually rot. That’s money flushed right down the drain and entire livelihoods destroyed. It just doesn’t stop there, though! Not only is Syria blockading the borders, thus shutting off most land trade to the outside world, but they are blocking access to the sea as well. Fishermen getting too close to Syria might just be rounded up and have their boats seized on a whim.

Let’s not forget the targeted car bomb assassinations. Is this not undeclared war? It’s everything but the tanks and a little city called Hama. Lebanon will be able to deal with Syria one day from a position of strength, but as long as Lahoud continues to destabilize the process, that day becomes further off. Lebanon has the vast backing of the international community and the United States, so the new government should circumvent Lahoud and respond to Syria’s aggressive tactics. They’ve got to prove Assad wrong by showing that they can govern themselves, which makes dealing with Syria killing two birds with one stone.