Sunday, March 27, 2005

This is from the New York Times, but not by Hassan Fattah: "Most Lebanese will tell you that Iraq had nothing to do with the popular upheaval now gripping the country, and not just because they opposed the American invasion of their Arab neighbor."
(Chibli Mallat, quoted in the piece, is NOT a leader of the opposition. He is very close to the Khu'i Foundation and to Ahmad Chalabi, and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq war. He calls himself a "friend" of Paul Wolfowitz. (Those token Arabs who met Wolfowitz once or twice call themselves his "friends.") Perhaps they took the term "friend" (as in "how are you my "friend"?"--commonly used in the US) literally. New York Times did not mention any of that. I look at public opinion surveys in Lebanon very regularly (and they are conducted and published regularly) and I can tell you that US media references to--or generalizations regarding--Lebanese public opinion have no connection to reality, unless one wants right-wing Maronites to represent all of the Lebanese people, and unless you want to consider Shi`ite Lebanese, and leftwing Lebanese to be...non-Lebanese.