Apparently, grammatical errors or horrors notwithstanding, "defending Syria is national right and duty." Fair enough. Or is it? Maybe omitting the article was a Freudian slip …

Why did Saud go all the way to Damascus just to announce the summit? (Notice how every little meeting is now a "summit.") Why didn't Bashar just go to Jeddah? Was Saudi Arabia putting him in a fait accompli situation because he had claimed he was too "busy" to go?

So here we were, minding our own business, thinking the excitement had gone out of the whole Syria-Lebanon affair and that the year had seen every possible development there was. Thanks to Abdel Halim Khaddam, however, we had the farcical session of parliament in Damascus today to send off 2005 with a big bang.

It's not clear why anyone in Syria should be relieved that UNSC Resolution 1636 was "watered-down" with the help of a number of countries.

Wouldn't national dialogue be more consolidated if people speaking their minds weren't thrown into jail?

It occurs to me today that The 25th Hour in fact accurately describes the Syrian regime's conduct; indeed, it only seems to react when it is already too late, beyond the 11th hour.

When UNSC Resolution 1559 was passed, the Syrian regime had gloated that it was a victory because it didn't mention Syria by name; it's fair to say that there is little possibility of that on Monday, when the vote on the post-Mehlis report resolution is expected.

Some of the comments I made this afternoon during a general meeting at Chatham House held just before the UN Security Council session on the Mehlis report.

Mehlis's disclosure that credible threats had been received by the commission, and the way his eyebrows shot up when Syrian Ambassador Faisal Meqdad complained about the report's allegations of misleading statements …

On the Syrian side, people are despairing of the situation, sympathizing with the neighbors, but completely impotent, as always, to help anyone, least of all themselves.

One shot from afar may have been a mistake. One shot from close range would have been gross incompetence. 8 shots from close range was a public execution.

Blair got nothing in return for its alliance with – or rather blind devotion to – the Bush administration, and clearly has very little clout in Washington. Is Blair's foreign policy really advancing his country's interests?

When it finally emerged, a few days later, that these were suicide bombers, and British-born ones to boot, the shock was even bigger than the shock of the attack. No border controls could have prevented this.

The minute we open our mouth, we are accused of being agents and collaborators – something which would make Americans laugh out loud.

Has anyone noticed that Robert Fisk is writing stranger and stranger things every day?

The real political and economic reforms which have been promised and talked about ad nauseam since the last party conference will have to wait.

There is no such thing as an old guard and a new guard; there is only the guard. And the guard is guarding the assets it has acquired over the past decades.

Let's see if you can guess to what it refers (don't peak): "Possessed of almost a Jewish soul, displaying loyal Zionism and always hanging around with the guys, reporting for reserve duty …”

2 years of “liberation,” 9 months of “sovereignty” and 2 months of “democracy” later, Iraq is not doing well.

Most Syrians have for a long time been opposed to the regime’s handling of Lebanon, upset not by the departure from Lebanon but rather upset by the mishandling in the last years.