I now know how little I know about Lebanon and Syria. Juan Cole dropped some science into what now seems like my walnut-sized brain. But I can't blame the grey matter itself, perhaps that I wasn't taught this stuff in school, and then never sought out the information, or for that matter even cared. So my brain has to take some of the heat for this.

I guess the only thing I realized already was that Ariel Sharon is a butcher, and has been a butcher for at least 20 years.