Syria's Response To UN Report

This is comical. Watching the news consider protests organized by the government in a totalitarian state that are in favor of the government's continued actions as news is laughable. This was a completely stage managed event that has nothing to do with the US or the media, but Assad's need to run Lebanon from behind Curtain #1. Harari's assassination exposed Syria's crumbling hand.

Waving placards and pictures of their president, tens of thousands of Syrians protested in a pro-government rally today over a U.N. report on the killing of a Lebanese leader.

"Mr. Mehlis: we are not murderers," read one banner, referring to Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor who wrote the report that implicated top Syrian security officials in the February assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (search).

Organized to show support for the beleaguered government of President Bashar Assad (search), the demonstration in central Damascus came a day before the U.N. Security Council (search) is due to debate the report. The United States and Britain are calling for the council to take a firm stand on Syria.

Sorry, but no one in the street is being accused of murder, unless their name was specifically mentioned in the report before it was sanitized by Annan's office, including Bashar's brother and brother in law. And those named were in Assad's ring of closest associates, which could lead one to believe that Assad knew or should have known of what was going on.

Michael Totten has much more (as he's reporting from Beirut, Lebanon).

Technorati: un, bush, harari, assassination, assad, lebanon, syria, lahoud.