I'll see your 500,000 and raise you another 500,000

From the AP article (which I'm linking to at Fox News because, well, you know):

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators chanted "Freedom, sovereignty, independence," and waved a sea of Lebanese flags in Beirut on Monday, the biggest anti-Syrian protest yet in the opposition's duel of street rallies with supporters of the Damascus-backed government.

Nothing to see here, move along. It's nothing special. Later in the article:

Monday's protest easily surpassed a pro-government rally of hundreds of thousands of people last week by the Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah. That show of strength forced the opposition to try to regain its momentum.

While there were no official estimates of the size of the crowd, police officers privately estimated it at about 1 million people. The officers refused to speak publicly because it was an opposition rally.

An Associated Press estimate by reporters on the scene put the number at much higher than the approximately 500,000 who attended the March 8 pro-Syrian rally.

I don't know about you, but that sounds like "regain(ing) the momentum" to me. I could write something really snarky about what this means for the Left, but Mike beat me to it:

Moreover, given not only the incontestable desirability of maintaining “stability” in the ME, no matter how brutal and inhuman that “stability” might be, but also the proven effectiveness of decades spent carefully nurturing the status quo as advocated by various forward-thinking liberals worldwide, it would be downright criminal and completely disgusting to suggest that the widely derided efforts of the Bush admin had anything whatever to do with any of this.

Of course not, Mike. It would have happened anyway if the US had done nothing in response to 9/11 and then engaged in the broader war against terror and its enablers. In fact, it would have happened faster. Trust us, we have the technology to explore alternate timelines so we know this to be true....

You know, it's funny that we're seeing these massive demonstrations by the people of Lebanon telling an occupying power to get out. We're *not* seeing anything remotely close to that magnitude from Iraqis telling the US to get out. Syria doesn't really have much of an economy itself; it relies on the economy in Lebanon. The US, on the other hand, is not sponging off of Iraq but is instead sinking large sums of money into the reconstrustion of Iraq's infrastructure and the revival of its economy. Yet, between Syria and the US, which one would the Left rather see leave the Middle Eastern nation it has its troops in?

And, also via Mike, this image is not to be missed. Be sure you're not drinking anything if you don't want it all over your keyboard and monitor.