The reason that I have no respect for the Lebanese journalists and politicians who now criticize Syria is that I remember all of them when they use to write the most pathetic and fawning praises of the Syrian regime and its leadership. (There are Lebanese journalists of course who also had not written praise for the Syrian regime: Joseph Samahah, `Ali Hamadi, Wisam Sa`adah, Husam `Itani, Duha Shams, Khalid Saghiyyah and the late Samir Qasir). But the rest, all of them, had praised the Syrian regime, and established ties with key people in the intelligence and military branches of the government. Take one of the most boring Lebanese journalist, Nasir Al-As`ad (formerly of the Communist Action Organization) of the Hariri mouthpiece Al-Mustaqbal. In 2003, he wrote commenting on an interview with Bashshar Al-Asad: "Its importance resides in it being an accurate translation of the spirit of Ta'if Agreement and the "Constitutional Understanding" that builds upon it." Or listen to one of the loudest new voices against Syria, Faris Kashshan (who started his career as a press aide to a Hariri minister): "this will leave the helm of the government in the hands of two institutions that favorably value the Syrian role as a stabilizing factor" in Lebanon. Or read him say also in 2003 that: "Damascus extends the hand of dialogue and affirms that peace is linked exclusively to the restoration of stolen rights, but it can simultaneously rely on land that it can, as has been proven in the difficult times, transform its stones into resistors." These are pens for hire, and will always be for hire, and political developments will change again and they will once more say things that contradict what they are now saying and writing.