Dear friends:

I am still not aware of anything about a coup in Syria in the Western news
media.  As of 5:30 p.m. ET March 18 the Middle East Newsline at
http://www.menewsline.com/ is still carrying the story.  It is also being
carried at http://www.free-lebanon.com/ .

This morning, the www.debka.com intelligence site in Israel had a slightly
different take, reporting that Syria had merely shaken up its military,
which could be a mild way of saying the same thing.  Oddly, however, during
the day the story was pulled from its Web site.

Something must be going on, but a news blackout seems to be in place.  It
could be that a possible internal conflict will be resolved (and a few
heads rolled) and the public may never know what happened.  That can happen
in totalitarian countries.  However, it is hard to imagine this escaping
the attention of aggressive Western journalists who are quick to
immediately scream worldwide if a terrorist murderer is discovered to be
only slightly abused by Coalition forces.

Will be interesting to see what might develop, if anything.

Jim