Jumblatt Denial

Arthur Chrenkoff semi-responds to my post on Walid Jumblatt. I say "semi" because he curiously excises the Jim Henley passage at the end that ties it all together:

Simply start saying things useful to the Bush White House and you too can take on gravitas with Gannonite speed. Only spoilsports would pause to wonder if your insights into the murder of Rafiq Hariri or your enthusiasm for democracy were more credible than your shrewd deductions regarding the massacres of September 2001. And the only people who would suggest that, as a politician, anything that comes out of your mouth is calculated to maintain and increase your own power would be people who are just on the other side.

The point, Arthur, is that Jumblatt is not merely some reasonable analyst who opposed the Iraq war then had the scales fall from his eyes as everything turned out peachy keen – he's a politician with an agenda of his own that he now wishes to advance with help from the U.S. Moreover, Jumblatt's insane extremism – calling 9/11 a U.S. government plot, cheering the deaths of the Columbia astronauts because one of them was Israeli, etc. – must be considered when assessing the supposed changes in this leopard's spots. This is not Gerhard Schroeder or Jacques Chirac we're talking about here, or even a Saudi prince, but a full-blown America-hating opportunist playing the get-Syria crowd for the fools they are. Update: Further reading. 2/25: More!