DUBAI — Just a few thoughts and obser­va­tions from the Vegas-meets-Singapore hotspot on the Gulf:

Tom Van­den Brook of *USA Today* writes yet another story for his grow­ing clip col­lec­tion on [MRAPs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP_(armored_vehicle)), those big, expen­sive and life­sav­ing armored vehi­cles used by Marines in Anbar. The news in this story? Defense Sec­re­tary Robert M. Gates says they’re great. Seri­ously. Four hun­dred words for what should have been a sin­gle sen­tence in another story. Please stop, Tom. The Pulitzers [have already been announced](http://www.pulitzer.org/). You didn’t win.

Mean­while, in Lebanon, I’ve heard from friends that Beirut is calm but tense. (I’m not there any­more so I can’t really report too eas­ily.) March 14 is increas­ingly dispir­ited and hop­ing for a response from the world greater than sim­ple con­dem­na­tion. The SSNP has taken over Hamra, which is bizarre. And what’s up with Hezbol­lah advanc­ing on the Chouf? And then whin­ing when two of their fight­ers get taken by the Druze? You don’t mess with the Druze, man. And if you invade someone’s ter­ri­tory — and let’s be hon­est, that’s what’s going on — you’re bound to take some casu­al­ties. Hezbol­lah can’t have it both ways.

Some of the Lebanese blogs I’ve started read­ing are [From Beirut To the Beltway](http://www.beirutbeltway.com/beirutbeltway/), [Lebanese Polit­i­cal Journal](http://lebop.blogspot.com/) and [The Beirut Spring](http://beirutspring.com/blog). These are solidly March 14 blogs and the authors hold polit­i­cal views I don’t nec­es­sar­ily agree with, but at least there’s some on-the-ground post­ings going on.