This:
The United States has imposed sanctions on Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and six senior Syrian officials for human rights abuses over their brutal crackdown on anti-government protests. The White House announced the sanctions on Wednesday, a day before Barack Obama, the US president, was to deliver a major speech on the uprisings throughout the Arab world with prominent mentions of Syria. … The sanctions will freeze any assets Assad and the six Syrian government officials have in US jurisdiction and make it illegal for Americans to do business with them.
Andrew Malcolm isn't impressed:
Here's the problem with that deal: With months of warnings, the Syrian ophthalmologist-turned-dictator and his cronies don't have enough money left in the U.S. to buy a kabab. Given the proclivities of pouting American pols for phony PR gestures — think Jimmy Carter boycotting the Moscow Olympics — no bad guy with half a mind would put any loot in a U.S. credit union CD.
Meanwhile, Mike Crowley checks in on Yemen:
[C]ounterterrorism adviser John Brennan, who is something of a de facto U.S. envoy to the al-Qaeda hotbed of Yemen, phoned that country’s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to urge him to sign a political transition agreement that would lead to his departure. But this isn’t the first time Obama and Brennan have nudged Saleh, a canny political survivor who has been stalling the transition deal for weeks, and it’s not clear whether another push will help.
The Dish 