Insomnia

The Saudi press agency reports that five employees of the U.S. construction company Bechtel were kidnapped Tuesday on the highway near Tuz, 230 kilometers north of Baghdad.

Police said gunmen intercepted a vehicle belonging to Bechtel and abducted all five occupants. The nationalities of the passengers were not immediately known.

A vast, pro-Syrian, pro-Hizbollah rally flooded Beirut today, dwarfing all the previous protests demanding that the Syrians leave Lebanon.

Hizbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah called for those opposed to the Syrians to "join a government of national unity" and to reject the withdrawl of Syrian forces and the disarming of Hizbollah.

He went on to say that Lebanese did not fear U.S. intervention.

"We have defeated them in the past and if they come again we will defeat them again," he said, drawing chants of "Death to America" from the sea of demonstrators.

Mmm. Democracy in action.