On March 14 2005 Beirut's fashionable downtown district was flooded with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, waving Lebanese flags and passionately demanding an end to Syrian control over Lebanon.

Dubbed in Washington the "Cedar Revolution", the protests - following the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri - were held up as evidence of a changing Middle East, a blow to radicalism and a vindication of America's push for freedom.