Nobody who is a regular contributer here knows much of anything about the ME beyond Israel.

Until the '06 war on Lebanon, neither did I.

In general, one does have to rely on knowledgable bloggers and their commenters (who are also fluent in Arabic) to get the bigger picture. Local media sources are another source of information altho they are all partisan so knowing the bias is key to filtering the information.

Nadine's post contains the following piece of pure agitprop/ propaganda:

This election would put Lebanon in the hands of either of two camps: the US-backed March 14th coalition, a pro-democracy organization which favors a peaceful resolution to the Middle East's ongoing conflicts, versus the March 8th coalition which favors alliances with Syria and Iran and open-ended conflict with Israel.

This is absolute bullshit and I'm sorry I missed it first time around. I too hope she will return so I can ask her if her expenses to return to Lebanon were also paid for by the great democracy-luvin Saudis who are our full partners in messing in Lebanon. They spent beaucoup bucks to return thousands to vote for M14. One source in Riyadh told Newsweek that the Saudis spent more than the Obama campaign did in winning the general election.

So let's hear all the cheers that "our" side won. Hip Hip Hooray.

This piece of "information" from Nadine's post is also curious:

(Lebanon has the unique position of being composed of roughly 33% Sunni Muslims, 33% Shiite Muslims, and 33% Christians).

Nobody actually knows the composition of Lebanon because the last census was in 1932. Because the division of power and who can be in what position is determined by which sect they belong to, those who have been favored are understandably reluctant to have a real census conducted.

BTW, the so-called "defeat" of the March8 coalition, "Hezbollah" for those who like American simplistic shorthand, included a substantial victory in the popular vote. Long before the actual event, there were more than a few Lebanon watchers speculating that "Hezbollah" wanted to lose. The real Hezbollah did win all their seats; it was their Christian ally, Aoun who lost some.

The speculation around a desired loss by Hezbollah was that they didn't want the responsibility of running the place, that they are better off being "the opposition/the resistance", Israel's threats to destroy all of Lebanon if they won and the threats from Obama administration officials. The latter were always issued along with pious declarations of our support for the sovereignity and democratic values of Lebanon while warning of "foreign interference" in the election process....

(Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were seen as campaigning for the M14 coalition during their quick stopovers in Beirut.)

To return to the main thrust of this post, I agree.

While I'm familiar with bloggers who are more knowledgeable about the region, they tend to be informed about specific countries rather than the ME as a whole. They also tend to be really busy with their RL professional commitments in addition to their blogs.

Thanks lally... 8-)

And I even did accidently (sheepishly dropping my head in shame having never rec'd one of my own posts before and meaning to click the comment tab).

That might have been Juan Cole, though I'm not sure. Josh has linked to his blog again on the front page, in reference to his Iranian election coverage:
http://juancole.com/