Border Crossings II

So, this border crossing was a little bit more involved than the previous one, mainly due to the on-again/off-again nature of the presidential elections in Lebanon. Was supposed to cross yesterday, the day before the elections (which actually didn't occur today), but was assured that I could cross on election day without problems. Until there WERE problems: businesses were ordered to close, and additional check points and security points (ie soldiers and tanks) were going to be put in place on election day, so my original form of transport cancelled last minute. Then, we had to scramble around to find another way to get in, which I did, but had to pay twice as much to get here!
For all of that, the crossing was fairly uneventful: the soldiers were really quite friendly and helpful, despite their machine guns - I suppose the French helps too...
All of that hassle was a bit overblown, as the politicians then blustered around and delayed the election, yet again... I was doing a bit of math, and, considering there are only 3 million Lebanese, when one subtracts the number of children, women, elderly men, and men who actually want peace and not a return to civil war, there are likely only about 150,000-200,000 men who are actually the problem in this country... which is an insignificant amount of people causing so much strife in a tiny parcel of land... I think they should be allowed to go up to the north-east or south-east corner of the country and just duke it out amongst themselves....
Another point which I forgot to make about Syria: I did, in fact, encounter one woman who had come to the clinic in full chador (which, in my opinion, is almost worse than the burqa, as there isn't even an "eye screen" - basically, you are covered with a large black cloth, full length black gloves, wrist guards, etc etc, so you cannot even tell there's a human in there... she had come in with her husband and child (the child being the patient, and the father being clothed in normal Western-style clothing, of course)... it was as if she wasn't there... it was eerie... at least with the niqab, you can see the eyes, so you know there's a person there... but this, this was as if she was a non-person, non-existent... she didn't speak, I couldn't even appreciate if there was a face, or a soul, behind that blackness... like the Ringwraiths, actually...