After Pelosi’s Syria Visit, Dissidents Cower by Katherine Zoepf Published: May 15, 2007 Photo: Reuters/Sana Nancy Pelosi and Bashar al-Assad. DAMASCUS, SYRIA—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria last month, and the related question of whether or not the U.S. should formally re-engage this Baathist republic, remains as controversial a topic on the streets of Damascus as it was in the days afterwards among Beltway bloggers. And, perverse as it may seem to some American liberals, it is the Syrians who are most sympathetic to their progressive values who have been most critical of Ms. Pelosi’s attempts to begin a...