Top Items:
New York Times:
Israeli General Says Lebanon Offensive Will Last Weeks — JERUSALEM, July 18 — A top Israeli general said today that Israel's offensive in Lebanon would last another few weeks, and he said that the use of large numbers of ground forces had not been ruled out.
Discussion:
TAPPED, Associated Press, american footprints, Balloon Juice, FP Passport and Air America Radio
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Richard Cohen / Washington Post:
Hunker Down With History — The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims …
Discussion:
Ynetnews, Captain's Quarters, Yourish.com, Atlas Shrugs, The Real Ugly American.com, Confederate Yankee, AbbaGav, The Corner on National …, Daled Amos, Right Wing News, Hyscience, The Belmont Club, THE LIFE-OF-RUBIN BLOG, Blue Crab Boulevard, A Barbaric Yawp, ShrinkWrapped, Elder of Ziyon, Macsmind, Stop The ACLU, IMAO, Boker tov, Boulder!, Israel At Level Ground, Iowa Voice and Decision '08
Haaretz:
UN delegation presents cease-fire package; Livni hints Israel won't rule out int'l force in Lebanon — Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni hinted Tuesday that Israel would not object to a temporary international force in south Lebanon, despite earlier an outright Israeli rejection of such a plan.
Discussion:
Liberty and Justice, AMERICAN FUTURE, Hot Air, Vital Perspective and Blue Crab Boulevard
Yaakov Katz / Associated Press:
IDF needs another week to alleviate Hizbullah threat — Forty to fifty percent of Hizbullah's military capability has been destroyed in the six days of the IDF counter-attack following last Wednesday's Hizbullah raid in northern Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
StrategyPage:
Hizbollah's Iranian Rocket Force — July 18, 2006: It's been no secret that, for years, Iran has been shipping, through Syria, thousands of unguided rockets to Hizbollah in Lebanon. As far back as 2001, there were reports of 240mm Fadjr rockets arriving in Hizbollah controlled territory in southern Lebanon.
Discussion:
Blue Crab Boulevard
Juan / Informed Comment:
Israel Invades Lebanon; — Ongoing Airstrikes Kill Dozens of Lebanese Civilians; — Hizbullah Rockets Wound 11 in Haifa — Israel invaded Lebanon on Monday, sending ground troops into the south. Israeli leaders say that they do not intend a long-term occupation. But then war is unpredictable.
Jonathan Chait / The New Republic:
NOT EQUAL: — At Tapped, Matt Yglesias writes that Hezbollah's …
NOT EQUAL: — At Tapped, Matt Yglesias writes that Hezbollah's …
Discussion:
TAPPED, QandO, The Moderate Voice, Outside The Beltway, Lawyers, Guns and Money and Blue Crab Boulevard
David Aaronovitch / Times of London:
A heavily armed militia attacks your territory. What are you meant to do?
A heavily armed militia attacks your territory. What are you meant to do?
Democrat Taylor Marsh Blogs Politics:
Bush Gropes Germany's Merkel — updated below— President Bush took time out from the G-8 Summit to grope German Chancellor Angela Merkel. I'm not kidding. It boggles the mind. — Via Mash (by the way, great get!), we get photos via a friend of his in Germany.
Discussion:
Majikthise, Le Blog Bérubé, The Carpetbagger Report, The Green Knight, Think Progress, Hullabaloo and Pen-Elayne on the Web
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Katharine Q. Seelye / New York Times:
Times to Reduce Page Size and Close a Plant in 2008 — The New York Times is planning to reduce the size of the newspaper, making it narrower by one and a half inches, and to close its printing operation in Edison, N.J., company officials said yesterday. — The changes, to go into effect …
Discussion:
The Moderate Voice, BuzzMachine, The Corner on National …, Blue Crab Boulevard and Don Surber
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Reuters:
NYT to cut paper size and close plant —Text+NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co. (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) plans to narrow the size of its flagship newspaper and close a printing plant, resulting in the loss of 250 jobs, the company said in a story posted on its Web site late on Monday.
George F. Will / Washington Post:
Transformation's Toll — "Grotesque" was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's characterization of the charge that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was responsible for the current Middle East conflagration. She is correct, up to a point. This point: Hezbollah and Hamas were alive and toxic long before March 2003.
Duncan Black / Los Angeles Times:
Why the Left Is Furious at Lieberman — A blogger's blast at the embattled Connecticut senator. Hint: It's not just Iraq. — SOME TIME AFTER having lunch in Iraq with the junior senator from Connecticut, Time magazine Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware told an interviewer …
Discussion:
Shakespeare's Sister, US News, stamfordadvocate.com, Preemptive Karma, LamontBlog, Martini Republic and THE NEWS BLOG
Kate Zernike / New York Times:
G.O.P. Senator Resisting Bush Over Detainees — WASHINGTON, July 17 — Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina often plays the contrarian, the conservative Republican willing to poke a stick in the eye of the White House. — Now Mr. Graham is playing an even higher-profile variant of that role …
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Washington Post:
Bush Set to Use First Veto on Stem Cell Bill — Despite Divided GOP, President Says He Will Not Ease Restrictions on Federally Funded Research — Since his inauguration in 2000, President Bush has gone out of his way to avoid an overt confrontation with Congress.
Discussion:
The Left Coaster, the talking dog, The Democratic Daily, The All Spin Zone and Outside The Beltway
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Jules Witcover / Salt Lake Tribune:
The Democrats' message dilemma — WASHINGTON — It was a bit startling the other morning to hear Sen. Charles Schumer of New York — the garrulous poster boy of Democratic liberalism — intone that New Deal Democracy is over. But also, he added just as surprisingly, so is Reagan Republicanism.
Michael Hirsh / Newsweek:
Caught on Candid Camera — What Bush's overheard remarks tell us about his views on Mideast diplomacy-and why he should be engaging Syria rather than criticizing it. — Reuters TV-pool — Overheard: Bush talks to Blair at the G8 lunch — July 17, 2006 - Only very rarely …
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MSNBC:
U.S. citizens remain in dark about evacuation — Official: Operation costs more than available resources; 64 have left so far — A French toddler is carried over a fence by relatives as they wait Monday with hundreds of other French citizens near their embassy in Beirut to be evacuated from Lebanon.