ANALYSIS: Giving the war an image of victory, not a draw  —  Borrowing from the world of soccer beloved to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Israel Defense Forces operation in Lebanon went into overtime on Monday.  —  Olmert wants to take another stab at a decisive conclusion before the UN Security Council blows the final whistle.

Castro relinquishes power before surgery  —  HAVANA - Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his brother Raul on Monday night and told Cubans he underwent surgery.  —  The Cuban leader said he had suffered gastrointestinal bleeding, apparently due to stress …

Democrats Unite on Iraq Withdrawal Demands  —  Twelve Democratic leaders of the House and Senate have urged President Bush in a strongly worded letter to begin withdrawing the 130,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by year's end, a sign that Democrats may be uniting on a key election-year issue that has divided the party.

Ned Lamont on the Colbert Report  —  Stephen Colbert interviewed Ned Lamont tonight about the upcoming Connecticut primary.  —  Some rough transcript quotes from Ned: … Ned did an outstanding job at handling the tough interviews Stephen Colbert gives.  He was quick with the responses and presented his platform very well.

The Gibson Affair: A Defining Hollywood Moment  —  So is Mel Gibson's drunken anti-Semitic spew really headline news — or is it just another celebrity DUI?  Another high-profile addition to The Smoking Gun's mug shot gallery (Nick and Glen, meet your new buddy Mel)?  Monologue fodder for Leno, Letterman, Conan, and Kimmel?

Will the Center Hold?  —  A moderate senator and a far-left congresswoman face tough Democratic primary challenges.  —  Two primaries next week will tell a lot about the strength of the hard-left wing of the Democratic party.  In Connecticut, moderate Sen. Joe Lieberman faces …

Iraq's Vice President Criticizes Israel  —  Iraq's vice president on Monday accused Israel of carrying out "massacres" in Lebanon, the strongest criticism yet of the Jewish state by a top official of the U.S-backed Iraqi government.  —  Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite …

This war must not end  —  The war in Lebanon must not end short of its logical conclusion.  Its logical conclusion is not the successful use of human shields by Hezbollah to hamstring the Israeli Defense Forces.  Its logical conclusion is the destruction of Hezbollah as a military …

IDF exchanges heavy fire with Hizbullah in south Lebanon  —  Intense clashes erupted on Tuesday morning between IDF paratroopers and Hizbullah terrorists in the southern Lebanese town of Ayta a-Shab.  —  Heavy gunfights were reported involving light machine guns and rockets.

Gitmo Guards Often Attacked by Detainees  —  The prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay during the war on terror have attacked their military guards hundreds of times, turning broken toilet parts, utensils, radios and even a bloody lizard tail into makeshift weapons, Pentagon reports say.

Fla. Republicans won't back Rep. Harris  —  TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The state Republican Party bluntly told Rep. Katherine Harris (news, bio, voting record) that she couldn't win this fall's Senate election and that the party wouldn't support her campaign, a letter obtained Monday by The Associated Press shows.

Shooting exposes the war at home  —  Tension simmers here, but rarely reaches the surface  —  In intellectual Seattle, where even the most fractious political debates can be discussed over coffee, Friday's shooting at the Jewish Federation building left both pro- and anti-Israeli activists struggling …

AMATEUR HOUR  —  On the Internet, everybody is a millenarian.  Internet journalism, according to those who produce manifestos on its behalf, represents a world-historical development—not so much because of the expressive power of the new medium as because of its accessibility to producers and consumers.