Rice Rejects Overture To Iran And Syria  —  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday rejected a bipartisan panel's recommendation that the United States seek the help of Syria and Iran in Iraq, saying the "compensation" required by any deal might be too high.

Diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war  —  The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

New U.N. Leader Is Sworn in and Promises to Rebuild Trust  —  Ban Ki-moon of South Korea was sworn in Thursday as the next secretary general of the United Nations, and he pledged to rebuild faith in an organization that has been tarnished by scandal and riven by disputes between rich and poor nations.

Ill Senator Is Called Responsive; Capital Is Riveted  —  Senator Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, was said to be in critical condition but "responsive" Thursday after an operation to stop bleeding in his brain, and Democrats declared that his condition would not imperil the narrow majority …

Castro Near Death, U.S. Intelligence Chief Says  —  Cuban President Fidel Castro is very ill and close to death, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte said yesterday.  —  "Everything we see indicates it will not be much longer . . . months, not years," Negroponte told a meeting of Washington Post editors and reporters.

White House Upset by Senator's Trip to Syria  —  The White House said Thursday that a Democratic senator's meeting with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was inappropriate and undermined democracy in the region, while three more senators, including a Republican, made plans to visit Damascus in defiance of President Bush.

Getting Serious About Iran: A Military Option  —  By Arthur Herman From issue: November 2006  —  As the impasse over Iran's nuclear-weapons program grows inexorably into a crisis, a kind of consensus has taken root in the minds of America's foreign-policy elite.

'The Man From Nowhere'  —  What does Barack Obama believe in?  —  We are getting very excited.  Barack Obama is brilliant, eloquent and fresh.  He is "exciting" (David Brooks), "charming" (Bob Schieffer), "my favorite guy" (Oprah Winfrey), has "charisma" (Donna Brazile), and should run now for president (George Will).

Today's Rationale?  —  Nine days until Christmas...and Mommy just got dragged away in handcuffs for a bunch of show arrests.  Nice.  —  The shifting rationale for the ICE raids on the Swift Meatpacking plants is making me very peeved.  What began as a "raid on illegal immigrants" …

Final Fantasy  —  Fred Kagan's disastrous plan for "victory" in Iraq.  —  There's a line from one of Johnny Cash's final songs that adequately sums up the new Iraq strategy proposal released yesterday by Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute.  Go tell that long tongue liar …

Facts on the Ground  —  Reality keeps racing ahead of any of the options the Bush Administration might consider for Iraq.  Though both the ISG Report and the Adminstration throw cold water on a de jure partition strategy, even the soft Gelb-Biden version, the sectarian laundry that's …

Is Denver ready to turn blue?  —  DENVER — This one-time cow town at the foot of the Rockies is two time zones and 1,500 miles away from the power centers of New York and Washington, but city and state officials say it can handle the demands of 35,000 visitors and the intense spotlight …

Belgium splits up?  TV hoax is decried  —  BRUSSELS — Suddenly and shockingly, Belgium came to an end.  —  State television broke into regular programming late Wednesday with an urgent bulletin: The Dutch-speaking half of the country had declared independence and the king and queen had fled.

Smart children "more likely to become vegetarians"  —  LONDON (Reuters) - Children with high IQs are more likely to be vegetarians when they grow up, according to research reported on Friday.  —  A British study of more them 8,000 men and women aged 30 whose IQs had been measured when they were 10 …

Comedy Goes Clean  —  The F-word finally falls from favor.  —  The most positive trend of 2006 (surely there had to be one) was described in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month by Jeff Zaslow in a piece titled, "Comedy Comes Clean."  Notwithstanding the fact that the movie "Borat" …

General Says Army Will Need To Grow  —  Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns  —  Warning that the active-duty Army "will break" under the strain of today's war-zone rotations, the nation's top Army general yesterday called for expanding the force by 7,000 …