Hostage to Hezbollah  —  Lesson for Nasrallah: "The violence done to Lebanon shall overwhelm you."  —  Pity Lebanon: In a world of states, it has not had a state of its own.  A garden without fences, was the way Beirut, its capital city, was once described.

In Mideast Strife, Bush Sees a Step To Peace  —  President Bush's unwillingness to pressure Israel to halt its military campaign in Lebanon is rooted in a view of the Middle East conflict that is sharply different from that of his predecessors.  —  When hostilities have broken out in the past …

To Save a Revolution  —  You could sense the hurt and anger as Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora pleaded this week to the U.S. ambassador and other diplomats in Beirut for a halt to Israeli attacks on Lebanese targets.  "The country has been torn to shreds," he said.  "I hope you will not let us down."

The Lieberman Campaign: What Happened?  —  How did it come to this?  —  Joe Lieberman and his campaign staff must be asking themselves just that question this morning.  How does an 18-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, a central figure in Connecticut Democratic politics for more than 35 years …

Exiled Bakri in SOS plea  —  EXILED preacher of hate Omar Bakri has begged the Royal Navy to rescue him from war-torn Beirut.  —  The Muslim cleric who fled Britain last year, tried to board a ship full of women and children yesterday but was turned away.  —  He also wrote to the British …

A Secret the Media Kept  —  Toward the end of 1979, hundreds of American and Canadian journalists and news organizations got hold of a dynamite news story that would have made personal reputations and careers and sent circulation or broadcast ratings soaring.  The facts were confirmed, unassailably.

Sources: Negroponte Blocks CIA Analysis of Iraq "Civil War"  —  I reported in May that despite the deteriorating situation in Iraq, no National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has been produced on that country since the summer of 2004.  The last NIE, a classified document that the CIA describes as …

Top-Secret World Loses Blogger  —  CIA Contractor Is Fired When Internal Post Crosses the Line  —  Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success within the select circle of people who could actually access it.  —  Only people with top-secret security clearances …

Count Ethnic Divisions, Not Bombs, to Tell if a Nation Will Recover From War  —  WITH repeated Shiite and Sunni killings in Iraq, the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel, Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, the assaults by the Taliban and counterassaults by American forces in Afghanistan …

Sen. Reid: Iraq devolves into 'civil war'  —  Democratic leader will try to revive Senate debate on Iraq  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — Declaring that he believes the situation in Iraq has devolved into a civil war, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he plans to try to bring the war back up for debate on the Senate floor.