Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

The most recent Gallup poll this month found that 52% of adult Americans want to see all U.S. troops out of Iraq within a year, with 19% advocating immediate withdrawal. In the summer of 1970, Gallup found that 48% wanted a pullout within a year, with 23% embracing the “immediate” option. Just 7% want to send more troops now, vs. 10% then.

At present, 56% call the decision to invade Iraq a “mistake,” with 41% disagreeing. Again this echoes the view of the Vietnam war in 1970, when that exact same number, 56%, in May 1970 called it a mistake in a Gallup poll.

Q. Is the country closer to a civil war?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don't know. You know, I thought about that last night, and just musing over the words, the phrase, and what constitutes it.

"We must condemn this action in the strongest possible terms," said Annan. "I am deeply dismayed that my earlier calls for immediate cessation of hostilities were not heeded." (Full story) Airstrikes kill dozens (Video)

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking during a visit to California on Sunday, said the attack added urgency to the situation.

"What has happened at Qana shows that this is a situation that simply cannot continue," Blair told reporters after speaking with other world leaders, including Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. "I think there is a basis for an agreement that would allow us to get a U.N. resolution, but we have to get this now."

Four U.S. marines have been killed in action in restive Anbar province, the U.S. military said on Sunday.

The marines, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7, died on Saturday.
No further details were available.

The casualties followed the deaths of four other marines in Anbar, west of Baghdad, on Thursday.

Tony Blair was facing a full-scale cabinet rebellion last night over the Middle East crisis after his former Foreign Secretary warned that Israel's actions risked destabilising all of Lebanon.

Jack Straw, now Leader of the Commons, said in a statement released after meeting Muslim residents of his Blackburn constituency that while he grieved for the innocent Israelis killed, he also mourned the '10 times as many innocent Lebanese men, women and children killed by Israeli fire'.

He said he agreed with the Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells that it was 'very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics used by Israel', adding: 'These are not surgical strikes but have instead caused death and misery amongst innocent civilians.' Straw said he was worried that 'a continuation of such tactics by Israel could destabilise the already fragile Lebanese nation'.

The Observer can also reveal that at a cabinet meeting before Blair left for last Friday's Washington summit with President George Bush, minister after minister pressed him to break with the Americans and publicly criticise Israel over the scale of death and destruction.

The critics included close Blair allies. One, the International Development Secretary, Hilary Benn, was revealed yesterday to have told a Commons committee that he did not view Israel's strikes on power stations as a 'proportionate response' to Hizbollah attacks.

Another Blairite minister among the cabinet critics said: 'It was clear that Tony knows the situation, and didn't have to be told about the outrage felt by so many over the disproportionate suffering. He also completely understands the effect on the Muslim community - both in terms of losing Muslim voters hand over fist and the wider issue of community cohesion.'

Blair responded to the dissenters by 'engaging seriously', the minister said. 'But he made it clear why he felt he had to choose the high-risk strategy of trying to move things forward for the future of the Middle East through his talks in Washington.'

In addition to the cabinet critics, one of Blair's closest Labour confidants was understood to have urged him last week to 'place distance' between himself and Bush over the crisis.

In interviews last night in San Francisco, the Prime Minister defended his decision not to call for an immediate ceasefire, but voiced the hope that an agreement on a UN framework for ending hostilities could be reached within a period of days. Asked by Sky News if he was too close to the White House, he said: 'I will never apologise for Britain being a strong ally of the US.'

Mourning the dead in Qana, Lebanon - BBC

QANA, Lebanon - An Israeli airstrike killed at least 60 people — many of them children — in a southern Lebanese village Sunday, the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice postponed a visit to Lebanon in a setback for diplomatic efforts to end hostilities.

Infuriated Lebanese officials said they had asked Rice to postpone the visit after Israel’s missile strike. But Rice said she called Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora to say she would postpone the trip, and that she had work to do in Jerusalem to end the fighting.

The missiles destroyed several homes in the village of Qana as people were sleeping. Rescue officials said at least 60 people were killed, and the bodies of 27 children were found in the rubble, Reuters reported. ...

...Rescuers aided by villagers dug through the rubble by hand. At least 20 bodies wrapped in white sheets were taken away, including 10 children. A row of houses lay in ruins, and an old woman was carried away on a plastic chair.

Villagers said many of the dead were from four families who had taken refuge in on the ground floor of a three-story building, believing they would be safe from bombings.

“We want this to stop!” shouted Mohammed Ismail, a middle-aged man pulling away at the rubble in search for bodies, his brown pants covered in dust. “May God have mercy on the children. They came here to escape the fighting.”

“They are hitting children to bring the fighters to their knees,” he said.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The Israeli government has said it takes full responsibility for the bombing and has said it would investigate. But this morning, the Lebanese prime minister called this a war crime. Is it a war crime?

AYALON: Yes, it is a war crime. ... one committed by Hezbollah, which is using innocent civilians as human shields. ... By the way, George, speaking formally, the Fourth Geneva Convention states that if civilians caught in the crossfire are hiding enemy fighters, they are participants, and are not protected. ...

More than 54 civilians, at least 34 of them children, have been killed in a town in south Lebanon in the deadliest Israeli strike of the conflict so far.
Displaced families had been sheltering in the basement of a house in Qana, which was crushed after a direct hit.

Lebanon's prime minister denounced "Israeli war criminals" and cancelled talks with the US secretary of state.

Israel said it regretted the incident - but added that civilians had been warned to flee the village.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would "continue to act with no hesitation against Hezbollah" which has been firing rockets into Israel from southern Lebanon.

He is reported to have told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Israel needs 10-14 days to press its offensive.

Israel's military has asked United Nations observers in southern Lebanon to evacuate two more villages - Ramyah and Ayta ash-Shab - before sunset, but they are unable to do so, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said.

Attack condemned

Hundreds of Lebanese protesters staged a violent demonstration, ransacking the UN headquarters in Beirut, chanting slogans against the US and Israel and in support of the Hezbollah militants.

Several countries have condemned the attack and renewed their calls for an immediate ceasefire - opposed by Israel and the US.

At an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council, Mr Annan urged members to strongly condemn the Qana attack and to put aside differences to call for an immediate ceasefire.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Sunday the situation could not continue and that all hostilities ought to cease once a UN resolution is adopted.

Lebanon's health minister now says about 750 people - mainly civilians - have been killed by Israeli action in Lebanon since their operations began 19 days ago. ...

...A total of 51 Israelis, including at least 18 civilians, have been killed in the conflict, sparked by Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July.

Out of respect for the souls of our innocent martyrs and the remains of our children buried under the rubble of Qana, we scream out to our fellow Lebanese and to other Arab brothers and to the whole world to stand united in the face of the Israeli war criminals.

The persistence of Israel in its heinous crimes against our civilians will not break the will of the Lebanese people. There is no place on this sad morning for any discussion other than an immediate and unconditional ceasefire as well as the international investigation into the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now.

The attacks that Israeli forces are launching targeting civilians and the Lebanese infrastructure are another confirmation of Israeli aggressive intentions.

The Arab Republic of Egypt expresses its profound alarm and its condemnation of the irresponsible Israeli bombing of the Lebanese village of Qana, which resulted in innocent casualties, mostly women and children.

This criminal aggression is an ugly crime that has been committed by the Israeli forces in the city of Qana that is a gross violation of all international statutes.

The massacre committed by Israel in Qana this morning shows the barbarity of this aggressive entity. It constitutes state terrorism committed in front of the eyes and ears of the world.

The Qana bombing is the outcome of [US Secretary State Condoleezza] Rice's trip to the region. Some American officials should be put on trial for the crimes in Lebanon.

It's absolutely dreadful, it's quite appalling. Undoubtedly today's events will make things worse at least in the short term. We have repeatedly urged Israel to act proportionately.

I have talked to the prime minister of Lebanon... I have expressed to him my profound dismay and deep sorrow at the attack and the death of innocent civilians in Qana. Nothing can justify that. I have transmitted to him that the European Union is continuously working to reach an immediate ceasefire.

It is time to end this madness. The UN Security Council must accept its responsibility and immediately adopt a resolution to bring an end to hostilities.

"In the name of God, I appeal to all those responsible for this spiral of violence, so that they immediately put down their arms on all sides," the pope told pilgrims and tourists at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, on the outskirts of Rome. Pausing slightly, he repeated the word "immediately."

"I appeal to governing leaders and to international institutions not to spare any effort to obtain this necessary cessation of hostilities," the pontiff said.

``Peace, peace, peace,'' pilgrims and tourists in the papal palace courtyard chanted, using the Italian word, ``pace,'' for peace as they briefly interrupted the pontiff.

``In this moment I cannot help but think of the situation, ever more grave and more tragic, that the Middle East is going through: hundreds of dead, so many wounded, a huge number of the homeless and refugees, houses, cities and infrastructure destroyed, while in the hearts of many, hate and the will for revenge seem to grow,'' Benedict said, opening his remarks on the clashes between the Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and Israel's military.

``These facts demonstrate clearly that you cannot re-establish justice, create a new order and build authentic peace when you resort to instruments of violence,'' the pontiff said.

We are very sorry. We take this with great pain...but we have the full right to defend our people.

In the past few days, hundreds of rockets were launched at the Galilee from the vicinity of Qana and from Qana itself.

It turns my stomach, and my heart aches for them, but we have to tell the truth - rockets designed to kill and harm thousands of Israelis were launched from that very place. We would like a ceasefire as soon as possible.

All the residents were warned and called upon to leave. There are hiding places for rockets inside the village and the village itself is a safe haven for those who launch rockets. We have no policy to target innocent civilians.

I think it needs to be clear that Israel is in no rush to reach a ceasefire before we get to a point where we could say that we have achieved the main objectives we had set forth.

This requires a ripening of the diplomatic process and a specific agreement regarding the formation of the force that will operate from the areas from which Israel was threatened in this period.

...In realms of biblical narrative, some believe it to be the scene of Jesus Christ's first miracle, turning water into wine during the wedding at Cana of Galilee.

In modern times, it was the scene of one of the bloodiest events of the modern Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli shelling of a UN base sheltering Lebanese civilians 10 years ago.

International shock at those deaths - more than 100, and another 100 injured - led to huge pressure for a ceasefire deal bringing an end to Israel's last sustained military operation against Hezbollah militants, codenamed Operation Grapes of Wrath.

The Qana Massacre, as it is known in Lebanon, remains a powerful symbol for Lebanese people of what they say is Israel's indiscriminate and disproportionate response to Hezbollah's rocket attacks.

...Israel still insists the 1996 shelling was an accident and that its forces had a legitimate militant target - a Hezbollah military unit that had fired mortars and rockets from near the Qana base.

Then, as now, Israel accused Hezbollah of using the civilian population as human shields when they launched their attacks.

However, a UN investigation reported in May 1996 that the deaths at the Qana base were unlikely to have been the result of an accident as claimed by the Israelis.

The UN report cited the repeated use of airburst shells over the small UN compound, which sent down a deadly torrent of shrapnel that caused terrible injuries among the unprotected civilians.

The UN also noted the presence of Israeli helicopters and a drone in the skies over Qana which must have witnessed the bloodbath.

Strategic location

In the current round of Israel's bombardment, Qana has again been in the news - the scene of several incidents, such as the bombing by Israel of two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances and the death of a young Lebanese photojournalist, Layal Nejib, also in an air strike on her car. ...

... It lies at the northern edge of the Lebanon's southern uplands which border Israel and also at the confluence of five strategic roads in the hinterland south-east of the southern city of Tyre.

Qana and the villages surrounding it are a strong pro-Hezbollah area and Israel says it has repeatedly been used to fire rockets over the border about 10km (six miles) to the south.

Finally, Israel has claimed that all of its targets are strategic in nature, and aimed at stopping rocket fire into Israel from southern Lebanon. But as Tim Russert pointed out this morning, that doesn't explain the shelling of targets all over Lebanon, as shown by a map released by the Siniora government in Lebanon.

And as people around the world take to the streets, including in the equally embattled Palestinian territories, the linkage between what Israel is doing, and who is supplying her, is clear to every single person in the street.

And inevitably, troubling questions are already beginnning to be asked (though not by the itenierant journalists of the U.S., who can barely manage to get a sentence out without warbling about the fictional Hezbollah rocket attacks that started before Israel launched their airstrikes,) about whether this, like everything else in the Middle East or Central Asia that has George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's fingerprints on it, is about oil.

Whatever the geopolitics involved, I can see no reason to justify what Israel is doing. I got an email this week from a very thoughtful gentleman who made the case that on the radio and on this blog, I have been too soft on Hezbollah. He likened the situation to David Duke, the notorious Klansman who tried to clean up his image and run for office. The emailer asked, would that make him a politician? My answer is no, it makes him a Klansman trying to be a politician. But if the United States government decided to eliminate Duke and his fellow Klansman by firebombing Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, levelling homes, destroying the infrastructure and killing lots of civilian women and chilren as collective punishment because those states harbored both Klansmen and Klan-like sympathies, the world would rightly decry us as barbarians, and the people of those states, white and Black, would burn with hatred for those who bombed them, even if purportedly to save them from Klan infiltration.

And so the scorn being heaped upon Israel is more than justified this morning, whether or not you see their Hezbollah as our KKK.

Previous:

• Forgotten Gaza
• Unsurprising headlines: Mess-opotamia edition
• The miseducation of the "Great Satan"
• Condi's war
• What Israel has wrought
• Israel misinterprets the world
• WTF???
• Voices from Lebanon
• The destruction of Lebanon, update
• Why Israel cannot win its war
• They're destroying Lebanon
• Jumping through the window
• Thank you, George Will
• Flight of the neocons

Tags: News, Current affairs, Middle East, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza, Condi Rice, Bush, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Politics, war, Iran, Iraq, neoconservatives

From here on out, say a growing chorus of experts, America will pay a price for maintaining its 45-year trade ban with the communist nation — a strategic and economic price that will have negative repercussions for the United States in the decades to come.

What has changed the equation?

Oil.

To be more specific, recent, sizable discoveries of it in the North Cuba Basin — deep-water fields that have already drawn the interest of companies from China, India, Norway, Spain, Canada, Venezuela and Brazil.

This, in turn, has reheated debate in the U.S. Congress and the Cuban-American community on an old question:

Has the time finally come to shelve the embargo — given America’s need for more sources of crude at a time of rising gas prices, soaring global demand and the outbreak of war in the Middle East?

Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, an expert on Cuba energy matters and a political science professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, says America’s thirst for oil will soon force a fundamental change in Washington’s relations with Havana.

“I’ve always argued that we would keep the Cuban embargo in place until we got to the point where it started to cost us something.” Today, he adds, “we’re almost there.”

Says Phil Peters, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va., that defends limited government and free trade, and a Cuba expert: “If Cuba discovers a lot of oil and becomes an oil exporter, the embargo almost becomes an absurdity.”

Kirby Jones, founder and president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association in Washington, D.C., which has long sought an end to the trade ban, says the reality of Cuba as an oil producer makes the embargo too costly a policy to keep.

“Our choice is: Are we going to let those other countries take that oil? Or are we going to look at our strategic interests and recognize that very close to our shores is a substantial quantity of oil that is going to be exploited?”

In May, with much fanfare, Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, introduced twin bills to the House and Senate that would exempt Big Oil from the embargo.

Before introducing his legislation, Craig told a reporter that “prohibition on trade with Cuba has accomplished just about zero.” Ominously, he added: “China, as we speak, has a drilling rig off the coast of Cuba.” (The senator failed to mention that the Chinese are working in shallow water near Cuba’s shore, and possess neither the technology nor the expertise to tap Cuba’s promising deep-water reserves.)

Thanks to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Rep. Jim Davis, D-Fla., they, too, have measures in Congress for which to cheer: twin bills that would deny U.S. visas to executives of foreign companies that drill for oil in Cuban waters.

Nelson’s bill would undo a 1977 maritime boundary agreement between the countries that bisects the Straits of Florida and allows Cuba to perform commercial activities (e.g., oil drilling) near the Florida Keys.

It’s not clear how this could keep the Cubans from exploiting waters closer to their shores than America’s. One semiofficial response from Cuba, an editorial by the state-run Prensa Latina newswire, called the measures “extraterritorial.”

“Every day the United States puts off making the path into Cuba, that window of opportunity closes a little more,” says Benjamin-Alvarado. Once Cuba gets to the platform stage of deep-water drilling, he says, “the Americans are going to be left out.”

Security has been tightened in the Democratic Republic of Congo ahead of Sunday's national elections - the first multi-party vote in 40 years.
The poll, contested by 32 presidential and 9,000 parliamentary candidates, is aimed at ending a long civil war.

The capital, where several people died this week, has returned to normal.

Diplomats told the BBC that a large shipment of heavy weapons apparently ordered by the government had been sent to the country.

The diplomats said that Russian-made T-72 tanks were delivered to the port of Matadi, and were transported by night towards the capital, Kinshasa.

Israel's secret war: the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Palestine
By Anne Penketh in Gaza City
Published: 29 July 2006
A 12-year-old boy dead on a stretcher. A mother in shock and disbelief after her son was shot dead for standing on their roof. A phone rings and a voice in broken Arabic orders residents to abandon their home on pain of death.

Those are snapshots of a day in Gaza where Israel is waging a hidden war, as the world looks the other way, focusing on Lebanon.

It is a war of containment and control that has turned the besieged Strip into a prison with no way in or out, and no protection from an fearsome battery of drones, precision missiles, tank shells and artillery rounds.

As of last night, 29 people had been killed in the most concentrated 48 hours of violence since an Israeli soldier was abducted by Palestinian militants just more than a month ago.

The operation is codenamed "Samson's Pillars", a collective punishment of the 1.4 million Gazans, subjecting them to a Lebanese-style offensive that has targeted the civilian infrastructure by destroying water mains, the main power station and bridges.

The similarities with Israel's blitz on Lebanon are striking, raising suspicions that the Gaza offensive has been the testing ground for the military strategy now unfolding on the second front in the north.

In Gaza, following the victory of the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas in January, Israel, with the help of the US, initiated an immediate boycott and ensured the rest of the world fell into line after months of hand-wringing. Israel has secured the same flashing green light from the Bush administration over Lebanon, while the rest of the world appeals in vain for an immediate ceasefire.

The Israelis, who launched their Lebanon offensive on 12 July after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah fighters, intend to create a "sterile" zone devoid of militants in a mile-wide stretch inside Lebanon.

In Gaza, Palestinian land has already been bulldozed to form a 300-metre open area along the border with Israel proper. And in both cases, the crisis will doubtless end up being defused by a prisoner exchange. With Lebanon dominating the headlines, Israel has "rearranged the occupation" in Gaza, in the words of the Palestinian academic and MP, Hanan Ashrawi. But unlike the Lebanese, the desperate Gazans have nowhere to flee from their humanitarian crisis.

Before Israeli tanks moved into northern Gaza, yesterday, 12-year-old Anas Zumlut joined the ranks of dead Palestinians, numbering more than 100. His body was wrapped in a funeral shroud, just like those of the two sisters, a three-year-old and an eight-month-old baby, who were killed three days ago in the same area of Jablaya.

In the past three weeks, the foreign ministry and the interior ministry in Gaza city have been smashed, prompting speculation that Israel's offensive is not only aimed at securing the release of Cpl Gilad Shalit, or bringing an end to the Qassam rocket attacks that have wounded one person in the past month and jarred the nerves of the residents of the nearest Israeli town of Sderot.

"At first we thought they were bombing the Hamas leaders by targeting Haniyeh and Zahar," a Palestinian official said, referring to the Palestinian Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister. "But when they targeted the economy ministry we decided they wanted to completely destroy the entire government."

The only functioning crossing, Erez, is closed to Palestinians who are almost hermetically sealed inside the Strip. As the local economy has been strangled by donor countries, Gaza City's 1,800 municipal employees have not been paid since the beginning of April. Families are borrowing to the hilt, selling their jewellery, ignoring electricity bills and tax demands and throwing themselves on the mercy of shopkeepers. ...

Western officials say they hope the pressure will coerce Hamas into recognising Israel but the Palestinians believe the real goal is the collapse of the Hamas government - six of whose cabinet members have been arrested, the rest are in hiding.

Mr Shaath, who had a daughter, Mimi, late in life, says that he tried "laughter therapy" with his five-year-old at home in northern Gaza. "Every time there was a shell, I would burst out laughing and she would laugh with me. But then the Israelis occupied everything around us, and there were tanks, and shrapnel in the garden, and she saw where the shells were coming from, and she was terrified. So Mimi now gets angry when I laugh."

NEW YORK Did police in Malibu, Ca., try to cover up an anti-Semitic tirade, and other actions, by actor Mel Gibson after his arrest for drunk driving on Friday? The fact of his arrest became public quickly enough but what happened next only emerged today.

The New York Daily News opened its story today with: "A blitzed Mel Gibson launched into an obscenity-laced tirade when he was busted on suspicion of drunken driving early yesterday, threatening an officer and making anti-Semitic and sexually abusive remarks, according to a police report."

It seems that the full report was suppressed but four pages of it were leaked to the celebrity Web site tmz.com, which posted them today. The Daily News claims that a mug shot of the actor has also been withheld under orders from the sheriff.

Gibson had been pulled over by Deputy James Mee in the wee hours early Friday for going 80 mph and then tested DUI.

The Daily News picks up the story: "According to the incident report obtained by TMZ.com, the Road Warrior embarked on a belligerent, anti-Semitic outburst when he realized he had been busted. 'F-----g Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,' Mee's report quotes him as saying. 'Are you a Jew?' Gibson asked the deputy, according to the report.

TMZ has learned that Deputy Mee audiotaped the entire exchange between himself and Gibson, from the time of the traffic stop to the time Gibson was put in the patrol car, and that the tape fully corroborates the written report.

Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

The deputy became alarmed as Gibson's tirade escalated, and called ahead for a sergeant to meet them when they arrived at the station. When they arrived, a sergeant began videotaping Gibson, who noticed the camera and then said, "What the f*** do you think you're doing?"

A law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"

We're told Gibson took two blood alcohol tests, which were videotaped, and continued saying how "f****d" he was and how he was going to "f***" Deputy Mee. ...

... Deputy Mee then wrote an eight-page report detailing Gibson's rampage and comments. Sources say the sergeant on duty felt it was too "inflammatory." A lieutenant and captain then got involved and calls were made to Sheriff's headquarters. Sources say Mee was told Gibson's comments would incite a lot of "Jewish hatred," that the situation in Israel was "way too inflammatory." It was mentioned several times that Gibson, who wrote, directed, and produced 2004's "The Passion of the Christ," had incited "anti-Jewish sentiment" and "For a drunk driving arrest, is this really worth all that?"

We're told Deputy Mee was then ordered to write another report, leaving out the incendiary comments and conduct. Sources say Deputy Mee was told the sanitized report would eventually end up in the media and that he could write a supplemental report that contained the redacted information -- a report that would be locked in the watch commander's safe.

Initially, a Sheriff's official told TMZ the arrest occurred "without incident." On Friday night, Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore told TMZ: "The L.A. County Sheriff's Department investigation into the arrest of Mr. Gibson on suspicion of driving under the influence will be complete and will contain every factual piece of evidence. Nothing will be sanitized. There was absolutely no favoritism shown to this suspect or any other. When this file is presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney, it will contain everything. Nothing will be left out."

"I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested," he said in a statement issued by his publicist. "I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry. I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse."

He said he was taking "necessary steps to ensure my return to health."

Publicist Alan Nierob declined to elaborate beyond Gibson's statement, and sheriff's Sgt. Rich Erickson declined to respond, saying the case was still under investigation.

"After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the LA County sheriffs. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person.

"I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said and I apologise to anyone who I have offended.

"Also, I take this opportunity to apologise to the deputies involved for my belligerent behaviour. They have always been there for me in my community and indeed probably saved me from myself. I disgraced myself and my family with my behaviour and for that I am truly sorry.

"I have battled the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologise for any behaviour unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health."

In a separate incident, two Indian soldiers with the UN peacekeeping force were wounded in an Israeli strike on their observation post, the UN said.

The incident came days after four UN observers died in an Israeli air strike.

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations post where four peacekeepers were killed by Israeli fire Tuesday was hit at least 16 times over six hours, including five direct hits on the base as its unarmed staff repeatedly notified Israeli liaison officers and begged for help, U.N. officials said Wednesday.

On Tuesday U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the airstrike that hit the post in southern Lebanon was "apparently deliberate." ...

...The U.N. post was "longestablished and clearly marked," Annan said Wednesday.

U.N. officials who briefed reporters here said the attack began about 1:20 p.m. Radio contact with the post was lost about 7:30 p.m. During those hours, U.N. officials made at least half a dozen calls to top officials at the Israeli mission to the U.N. to seek an end to the attack, a senior U.N. official said. Additional calls were made to the Israeli military by U.N. generals on the ground demanding that the Israelis hold their fire.

The calls went unheeded and the fire continued even when a U.N. rescue mission was underway after a direct hit on the observer post, the official said.

The nearest known Hezbollah activity was more than three miles away, although in the past there have been Hezbollah weapons caches in the area, a senior U.N. official said. The U.N. is still trying to determine if the hits were from aerial bombardment or artillery.

According to information compiled so far by the U.N., the base, which is one of four in southern Lebanon, had received fire several times in the last few days before the barrage that killed the observers, who were a Canadian, a Finn, an Austrian and a Chinese.

"They were unarmed observers in the service of peace," Annan said.

Israeli officials have indicated to the BBC that Israel may be willing to stop fighting as soon as a UN resolution is passed next week - before the arrival of an international peace force - and that they will not insist on the Hezbollah disarming first.

The UN says some 600 people - about a third of them children - have been killed by Israeli action in Lebanon.

They include a mother and her five children killed in a new wave of Israeli air raids in southern Lebanon, Lebanese medics said. Israel said it was investigating.

Ministers are growing increasingly concerned about the government's approach to the conflict in Lebanon, as normally loyal MPs warn that Britain is damaging its international standing.

Cabinet members feel the tone of government pronouncements is making it look indifferent to the suffering of Lebanese civilians, and senior backbenchers are openly critical of Tony Blair's stance. "We could do with sounding a little bit more like Kim [Howells] and a little less like Condi [Rice]," said one minister.

Foreign office minister Mr Howells has repeatedly called for Israel to show "proportionality and restraint", while the foreign secretary and prime minister have refused to condemn its actions.

Greg Pope, a Blairite and member of the Commons foreign affairs committee, told the Guardian that there was widespread dismay that the government had not called for an immediate ceasefire.

"Tony has misjudged [this issue], and is leaving us isolated among European countries and at home," he said.

[The New York Times, in an editorial published on Sunday, endorsed Mr. Lamont over Mr. Lieberman, arguing that the senator had offered the nation a “warped version of bipartisanship” in his dealings with Mr. Bush on national security.] The price of Mr. Lieberman’s slow start was on display on Friday, 11 days before the Aug. 8 primary. Mr. Lieberman, reshuffling his schedule after Democrats warned him that he was still not campaigning with enough urgency, set off on a 10-day bus tour across the state, with a sharp new message.

Christopher J. Dodd, the other Connecticut Democratic senator, stepped in roughly six weeks ago with his own political advisers to bolster a Lieberman campaign staff that associates said Mr. Dodd viewed as too inexperienced for a campaign that had become so difficult.

Mr. Dodd recounted telling Mr. Lieberman that he needed to embrace his Democratic roots — explicitly and repeatedly. Friends described Mr. Lieberman as indignant at the challenge from liberals to his Democratic credentials.

“I said, as painful as it is, the first words out of your mouth and the last words out of your mouth every time you speak have to be ‘I’m a Democrat,’ ” Mr. Dodd recounted on Thursday. “You can say whatever you want after that.”

Mr. Dodd sent Doug Sosnik, a White House political director under former President Bill Clinton, to inspect the get-out-the-vote operation that Democrats now see as critical to Mr. Lieberman’s success.

Mr. Sosnik, campaign officials said, sent back an S.O.S., and Washington Democrats dispatched Tom Lindenfeld, one of the party’s premier organizers.

But some party officials worry it may be too late to organize a strong turnout operation.

Mr. Lieberman, in an interview aboard his campaign bus on Friday, said he had long expected to face this kind of challenge, given his support for the Iraq war. He said the timing of his response had been appropriate because voters were just beginning to focus on the race.

“I want to assure you that I’m not surprised that I am in a fight for the Democratic nomination,” he said. “I always expected that I would have a primary challenge based on Iraq. I was hoping that God would send me a poor challenger. I am being tested with a rich challenger.”

He added: “Look, I could have told you this would be very close at the end. I know now it is very close.”

Several associates, who were granted anonymity in exchange for providing details of private conversations with Mr. Lieberman, said they told him that he was coming across as defensive and urged him to stop viewing this challenge as a fight with bloggers, who had led the charge against Mr. Lieberman. The associates told him to temper his Iraq position with criticism of how the war had been conducted.

• Sealed with a kiss?


• Goodbye, Holy Joe

It was Rice who waited more than a week, giving Israel time to pound the daylights out of Lebanon, before finding time to visit Beirut and Tel Aviv and attend a crisis summit in Rome. It was Rice who spent her trip categorically ruling out a quick cease-fire, which made one wonder if she really needed to travel at all, since she could have just thumbed out a text message: "2 soon 2 stop boom boom."

The most significant development from Rice's swing through the region was that she took personal ownership of the bloody, escalating war between Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas with a single breathtaking pronouncement:

"It is time for a new Middle East. It is time to say to those who do not want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail, they will not."

Take a moment to absorb those two sentences. The bit about how "we will prevail" is just standard chest-thumping from the Bush administration, the equivalent of George W. Bush's "bring it on" challenge to the Iraqi insurgents. It's the "new Middle East" part, which she repeated at every opportunity, that makes this Condi's war and that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of the region.

What secretary of state hasn't dreamed of a new Middle East where peaceful, democratic nations live in harmony? They all have, I suspect, but any utopian fantasies they might have entertained inevitably ran smack into dystopian realities. The current-model Middle East is replete with legitimate grievances, non-negotiable demands, ancient resentments, Machiavellian alliances, religious fanaticism and modern weapons of war. The idea of a grand stroke that would somehow create a "new" model is not just unrealistic, it's downright frightening.

Does Rice envision that in her "new" Middle East, Palestinians will somehow develop amnesia and forget their aspirations for a viable independent state? Does she believe the autocrats in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere will allow free and fair elections -- and that voters will reject the militant faith-based factions that for years have been providing needed services that corrupt governments can't be bothered with? Does she think anyone is going to see the uncontrollable Frankenstein's monster we created in Iraq as a model to emulate?

The one thing that's clear so far is that Rice believes that allowing Israel to decimate Hezbollah and drive what's left of the group out of southern Lebanon is such a valuable step toward her "new" Middle East that it's worth crippling a nascent Arab democracy with hundreds of civilian casualties and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure damage.

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 27 — At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.

An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a “new Middle East” that they say has led only to violence and repression.

Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.

Mouin Rabbani, a senior Middle East analyst in Amman, Jordan, with the International Crisis Group, said, “The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the most potent issue in this part of the wor