Israel Intesifying Attacks

Israel appears to be heading all the way to the Litani River and has intensified both air and ground assaults. Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah has been offering a ceasefire, which the Israelis interpret as a sign of weakness on his part.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israel's pounding of Hezbollah positions across Lebanon expanded Friday with missiles targeting bridges in the Christian heartland north of Beirut for the first time, an attack that further isolates Lebanon from the outside world.

Five civilians were killed and 19 wounded in the airstrikes north of the capital, Lebanese security officials said. A Lebanese soldier and four civilians were killed in air raids near Beirut's airport and southern suburbs, security officials and witnesses said.

Meanwhile, dozens of Hezbollah rockets struck northern Israel within a half-hour Friday, killing one Israeli and seriously wounding another, police said.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile during heavy fighting in a southern Lebanese village where the militant group had been launching rockets, the army said.

The destruction of four bridges on the main north-south coastal highway linking Beirut to Syria further sealed Lebanon from outside links, as the Israeli naval blockade and earlier strikes against roadways have largely closed off other access points.

Fierce fighting continued along the border, and Hezbollah said in a statement broadcast by the group's Al-Manar TV station that guerrillas had killed six Israeli soldiers near the villages of Aita al-Shaab and Markaba.

Arab media reported Hezbollah had hit an Israeli tank. The Israeli army was not immediately available to comment on the claims.

The clashes came a day after a massive barrage of guerrilla rockets pounded northern Israel, killing eight people, and an offer by Hezbollah's leader to stop the attacks if Israel ends its airstrikes. Two more rockets hit northern Israel early Friday, causing little damage.

Hezbollah media hasn't exactly been known for it's stunning accuracy in reporting, of course. It's sort of the New York Times of Lebanon.

Rocketing Civilians

The rocketing of civilians by Hezbollah continues. More civilians were killed and wounded today. Yesterday saw a total of more than 180 rockets land, and the biggest one-day civilian death toll.

One person was killed and several people were wounded as rockets landed across the North on Friday afternoon.

A Hizbullah-fired rocket killed a woman in Mughar, making this the third time the village was struck by rockets. Two other people were seriously wounded in the town.

Another person was seriously wounded in Kibbutz Sha'ar Yishuv.

Police commander Dan Ronen said 45 rockets crashed into towns across the north within a half-hour period.

A car suffered a direct hit in the Kiryat Shmona area, where one person was seriously wounded. Two people there were wounded moderately, and others were lightly wounded.

In Tiberias, one person was listed in critical condition, and another person was seriously wounded.

The barrage also hit Safed, wounding one person lightly. Others were being treated for shock.

There are too many rockets still being launched. Directly and intentionally at civilians, by the way. Which would be a war crime.

Too Close To The Flame?

Well, my prediction about Lamont disowning Jane Hamsher was wrong. Still, others are noticing that Lamont got himself into the mess in the first place by getting too close to the netroots. John Dickerson, writing in Slate for example.

If Lamont wants to get to Washington, he's going to need to learn one of the most important senatorial clichés: "I'd like to revise and extend my remarks." He can't run from the bloggers. And he can't run from Hamsher, who has raised money for him, boosted him tirelessly, and even helped him shoot a video blog. He's their guy. He put Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos, in a campaign ad. Bloggers are integrated into his Web site. One contributor to a Connecticut blog designed a fabulous float depicting the Bush-Lieberman kiss. It has been used to lampoon Lieberman across the state and is used in this Lamont ad. He can't say the bloggers aren't his problem now.

Lamont, who thus far remains the "not Lieberman" choice, is also missing a chance to be senatorial. His spokeswoman denounced Hamsher. Why didn't he? The campaign asked Hamsher to take down the image from her post; she did, and then offered the non-apology preferred by loutish boyfriends—I'm sorry if I made you upset. Lamont should have gone further to show some spine.

Of course Lieberman has to make so much of the issue. He's getting thumped in a Democratic primary he didn't think he'd have much trouble winning. Lamont is ahead by 13 points in the most recent polls. But the link to Hamsher is more tenuous than the Lieberman camp would like to make it. She doesn't work for the campaign. (It's hard to picture her pickaxe among the earnest staffers.) Yes, it's true she has worked hard to portray herself as inside the campaign bubble. (She's backstage and gives top officials air-conditioned car rides.) But if Hamsher really were inside the Lamont campaign, she would know it was stupid to start posting offensive racial images the day the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were campaigning with Lamont. (The campaign had been touting the visits to rebut the Lieberman campaign's charge that Lamont was a member of an exclusive country club. It was that campaign that Hamsher was responding to in her post.)

Dickerson appears to believe this incident won't change the outcome of the primary. But he also notices that support by bloggers may be a two-edged sword. I, for one, am not writing Lieberman off. I know the poll released yesterday showed Lamont ahead, but that was before the uproar over the picture. I'm also on the record as not being a strong believer in polls or polling, especially these days. I really have a gut-level feeling that the picture did some damage, we'll see if it was enough to really hurt Lamont or not. We'll see if circling too close to the open flame singed Lamont's wings.

Another Day Of Waiting For Fidel

Weird pronouncements are coming from Cuba, the US government admits they really do not know what is going on, either and we'll just have to wait. Hard, isn't it? Cuban government spokesmen are warning the the communist party will "defend the revolution". Now that sounds almost as if it were a backhanded admission that Castro will not come back to power, but we'll have to see.

"The people know they have a resource, a weapon, a place to defend the revolution if necessary," Rogelio Polanco, editor of the Communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde, said on state television Thursday evening.

"Once again, they shouldn't make a mistake, not to fantasize … thinking their desires are reality," Polanco said in a public affairs program discussing how exiles celebrated Castro's recent surgery for intestinal bleeding. "They should not mess up and commit the greatest error of all time."

There is a possibility that this is a false flag operation meant to pull dissidents out into the open for extermination. It would be good to keep that in mind. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald has information on the lack of information that the US has on what's going on.

WASHINGTON - At a time when Fidel Castro is ill and his brother-successor is mysteriously missing from public view, the Bush administration is admitting that it's in the dark on what's really going on in the island 90 miles from Key West.

''Our insight into the decision-making process of . . . this particular dictatorship isn't that great,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday, three days after Castro ceded power to his brother following what was described as complicated surgery to stem gastrointestinal bleeding.

''I don't think there are too many people outside that small core group of people who run Cuba who really know what is going on. I don't have an assessment for you on Fidel Castro's health,'' McCormack said.

President Bush issued a statement later saying the U.S. government is ''actively monitoring the situation in Cuba'' following Castro's temporary transfer of his powers to Defense Minister Raúl Castro, who has yet to make a public appearance.

But U.S. officials have confessed ignorance on events in Cuba in private encounters with lawmakers and other Cuba watchers, people in contact with administration officials say.

White House spokesman Tony Snow has attributed the lack of information to Cuba's status as a ''closed society'' — a government controlled media and a long tradition of secrecy because of fears of U.S. attacks.

Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, a Cuba native who has met with President Bush and other high-ranking administration officials in recent days, acknowledged Thursday that “sometimes people in Miami know more than what the government knows.''

''I've asked and we don't have any more information than what the Cuban government has released,'' Martinez said.

(See, a real dictatorship is usually very good indeed at finding and eliminating spies and at silencing dissent. That would be a clue for the lefties that think the US is turning into a dictatorship, if they'd care to take it.)

So, the strange silence continues in Cuba, even though even Cubans in the street are getting nervous.

UPDATE: Here is the entire text of Bush's remarks.