Until now, the administration has refused to discuss the video or the attack, other than in a highly classified briefing for a few allies and crucial members of Congress.

The timing of the administration’s decision to declassify information about the Syrian project has raised widespread suspicions, especially in the State Department, that Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hawks were hoping that releasing the information might undermine a potential deal with North Korea that would take it off an American list of state sponsors of terrorism.

“Making public the pictures is likely to inflame the North Koreans,” said one senior administration official who would not speak on the record because the White House and the State Department have declared there would be no public comment until the evidence is released. “And that’s just what opponents of this whole arrangement want, because they think the North Koreans will stalk off.”

Ambassador Christopher Hill has argued in private that the Syrian episode and the uranium enrichment are side shows, and that the critical issue is stopping North Korea from producing more plutonium and giving up what it has. But his State Department colleagues say that he has been told not to defend the deal, or even explain it.

On primary election day in Pennsylvania, even with polls showing her well ahead in that state, Hillary went lower in her grab for votes. Seizing upon a question as to how she would respond to a nuclear attack by Iran--which doesn't have nuclear weapons--on Israel, which does, Hillary mocked reasoned discourse by promising to "totally obliterate them," in an apparent reference to the population of Iran. That is not a word gaffe; it is an assertion of the right of our nation to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale.

Clearly the heat of a campaign is not the proper setting for consideration of a response to a threat from a nation that is a long way from developing nuclear weapons. Obviously the danger of Iran's developing such weapons can be met with a range of alternatives, from the diplomatic to the military, that do not involve genocide and at any rate must be considered in moral and not solely political terms. Or is it base political ambition that would guide Clinton if she received that middle-of-the-night phone call?

What makes the Palestinians so special that they deserve their own country when the Catalans and the Québécois and all the rest don't have them? The answer is pretty simple -- the alternative to independence is citizenship. The Québécois don't have an independent country, but they are citizens of Canada. Catalans are citizens of spain. Flemish and Walloons are both citizens of Belgium. Komi are citizens of Russia. When you see legal discriminatory treatment against citizens -- as with African-Americans in the United States until very recently -- that's a problem. People are owed equal citizenship.

It's clear, though, that granting Israeli citizenship on terms of equality to residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is incompatible with the idea of Israel as a Jewish state. Thus, Palestinian independence emerges as a reasonable, practical, and moral alternative.

Rice announced that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would resume peace negotiations with Israel, despite Abbas's earlier position that he would only do so after a ceasefire in Gaza was in place.

Yes, Abbas needs the peace process in general. But politically, he can't very well sit down with Ehud Olmert while Israeli bombs are killing Palestinian civilians. He needs to wait a decent interval until the fury dies down. By agreeing to pretend to negotiate instead of pretending not to negotiate, all he did was reinforce his image as an American-Israeli puppet -- and he will get no closer to a peace treaty by being dragged to the table against his will. And having Rice announce the reversal? That was the icing on the cake.

The drive to remove Hamas from power will not be accomplished by force. Force and collective punishment create more more outrage, more generations of embittered young men and women who will dedicate their lives to avenging the humiliation, perhaps years later, they endured and witnessed as children. The assault on Gaza, far from shortening the clash between the Israelis and Palestinians, ensures that it will continue for generations.