International:
Turkey Pressured to Send Troops Into Northern Iraq
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan gave the green light on Tuesday for a possible military incursion into northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels hiding there after a series of deadly attacks on Turkish security forces. Read more here

Pakistan Clashes Kill 250 Near Afghanistan
Militants, troops clash, marking deadliest attacks in Pakistan since declaring support for terror war.

Qatar says oil prices should top 100 dollars
Qatar's energy minister said crude oil prices, which have surged recently to record levels above 80 dollars a barrel, should be more than 100 dollars.

"If we take into account inflation from 1972 to the present day, the real and fair price for oil should be more than 100 dollars," Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah said in remarks aired by Al-Jazeera television on Tuesday. Get the full story

National:
Dow Sets New Records
Wall Street advanced sharply Tuesday as investors interpreted minutes from the Federal Reserve's last meeting as indicating the central bank is ready to keep cutting interest rates to boost the economy. The Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 index reached new record highs. Details...

Casey: Army Needs ‘Three Or Four Years’ And ‘Substantial Resources’ To Recover From Iraq War
Gen. David Petraeus has repeatedly stated that he would like the U.S. to be in Iraq for 9-10 years. “[T]he average counter insurgency is somewhere around a nine or a 10 year endeavour,” he said in July.

Romney, Giuliani Clash Over Taxes at GOP Debate
Republican presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani quarreled over tax and spending cuts Tuesday, each claiming greater commitment than the other in a debate in the nation's struggling manufacturing heartland. FULL STORY In Other News…

In Other News...
"Two months after vowing to roll back broad new wiretapping powers won by the Bush administration," the New York Times writes, "Congressional Democrats appear ready to make concessions that could extend some of the key powers granted to the National Security Agency." Glenn Greenwald suggests that "the picture is more complicated and less depressing than this NYT article suggests."

In a new report, the Iraqi government wants the United States to "to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months and pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of 17 people killed when the firm's guards" opened fire in a Baghdad last month. The Iraqis also want the United States to hand over the guards involved in the incident for possible trial in Iraqi court.

"Almost 40% of the people displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina" lived "below the poverty line last year," according to a Census Bureau survey. The survey also found that "nearly a third of those who fled the hurricane could not find jobs last year, and thousands more weren't trying."

President Bush's SCHIP veto has caused "fresh divisions" among Senate Republicans. "Because the president and Republican leaders are not pushing a positive health care agenda, a lot of people are not comfortable opposing anything that has children in it," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told Roll Call that the "lack of a forceful positive agenda" has "sort of split our caucus."

"Americans are hearing much less from the Bush administration about democracy for the Middle East than they did a year ago. As Shiite Iran rises, the White House has muted its calls for reform in the region as it redirects policy to reembrace Sunni Arab allies -- who run, to varying degrees, authoritarian regimes."

Six years after 9/11, "the 'war on terror' is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements," according to the Oxford Research Group, a British think tank. The group stated that a "fundamental re-think is required" if al Qaeda is to be rendered ineffective.

From The Right: Walter E. Williams: Attacking Talk Radio What has made Rush Limbaugh so effective with this message has been his ability to put things, and ask questions, in a manner that the average citizen can understand and relate to, and do so with a bit of humor. Humor creates madness among leftists who want their interventionist agenda taken seriously.

From the Left: Joby Warrick: Anti-Terror Spy Network Wrecked by White House Leak A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month and notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release. The founder of the company says the White House's premature disclosure of the tape tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

Quote Of The Day: "My administration has been calling upon all the leaders in the - in the Middle East to do everything they can to stop the violence, to tell the different parties involved that peace will never happen." -George W. Bush, Crawford, Texas, Aug, 13, 2001

(Sources: TownHall, TruthOut, AP, FOXNews, ThinkProgress, NewsMax, DrudgeReport, NYT, Reuters, LifesAJoke, Breitbart, TheHill, BBCNews,PoliticalCartoons.com, CBSNews, USAToday, RollCall, ChristianScienceMonitor)