It's probably safe to assume that Australian Internet activist Julian Assange wasn't thinking specifically about Iran when his brainchild, the information clearinghouse WikiLeaks, released its latest round of classified U.S. government cables. Still, the data dump, encompassing more than a quarter-million internal memos issued by the State Department and U.S. embassies overseas, successfully demolishes a number of sacred cows relating to American policy toward the Islamic republic and its burgeoning nuclear effort.
The jailing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London — and the drawn-out extradition battle that likely will ensue — are the latest steps in a global effort to corral the website.
Russia will demand that NATO drop its secret agreement to defend the Baltic States against any military attack, Russia's envoy to the alliance said Tuesday.
World leaders focused attention on North Korea on Monday, as an International Criminal Court prosecutor opened a war-crimes investigation into the reclusive country's recent military strikes and as U.S., Japanese and South Korean officials conferred at the State Department.
The Sri Lankan government has appointed a senior army officer accused of war crimes in the conflict with Tamil rebels as its deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.
The State Department has stated in a cable from Peshawar, Pakistan, that it is skeptical about eventually winning the military struggle in Pakistan's badlands, saying peace talks go nowhere and murderous militants control key towns.
Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed, foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, "asserted that the UAE is even more worried about Iranian intentions than is Israel," according to a secret April 9, 2009, cable from the State Department recounting a meeting two days earlier between the sheik and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton knows how to try to get a laugh from a public embarrassment.
The WikiLeaks revelations are awful, concerning and wrong. Despite this, they have revealed an overreaching, embarrassing and rather juvenile State Department.
