Outside the Beltway

The latest Wikileaks leak is a list of foreign infrastructure sites deemed vital to U. S. security.

Let’s keep our eye on the ball, people.

A top Saudi cleric says nothing in the Koran forbids women from driving cars.

Mike Bloomberg says we’re electing people to Congress who “can’t read” and “don’t have passports.”

The latest wrong of documents from Wikileaks show that American diplomats are as worried about Pakistan as the rest of us, and not quite sure how to deal with the situation.

The Feds famously got notorious mobster Al Capone on tax evasion charges. Will WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be done in by sex crimes?

The latest Wikileaks revelations suggest that China may not be willing to protect North Korea for much longer.

A crippling, and technologically advanced, computer virus and attacks against Iranian nuclear scientists lead to only one conclusion; someone is doing everything they can short of military action to make sure Iran doesn’t develop nuclear weapons.

The two English language newspapers who have been Julian Assange’s accomplices in disseminating stolen secrets defend themselves.

Another FBI sting operation results in the arrest of a “terrorist,” or did it create a crime where none existed before?

The diplomatic ramifications of the latest Wikileaks leaks are just starting to emerge and may place some countries in very embarrassing positions.

A new round of Wikileaks documents is out, and it opens the door on diplomatic correspondence previously hidden from the public.

McCain brings up “regime change” in re: the DKRP and China apparently isn’t doing enough.

There is at least one simple reason why dealing with the North is so difficult.

Tensions are on the rise again on the Korean Peninsula after North Korea shelled a South Korean island.

Israelis and Palestinians don’t agree on much these days, but they do agree that Barack Obama hasn’t helped the peace process at all since coming to office.

North Korea has unveiled to the world a new nuclear processing facility that puts back on the table the question of just what we should, or can, do about the fact that a rogue state possesses nuclear weapons and wants to build more.

Would troops to Mexico help in the drug war?

The long awaited new strategic concept, launching what has been termed “NATO 3.0,” has been published under the banner “Active Engagement, Modern Defense.”

Afghans in two crucial southern provinces are almost completely unaware of the September 11 attacks on the United States and don’t know they precipitated the foreign intervention now in its 10th year, a new report showed on Friday.

The first civilian trial of a Guantanamo detainee ends with the Defendant being acquitted on all but one charge, and shows us why the entire process is little more than a show trial.

Terrorism risk assessment: Russia at “Extreme Risk”, Greece at “High Risk”, U. S. at “Medium Risk”, Canada and Germany at “Low Risk”.

Hamid Karazi says that the United States needs to reduce it’s military presence in his country. Perhaps we should listen to him.

According to reports, the Obama Administration is set to abandon the July 2011 withdrawal deadline that was set earlier this year.

Of the five countries that use the death penalty the most, only one is a democracy.

Thanks to a combination of good intelligence and fast action, it looks like the U.S. and UK avoided a serious attack on airliners last week.

David Broder offers up some odd ideas on the relationship between a war with Iran and the economy.

Ivo Daalder, the US Ambassador to NATO, says that we are “seeing the corner and can peek around it in Afghanistan” and that a province-by-province handover of security responsibilities to the host government will “start in the first half of 2011.” But the final handover is not expected until “the end of 2014” and NATO forces will remain in an advisory capacity indefinitely. “The process will take years,” he emphasized.

Once again, Angela Merkel has held her ground and forced the other EU leaders to accommodate Germany’s policy concerns. This time, it’s a set of amendments to the Lisbon Treaty to deal with sovereign debt emergencies.

The military surge in Afghanistan appears to be having little impact on the Taliban.

Police in Turkey have arrested 12 people suspected of links to Islamist militant network al-Qaeda in Istanbul and Van province.

World Politics Review has published a special issue on “NATO’s Identity Crisis” ahead of next month’s Lisbon summit and the unveiling of a new Strategic Concept. I contributed the lead essay, “NATO in an Age of Austerity.”

We already knew that Hamid Karzai was corrupt, now we know he takes bribes from the Iranians.

In what is being described as the largest leak of secret documents in U.S. history, Wikileaks has made public more than 400,000 documents related to the seven year long Iraq War.