There’s still considerable anxiety that the North, determined not to lose the three-quarters of the country’s oil that lies in the South, will find one means or another to block the vote or deny its legitimacy — and that the result will be the world’s worst war in 2011. That’s where George Clooney comes in.

Clinton, who has embarked on a damage-control trip around the world, sharply condemned the publication of the embassy cables by the website WikiLeaks, calling it a "very irresponsible, thoughtless act that put at risk the lives of innocent people all over the world."

Let us remember that open and transparent diplomacy was the rallying cry of President Woodrow Wilson when he railed against the secret covenants of Europe's balance of power diplomacy...President Wilson offered us instead 'public diplomacy.'

So does Wikileaks' publication of masses of secret and confidential reports from U.S. missions abroad really matter? The publication of these cables is certainly a major embarrassment for the U.S. State Department.

The diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks have, among other things, fed the notion that America's partners in the Middle East would support a forceful, perhaps even military, response against the nuclear efforts of Iran.

Afghans are more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident in the ability of the United States and its allies to provide security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than they were a year ago, according to a new poll conducted in all of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

Leaking diplomatic dispatches used to be a recognized diplomatic art. In the not too distant past, American ambassadors in Central America or the Middle East who thought Washington was ignoring their cables would share them with correspondents, knowing that news reports would have a better chance of reaching the secretary of state’s desk than almost any memo the ambassadors wrote themselves.

Former Saudi ambassador to Washington Prince Turki Al-Faisal Sunday felt that America's credibility and honesty have been seriously compromised following the recent publication of hundreds of confidential diplomatic cables.