George Horne, Deputy Executive Director of Operations & Maintenance Resources, rolls out a preserved Burmese Python which was captured in Miami-Dade County, Florida, during a hearing before the Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill November 6, 2009 in Washington, DC. The hearing was focused on H.R. 2811, a bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to include constrictor snakes of the species Python genera as an injurious animal.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Journalists often like to start out an interview with a softball question to break the ice before moving on to controversial topics. This tactic clearly doesn't work on former Polish President and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you looking forward to travelling to Berlin on Monday for the 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Walesa: It's not important whether I'm looking forward to it or not. I am a politician who played an important role in the reunification of Germany and I was invited to take part in the celebration. It's not like a piece of candy handed out to a sweet little boy.

The Pakistani military reported that they entered and largely cleared the "Taliban headquarters" in South Waziristan today. The reported success is part of a large-scale offensive in the region, which is a stronghold of Tehrik-i-Taliban, an umbrella organization of Pakistani Taliban factions drawn together under the leadership of (the recently-killed) Baitullah Mehsud. The "headquarters" referred to is the town of Makeen, which had been Mehsud's hometown.

How important is it to clear Taliban headquarters, whether in Waziristan or Balochistan? In an interview with FP, Sameer Lalwani, a research fellow at the New America Foundation, argues the answer largely depends on what comes next:

[Makeen] might have been the center of TTP [Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan] organization, but I suspect that at some level, ‘headquarters' doesn't mean as much to an insurgency that's able to melt away and reappear down the road at different locations and continue operations... it certainly disrupts the organization of the group. [But] it's a very fluid network, they have alliances with other neighboring tribes, they're able to parlay their way, probably, for a safe haven within Afghanistan, or in the mountains, for a period of time.

So, it really depends on what the follow-up operations are.... I think this is one of the biggest demonstrations of Pakistani commitment, in their ground invasion of South Waziristan, and the most targeted, and probably one of the stronger efforts we've seen in recent years, but I'd still be apprehensive to say this is a categorical success, even [having] secured a few militant strongholds and, I guess, the center of operations, because the real question becomes ‘how long can they hold it?'"

The Taliban certainly isn't handing the territory off. Responding to Pakistan's recent military successes, a Taliban spokesman said simply, "We are prepared for a long war."

Photo: NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images

It was nice of the city of Berlin to organize a U2 concert as part of the celebrations for 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, but putting up 2-meter wall to keep people out was an unfortunate decision:  

True, there were no minefields or watchtowers, but the new temporary wall erected before the performance certainly sent the wrong signals.

Only 10,000 fans in possession of previously allocated free tickets were allowed to pass through the checkpoints — yes, checkpoints — to listen to the Irish band.

Before I write anything about Zimbabwe, I should put my biases out there: as my colleagues at FP can attest, I think Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is pretty great. In fact, after interviewing and meeting him, I am convinced he could be Zimbabwe's "Mandela."

But from the beginning we've also known that Mugabe is no De Klerk. And two pieces of news coming out of Zimbabwe make this point both more clear and alarming than ever. The first has to do with Zimbabwe's diamond mines. Earlier this summer, the Kimberly Process -- a procedure established after the diamond-funded wars of the 1990s to prevent 'blood diamonds' from hitting the market -- recommended that Zimbabwe be suspended for failure to meet minimum standards.

What does "failure to comply" mean exactly? Well, as Global Witness, an NGO that monitors resource conflict, put it:

[C]ontrols over the diamond sector have been nonexistent and communities in and around the diamond fields have borne the brunt of a series of brutal measures to restore state control over the area. The authorities have failed to stop the military from carrying out abuses and profiting from the illicit trade in diamonds, effectively condoning - and perhaps even encouraging - the looting and attendant violence against civilians."

Sounds serious, right? Nope, the Kimberly Process decided today. Zimbabwe just needs some time to fix thing. Ahem, Mr. Mugabe, when might be convenient?

Maybe Mugabe will have time to work out how to control his soldiers after he works out another boiling conflict -- this one within his own government. After months of threatening to do so, Prime Minister Tsvangirai finally pulled out of the unity government three weeks ago, saying that unresolved issues and a failure to compromise on Mugabe's part had made his job impossible. Now, after Tsvangirai's tour of regional capitals and a summit of the negotiation-monitoring Southern African Development Community (SADC), the unity government is back. But Mugabe and Tsvangirai have only 15 days to work out how they are going to solve the world of differences between them. 

This is very bad news, not least because asking Mugabe to compromise in 15 days is like asking Kim Jong-Il to forfeit his nukes by next Thursday. Impossible. 

In my opinion, with bias acknowledged, the only ones more disgraced than Mugabe in all this are the internationals who forced the unity government coalition in the first place, but who have failed to follow through. SADC has been spineless, even under its newer, supposedly more firm moderator, South African President Jacob Zuma. They've hardly nudged Mugabe toward compromise, let alone given him the push he very badly needs. And the Kimberly Process just rendered itself rather uncredible by letting Zimbabwe go free.

Photo: JEKESAI NJIKIZANA/AFP/Getty Images

The Obama administration, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in particular, seems to have developed a bit of a "mission accomplished" problem when it comes to diplomatic breakthroughs. Last week Clinton hailed Benjamin Netanyahu's "unprecedented" concessions on settlement construction, when it was fairly clear that Palestinians didn't see evidence of any concessions and touted a "historic agreement" to end the ongoing political standoff in Honduras, though it should have been obvious that neither side had any incentive to follow through on the terms of the deal. 

Today, it's fairly obvious that Clinton was overselling both developments with Mahmoud Abbas announcing that he will quit (true or not) and Manuel Zelaya declaring, "the accord is dead."

The administration has had a number of diplomatic "breakthroughs" that didn't pan out lately. Hamid Karzai's agreement to hold a runoff election in Afghanistan was followed by Abdullah Abdulla's decision to pull out. Dmitry Medvedev's seeming openness to Iran sanctions was contradicted by his own foreign minister. And the Iranian negotiators who agreed to a deal on nuclear enrichment, apparently didn't check with the bosses back in Tehran.

This isn't to say that these efforts were a waste of time or that the setbacks were the fault of the U.S., but out of desire for a tangible foreign policy victory, the administration seems to be developing a tendency to oversell diplomatic tactical victories before it's clear if the other parties will follow through on their commitments. 

I agree with Dan Drezner, that no one with reasonable expectations of what U.S. foreign policy can accomplish should be shocked by the fact that the Obama team hasn't achieved major breakthroughs on any of these challenges, but it would be nice if they didn't keep telling us we were witnessing history in the making. 

Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images 

Last night, the popular blog Gawker and a few other sources reported that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, participated in advising the White House on the transition via a George Washington University think tank on homeland security.

It turns out, it was all wrong. Last night, I spoke with Frank Cilluffo, the director of G.W.'s Homeland Security Policy Institute and a Foreign Policy contributor, who explained the errors.

The Institute had authored an advisory paper -- not because the White House commissioned it, but because that's what think tanks do. 

How was Hasan "affiliated"? Cilluffo notes that G.W. lists everyone who RSVPs to Institute events in the meeting booklets (common practice in D.C. think tanks). Hasan was just a member of the public who attended a HSPI event. He never had any affiliation at all. 

Cilluffo remembered calling on Hasan during a Q&A session. The Institute director recalled cutting Hasan off when he wouldn't stop talking, and recognized him when the television started broadcasting his picture yesterday. But, that was it. They have no relationship; the think tank has no relationship with Hasan. 

Gawker has since corrected its post, which is good to see; other blogs (see Spencer Ackerman, for one) have debunked the rumor. But the lie peppered the Internet last night, and continues to today. The media and the public, of course, want answers about this senseless crime. I hope the media waits until it really has them to publish.

Americas

• The U.S. brokered pact to end Honduras's political crisis has failed, says ousted President Manuel Zelaya, as interim president Robert Micheletti announced he would form a cabinet without Zelaya's suporters. 
• Peru's Shining Path rebels attacked a military base, killing one soldiers. 

Asia

• Pakistani troops have entered what they call the "headquarters" of the Taliban. 
• China denounced U.S. protectionism a week before President Obama's visit.
• Burmese troops launched an attack on rebels in the country's northwest. 

Africa

• Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has ended his boycott of cabinet meeting with President Robert Mugabe. 
• The world's diamond watchdog is giving Zimbabwe more time to comply with an order to clean up abuses in one of its fields. 
• The war crimes trial of former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba will begin in April. 

Middle East

• Saudi officials have denied widespread media reports that they attacked rebel bases inside Yemen.
• Israel has rejected a U.N. General Assembly resolution urging it to investigate the findings of the Goldstone report.  
• Exxon-Mobile has signed a deal to develop a major oil field in Iraq.

Europe

• Serbia charged six former fighters for war crims committed during the Bosnian war. 
• Russia has arrested two neo-nazi suspects for the January killing of a human rights activist and a reporter. 
• British Prime Minister Gordon Brown strongly condemned the corruption of Hamid Karzai's government.