Archives for December 2004

Bin Laden votes in Iraq and Shoots himself in the Foot Usamah Bin Laden’s latest video was broadcast on al-Jazeera on Monday, in which he commanded Muslims to boycott the January 30 elections in Iraq, and expressed his approval of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi had been a rival of Bin Laden’s in Afghanistan […]

Iraqi Islamic Party Withdraws Dispute over Theocracy among Iraqi Shiites The near assassination on Monday of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a leading Shiite cleric and politician, raised new fears of sectarian strife in Iraq. Al-Hakim himself, however, urged Shiites to concentrate on winning the January 30 elections and to avoid doing anything that would derail them. […]

Arato Guest Editorial: The Iraqi Constitution The Iraqi Constitution: A Modest Proposal Andrew Arato Iraq is on the verge of a disaster that is ultimately of our making. The United States has imposed a political process on Iraq characterized by the exclusion of the main representatives of militant, and organized actors fully capable of acting […]

Tsunami a Foretaste of Global Warming The horror of waves caroming across the Indian ocean at 500 miles an hour (the speed of a commercial jet liner!) and then crashing into beaches and shorelines at a height of as much as 30 feet, for all the world like liquid Godzilla, crushing sunbathers and carrying hapless […]

Suicide Bomber Kills 9, Wounds 39 Outside Home of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim A carbomber detonated his payload Monday morning outside the home in Baghdad of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, killing at least 9 persons and wounding 39. Al-Hakim’s mansion, taken over from former senior Baath official Tariq Aziz, is in the Jadiriyah quarter, and serves as […]

How to Save the Iraqi Elections (Reprint Edition) The following piece appeared in the Detroit News in early December: Sunday, December 5, 2004 Bush policies set off skirmish on fate of Iraqi elections Upcoming voting is headed toward train wreck unless U.S. sets aside legislative seats for Sunnis By Juan Cole / Special to The […]

IraqTheModel On December 12, just before I went off to Japan on a trip, I drew attention to a web log entry by Joseph Mailander at the Martini Republic, which raised questions about the bona fides of a web site run by three Iraqi brothers called IraqTheModel. Mailander had come to be suspicious of the […]

Bombings and Assassinations Mar Christmas Day in Iraq Douglas Ireland of the LA Weekly has a fine piece on the problems with the coverage of Iraq in the US media, and offers some helpful pointers on how to penetrate the fog of information war. Guerrillas detonated a car bomb on Saturday at Khan al-Nus, between […]

Study of Arabic in the US Harry Levins of the St. Louis Post Dispatch has an interesting article on the lack of Arabic speakers in the US. He says that a little over 10,000 students are now studying Arabic. That is a big increase from the 1980s, when it was about 2500, or from the […]