Juan Cole

All hell broke loose again in Iraq on Sunday, with political violence killing nearly 60 persons according to official statistics. A roadside bomb killed 4 US troops, bringing the total dead in Iraq on the American side to 4,000. The thing I most mind about the deaths of those brave warriors is that our government […]

Craig Unger’s email, part of an interchange on a private discussion group, is reprinted here with permission: [A critic, let us call him X, objected] to Jim Lobe’s suggestion that Iraqi WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda had nothing to do with starting the Iraq War. But Lobe is right. X is off base when […]

This Easter is an especially sad one for Iraq’s Chaldean Christians. Their archbishop was kidnapped and held for ransom, then killed by guerrillas. His captors had demanded that the Christians support demands that the US withdraw from Iraq and pay $3 mn. [Since Chaldeans are patriotic Iraqis, there was no reason to think they did […]

The USG Open Source Center translates an Arab nationalist call to the southern Shiite province of Maysan, which is ruled by the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr, to block Iranian influence. In fact, Maysan, which borders Iran, is negotiating with Iran to receive electricity and other aid. Movement Calls For Efforts To Prevent Iran From […]

A US soldier was killed and four wounded by rocket fire south of Baghdad. Courtesy ABC News The Guardian video does a report, streamed below, on the prospect that some of the 80,000 members of the Awakening Councils or Concerned Local Citizens in Diyala Province and elsewhere are going to go on strike. Many of […]

courtesy al-Sharq al-Awsat The misery of the some 2 million widows in Iraq has security implications. Ma’d Fayyad reports in Arabic that fundamentalist Sunni guerrillas in Iraq are increasingly deploying widows as suicide bombers. Two major bombings this week, at Baladruz and Karbala, appear to have been undertaken by women. Fayyad says that one change […]

The USG Open Source Center translates Iraqi television reactions to the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq Iraqi TV Channels Carry Reactions to Fifth War AnniversaryIraq — OSC SummaryThursday, March 20, 2008 . . . Al-Rafidayn [Sunni fundamentalist, affiliated with the Association of Muslim Scholars] Harith al-Dari Within its 0700 GMT newscast, the […]