Juan Cole

Iranian Diplomats Consulted on Iraq Cabinet Changes Sistani Aide Killed in Karbala While American press reporting on the US military’s arrest of Iranians at the compound of Iraqi cleric have focused on the possibility that they were bringing arms, British intelligence has a different take. They say there is no conclusive evidence in the documents […]

Hate Radio and a Disney SLAPP Daily Kos has the saga of one person’s campaign against hate radio. Spocko’s problem, that he was posting audio files and has been threatened with a suit by Disney, is easily solved, it seems to me. He should just type up 600-word short excerpts from each file and post […]

Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sunnis Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles saw the Mehr report that I linked to yesterday and inquired, ‘ [I was baffled] by how Sadr could be negotiating to form an alliance with Sunnis at this point. It would be a big service to other non-experts if you could explain how this is […]

Al-Maliki Hints at Early Departure Saddam Executed by Militiamen Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said that he would like to step down before the end of his 4-yeat term and that he certainly would not seek a second term. Al-Maliki has been criticized for failing to restore security to Iraq, for not cracking down on […]

UIA woos Muqtada Inquiry Launched into Saddam Execution Irregularities MENA, the Egyptian news agency, reports a demonstration of hundreds of persons on Tuesday in Habhab near Baquba, protesting Saddam’s execution. The demonstrators denounced the Iraqi and American governments. An Iraqi observer at Saddam’s execution, prosecutor Munqidh Faraon, maintains that two senior Iraqi government officials took […]

Apocalypse II in Samarra US Kills 6 at National Dialogue Front Office CBS/AP report that an angry crowd of Sunni Arab demonstrators in the northern city of Samarra, protesting Saddam’s execution, broke “broke the locks off the badly damaged Shiite Golden Dome mosque and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of the executed […]

Conflicting accounts of CIA and Saddam, 1959-1963 My posting last Saturday, For Whom the Bell Tolls: Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein has elicited a very interesting account by a US government insider contesting the allegations about CIA-Saddam connections early in his life, specifically 1959-1963, and which denies CIA complicity in the first […]

US Reaction to 1963 Baath Coup Since the 1963 Baath coup has come up here twice this week, I thought readers might be interested in the three pieces of correspondence below, from the Foreign Relations of the United States, which is now being put on line. FRUS is anything but complete, and critics complain that […]

Rosen on Shiite Execution of Saddam Nir Rosen at Iraqslogger has a fine analysis of the Sunni Arab reaction to the hanging of Saddam, and includes a partial transcript of the highly sectarian, Shiite chanting at the scene by Iraqi politicians in attendance. I can confirm that Rosen’s partial transcript is accurate. Cindy Sheehan’s son […]