Juan Cole

Arab Reaction to the ISG Report The USG Open Source Center translates and analyzes the pan-Arab media on the Baker-Hamilton report: ‘ FYI — Pan-Arab Media Treatment of Baker-Hamilton Study Group Report on IraqMiddle East — OSC ReportWednesday, December 6, 2006 T19:38:34Z Doha Al-Jazirah Satellite Channel Television in Arabic, independent television station financed by the […]

Reprint Edn.: 10 Things Congress Should Demand on Iraq In the light of the issuance of the Iraq Study Group report, I thought readers might be interested in comparing it with the 10 suggestions I made in August of 2005 for a course change in Iraq. Alas, I no longer think that the US military […]

Regional Conference Prepared Iraqi Military to Assume control within a year Gates Confirmed The US now has a secretary of defense who knows that we are not winning in Iraq, who wants to do something about it, and who doesn’t think nuking Iran is just a dandy idea. Although his involvement in Iran-Contra dogged Robert […]

Al-Hakim: US Troops Should Stay; Urges harsher Measures against Sunni Guerrillas Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Iraqi Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim for the first time expressed his opposition to the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, after his meeting with US Secretary of State Condi Rice. He said that the Iraqi government wants US […]

Talabani, Hakim Reject Int’l Conference 9 GIs Killed The US military announced that Sunni Arab guerrillas have killed 9 GIs in Baghdad and al-Anbar over the weekend. AP says that 71 bodies were found in Baghdad and other cities on Sunday. AP also reports that President Jalal Talabani, Foreign Minister Barham Salih, and leader of […]

Rumsfeld’s Shocking Memo; Over 100 Dead in Sectarian Violence The NYT has gotten hold of a memo by Donald Rumsfeld detailing options on Iraq. Several things struck me about it: 1. Rumsfeld doesn’t understand the magnitude of the crisis or the tightrope the US is walking in the Gulf. His attitude is almost lackadaisical. Doing […]

Bus Stop Massacre Kills 20; Sistani Aide Warns against Violence, Blames Arab T.V. On Saturday morning, an empty fuel trucker slammed into people waiting at a bus stop in al-Wahada, 22 miles south of Baghad, killing twenty persons and wounding 15. In his Friday prayers sermon, Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala’i, a key aide to Grand […]

Dozens of Bodies in Sinjar and Baghdad 40% Increase in Violent Deaths in November AFP says that political violence left nearly 2000 dead in Iraq in November, a 40* percent increase over October. The number of wounded, however, fell substantially. AFP says that these numbers come from the Iraqi government. In fact, survey research has […]

The Bush-Maliki Summit and the New Middle East Cold War Over 100 Bodies found in Past 48 Hours Al-Hayat writing in Arabic sums up the results of the Bush-Maliki Summit: 1. The US and its Arab allies rejected the notion of making any concessions to Iran in return for Tehran’s help in calming the situation […]