Juan Cole

Breaking News: Mass Slaugher in Baghdad A string of car bombings in Sadr City and Kadhimiya (Shiite neighborhoods) wrought vast slaughter and destruction, leaving a death toll creeping toward 150 and over 200 wounded. Shiite guerrillas fired mortars at Sunni neighborhoods in response. I just saw the news conference of President Jalal Talabani, Vice President […]

36 Killed in Iraqi Civil War Britain may Leave Iraq British troops could withdraw from Basra by this spring. It is widely felt that the 7200 remaining troops are trapped in the south and probably cannot expect to achieve a great deal more in the way of providing security to the area. Late this coming […]

Revolutionary Guards Head: ‘US Forces in Middle East ‘Extremely’ Vulnerable The USG Open Source Center translates the following piece from Persian: ‘Iranian Guards Chief: US Forces in Middle East ‘Extremely’ Vulnerable Fars News Agency (Internet Version-WWW) Tuesday, November 21, 2006 T19:35:28Z The commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps has said: If America attacks Iran, […]

Bush’s Cedar Revolution Collapses in Yet Another Policy Failure The assassination of Lebanese cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel on Tuesday has thrown that country further into yet more turmoil. The crisis is a further testament to the bankruptcy of George W. Bush’s Middle East policy. Under the dishonest rhetoric of ‘democratization,’ what Bush has really been […]

Car Bomb in Green Zone Parliamentarians Trade Accusations The intrepid Edward Wong of the New York Times reports that a car bomb targetting the Iraqi speaker of parliament, Mahmud Mashhadani [Sunni], was detonated inside the Green Zone on Tuesday. The Green Zone is a 4 square mile area of downtown Baghdad behind concrete walls, with […]

Academics at Risk Please Donate to MESA A report on the Iraqi professors’ panel at the Middle East Studies Association meeting that just wrapped up in Boston. Their stories of everyday life on Baghdad campuses are heartbreaking. There is also a McCarthyite and frankly racist campaign being waged by far rightwing Zionist groups in the […]

Street Battles in Baghdad; 75 Bodies Found; Diplomatic Ties with Syria Bruited Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that on Monday running street battles erupted in several districts of Baghdad between guerrillas and Iraqi police. In Salikh, the Bank district, Sumer, and Tujjar, residents were forced to flee their homes lest they be exposed to kidnapping or […]

The joint letter of the Middle East Studies Association and the American Association of University Professors on the killing of Iraqi academics: ‘November 10, 2006 Honorable Nouri Kamal al-MalikiPrime Minister of the Republic of Iraqc/o The Embassy of Iraq1801 P Street, N.W.Washington, D.C. 20036 USAFax: (202) 462-5066 Dear Prime Minister al-Maliki: We write to you […]

Kissinger Says no Victory Possible; Bombings in Baghdad, Hilla Kill 74; Chaos in Baquba Bush’s visit to Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, has elicited protests. In 2000, 75 percent of Indonesians thought well of the United States. Now, only 30% do, according to polling. Henry Kissinger now thinks the Iraq War is unwinnable and […]