Juan Cole

Iraqi Television on Bush’s State of the Union It is odd that US media seem completely uninterested in how Bush’s State of the Union speech was received in Iraq, where half of it would be implemented. The Open Source Center of the US Government did a report on this issue, below. Note that former Iraqi […]

Another Helicopter Downed, 5 Americans Dead Mahdi Army Pledges not to Respond to US Arrests Sunni Arab guerrillas used some sort of surface to air rocket or missile a heavy PKC machine gun of a sort the US has trained the Iraqi Army in to shoot down a Blackwater helicopter guarding a high-level US ground […]

Arguing With Bush Yet one question has surely been settled – that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy. Actually, it is unclear what “taking the fight to the enemy” means in Bush’s ill-conceived “war on terror.” He is probably still trying to sneak Iraq into the struggle […]

Ashura Massacres Shake Iraq At Least 130 Killed The Western press reported on 130 of the iraqis killed in political violence in Iraq on Monday, and the some 200 wounded. It isn’t ordinary time in Iraq for the Shiites, it is ritual time, sacred time. It is a time of deep mourning, of grief and […]

Rightwing Smearers of Obama Don’t know a School from a Madrasa The rightwing smear campaign against Barack Obama, waged by a magazine funded by the far rightwing Korean businessman and part-time messiah, the Reverend Moon, has foundered on CNN’s good reporting. The allegation was that he had gone to a radical “Saudi-funded” madrasah. Wolf Blitzer […]

Sadrists Rejoin Government Talabani: US Should Talk directly to Syria Reuters reports on political violence in Iraq on Sunday. Two more US troops were killed, and the death toll in al-Anbar for Saturday was revised up to 5. In Baghdad, “A bomb killed at least six people and wounded 15 when it destroyed a minibus […]

22 US Troops Announced Killed 29 Bodies Found in Baghdad Reuters reports that police found 29 bodies in Baghdad on Saturday and 5 more in the northern city of Mosul. There was other major violence, with bombings, mortar attacks and assassinations in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul and elsewhere. A suicide bomber attempted to get a car […]

Militiamen Wound 6 British Soldiers Sadrist Rejoin Parliament Shiite militiamen fired mortars at a British base at Basra, seriously wounding one British soldier and lightly injuring 5 others. The Sadr Bloc of deputies in Parliament, who had staged a walkout to protest PM Nuri al-Maliki’s meeting with George W. Bush, are now returning to the […]

US moves on Sadr Aide Bombings Wrack Baghdad, Mosul Baathists Plan Convention in Damascus US and Iraqi troops arrested Sadr aide Abdul Hadi Darraji in East Baghdad at midnight Iraqi time last night. The Sadr movement maintains he is just a spokesman and is not involved in militia operations. The US accuses him of running […]