Juan Cole

15 Dead in Shiite Mosque Bombing Diwaniyah Street Fighting This wire service says that some 40 died in guerrilla violence in Iraq these past few days. Reuters reports civil war violence on Friday: A suicide bomber in Baghdad struck a Shiite mosque, killing at least 15 and wounding 25. This is very bad, given the […]

Zarqawi sought US-Iran War Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was hoping to provoke a US-Iran war as a way of bogging the Americans down further and defeating them in Iraq. Remember all those times Bush, Rice and Rumsfeld came out and said they suspected that Shiite Iran was somehow aiding the Sunni Arab insurgency? You remember how […]

Over 2500 US Troops Dead in Iraq 18,490 Wounded Time to Leave? AFP reports that the Iraqi Civil War claimed at least 27 lives on Thursday: “Three successive roadside bombs targeting Iraqi army patrols killed five soldiers and injured six others in the northern town of Tal Afar on Thursday, police said. Four soldiers were […]

Kurdish Weekly Despairs of Iraq From the USG Open Source Center translation of an editorial by a pro- Kurdistan Democratic Party (led by Massoud Barzani) magazine: “Iraqi Kurdish Weekly Says Leadership Better Leave Baghdad, Return to KurdistanUnattributed commentary: “Three years in Baghdad and a ruined country”Govari GulanThursday, June 15, 2006 T14:15:29Z Document Type: OSC Translated […]

Basra Crowd Attacks Iranian Consulate Fighting in Adhamiyah An angry crowd of Iraqi Shiites attacked the Iranian Basra consulate on Wednesday, protesting an insult aired on Iranian television against Shaikh Mahmud al-Sarkhi al-Hasani, a popular preacher [in Karbala who is very anti-American and is fixated on the coming of the Mahdi or promised one. See […]

Steele on Ahmadinejad: Of Arenas of Time and Intransitive Verbs Jonathan Steele of the Guardian does a good piece about the controversy over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s quotation from Khomeini that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” — which some Iranian activists and the Western press translated as “Israel […]

Islamists, Experts Speculate on Abu Hamza, new leader of “al-Qaeda in Iraq” Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the new leader of the Salafi Jihadis in Iraq, has threatened to kill Sunni Arab leaders cooperating with the US in the Green Zone in the center of Baghdad. al-Sharq al-Awsat interviews Sunni Islamists and Arab experts on Islamists for […]

Maysan Governing Council Members Go on Strike The deteriorating security situation in southern Iraq has been dealt another blow, as provincial governing council members have suspended their membership. The following is the USG Open Source Center translation. ‘Al-Zaman: Maysan Advisory Council Protests British Forces’ RaidsReport by Basim al-Shaykh Ali: “Maysan Advisory Council Suspends Work in […]

Bush Sneaks In and Out of Baghdad Again 24 Dead in Kirkuk Bombings Iraq’s civil war claimed at least 55 lives on Tuesday. Guerrillas detonated a coordinated set of car bombs in Kirkuk on Tuesday, killing 24 persons and wounding nearly 50. Among the targets were senior police officers, and the offices of the Patriotic […]