Juan Cole

Friday Headlines to Make You Laugh and Cry at the Same Time “Rumsfeld Cautions against too Many Troops in Iraq”. I swear to God, that is what it says. “Iraq now ‘Less Safe’. Oh, I’d say so. “Pentagon Dismisses US Troop Poll”. A Pentagon spokesman actually said, “It shouldn’t surprise anybody that a deployed soldier […]

25 Dead in Sectarian Strike at Nahrawan Curfew in Baghdadd Sunni Arab guerrillas attacked Shiites in the town of Nahrawan. Some 25 are feared dead, with bodies being pulled out of a factory and some found in a field. I would say that a communal attack of this scale is symptomatic of civil war. Prime […]

Kurds, Sunnis Attempting to Dump Jaafari Violence Leaves 30 Dead Guerrilla violence killed 30 in Iraq on Wednesday. The Financial Times says “bloodshed in central Iraq continued into its third day on Wednesday, with at least 30 killed in bombings and mortar attacks in Baghdad and neighboring regions. In the worst of Wednesday’s attacks, 23 […]

Bomb Blast Near US Consulate in Karachi Jihadis set off a bomb in Karachi, Pakistan near the US consulate, killing 4 and wounding 49. Two of those killed are Americans, one a foreign service officer according to what I heard on Aljazeerah. The strike was intended to cast a pall over Bush’s visit to Pakistan […]

Blogads Poll It is time for the annual blogads poll of Informed Comment readers. The information gathered is most useful for the advertisers, who support a lot of the blogosphere, so I’m grateful to all who make time to answer these questions.

Golden Oldies – IC from before the Iraq War, 2003 No comment. – JC ——————- Thursday, February 27, 2003 A poster to one of the lists I am on wrote: “US policy is to allow no sanctuaries anywhere on the globe for anti-American terror groups. No training camps. No organizations, no fronts. No funding. No […]

Salon: Iraq’s worst week — and Bush’s Cole in the Chronicle My essay at Salon.com this week is: Iraq’s worst week — and Bush’s As Americans finally begin to grasp the magnitude of the Iraq catastrophe, Bush’s popularity hits a new low. By Juan Cole Here is an excerpt: “The catastrophe in Iraq, the scope […]

Deadly Sectarian Violence kills 76, Wounds 179 Talabani Condemns Jaafari for Turkey Visit The Los Angeles Times estimates the dead in various attacks throughout Iraq on Tuesday at 76, with 179 wounded. Details are below. In the meantime, the glacial political process among top Iraqi politicians was roiled on Tuesday by a confrontation between President […]

Bush Ignored own National Intelligence Estimate on Danger, Nature of Iraq Insurgency Or, Ozymandias and Empire Knight Ridder reports that US intelligence agencies warned Bush in the summer and fall of 2003 that the guerrilla war was growing in strength, was mostly local, and was fueled in part by the big US military footprint in […]