Juan Cole

Bombings Provoke Fears of Hot Civil War Jalal al-Din Saghir, an Iraqi parliamentarian close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, called the weekend’s onslaught of suicide bombings a sign that Iraq is slipping into civil war. Shiite neighborhoods in and around Baghdad are seething with rage over the massacre at Musayyib, which used a fuel truck […]

Leeds Cell Linked to al-Libi? The Mystery of the Egyptian Chemist Pakistani authorities have traced one telephone call from one of the July 7 bombers to a businessman in Pakistan, and are questioning him. They are also following up on other telephone calls to the country from the bombers. Officials have also been visiting madrasahs […]

Rove: It is all going to be Declassified From Meet the Press with Tim Russert, 7/17: ‘ MR. RUSSERT: This is the cover of your magazine: “Rove on the Spot,” subtitled “What I Told the Grand Jury,” by Matthew Cooper. And here is an excerpt from your article, which will be available tomorrow in Time […]

Did Bush Intervene in Iraqi Elections? The Bush administration may have thrown covert support to its favored political parties in Iraq over objections from Congress, according to Seymour Hersh. At the very least, the administration seriously planned to do this. Everyone knows that the US was backing the list of interim PM Allawi, whom Washington […]

Musayyib Death Toll Rises to Nearly 100 Reuters is reporting that the death toll from the gas station bombing in Musayyib on Saturday has risen to 98. It is now the second most destructive bombing since the Baath regime fell in 2003.

87 Dead in Iraq Attacks, over 100 wounded 3 British Troops Killed The Age reports that a suicide bomber in Musayyib killed at least 70 persons [according to late reports] on Saturday and wounded 82. The huge blast, at a gas station near a Shiite mosque in this town about an hour and a half’s […]

29 Dead, 111 Wounded in Wave of Bombings 2 Marines Dead, 7 US Troops Wounded Street Battles in Samarra Sameer Yacoub of AP reports that guerrilla violence killed 29 persons in Iraq on Friday.Near the Jordanian border, a roadside bomb killed two US Marines. The wave of bombings left 111 persons wounded. One bomb late […]

The London Bombing: Egypt, Pakistan and France Weigh In The Egyptian government has arrested Magdy Elnashar, an associate of the bombers in Leeds, a chemist in whose Leeds home police have found “large amounts of explosives.” Elnashar had left for Egypt recently. He maintains his innocence. My guess is that he would be Egyptian Islamic […]

The Ghost of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan John Aravosis at AmericaBlog brings up the awful possibility, based on an ABC report, that the Public Relations-hungry Bush administration may have interfered with a British and Pakistani investigation of an al-Qaeda plot to bomb London that ties into July 7. The question is whether Bush played politics […]