Juan Cole

20 Bodies Found Another 5 US Troops Killed 68 Attacks on US and Coalition Forces Per Day The bodies of twenty men were found in black bags in southwest Baghdad on Monday. They had beards and may have been Sunni Muslim militants. [Knight Ridder is now identifying them as Shiites.] There has been a behind […]

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Moderate Muslim? Guest Editorialby Mark LeVineProf. Dept of History UC Irvine, author, Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld Publications, 2005) ‘ Just over two years ago I organized a forum of leading younger Muslim activists at the Central University in Budapest. Among those […]

Parliamentary Debate on Election System Collapses 5 US Troops Killed over Weekend The Sunday news cycle took a roller coaster ride with regard to whether the constitution drafting committee of the Iraqi parliament will be finished by August 15. It must request a postponement by today if it is going to seek one. First, committee […]

UK Police Seek links among Bombers Reading between the lines of this FT article, I conclude that UK police have not given up on the possibility that both the July 7 and the July 21 bombing cells were run by higher-ups and were linked. The link would not have come at the level of the […]

Frist Stance Setback to American Taliban Senator Frist’s flip flop on the stem cell issue may or may not help his rumored presidential bid in 2008, but it is a potentially historic shift in Republican policy. The contemporary Republican Party is a coalition of 1) the corporate wealthy; 2) Southern whites (former Democrats) who are […]

Constitution Unfinished as Deadline Looms 17 Dead in Violence Saturday Sunni Arab members of the constitution drafting committee are still rejecting language that would make Iraq a “federal” republic. In practice, this language would formally acknowledge Kurdistan and perhaps Shiite federations of provinces in the south as having a good deal of autonomy and a […]

London Bombings: State of Play After the dramatic arrests on Friday in London and Rome, it appears that the foot soldiers of the July 21 bombing are all in custody. Whether the police have been able to go up the cell structure to find handlers, bomb makers and logisticians is unclear. This is what we […]

Sunnis Demonstrate in Baghdad As Bombings Kill 28, wound 46, with 3 US Soldiers Dead 1 Million Iraqis say “US Out”! Maher al-Thanoon of Reuters reports that one thousand Sunni Arabs staged a demonstration outside the Green Zone (barricaded government offices) against the elected Iraqi government, which is dominated by Shiites in coalition with Kurds. […]

Nation Forum on Middle East “Unintended Consequences: A Forum on Iraq and the Mideast,” in The Nation is now available online. Journalists Helena Cobban and Nir Rosen, academic Middle East expert Shibley Telhami, and I all responded to questions about the state of the region. This is my answer to the first question asked by […]