Juan Cole

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 […]

Attacks in Baqubah, Mansur Train, Pipeline bombed Reuters reports on deaths in the guerrilla war on Thursday: In Baqubah and Khan Bani Saad northeast of Baghdad, guerrillas fought battles with Iraqi soldiers, killing six of them. In the tony Mansur district of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber struck at an Iraqi army checkpoint. He killed […]

Turks threaten to Invade Iraq Just a reminder how much of a tinderbox Iraq is, and how easily neighboring countries could be drawn into a war there: The Kurdish Marxist party, the Kurdish Worker’s Party (Kurdish acronym PKK) has been committing violence in eastern Turkey near the Iraqi border. The Kurdish guerrillas are suspected of […]

War on Terror Over The Bush administration is giving up the phrase “global war on terror.” I take it this is because they have finally realized that if they are fighting a war on terror, the enemy is four guys in a gymn in Leeds. It isn’t going to take very long for people to […]

The Consequences of Nuking Iran Readers have asked me about this discussion at Daily Kos. It notes that former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi wrote in the American Conservative: The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be […]

On How US Troops Aren’t Coming Home Any Time Soon al-Hayat reports that 16 Iraqis were killed in guerrilla violence in Baghdad and its environs on Wednesday, and 20 bodies were discovered in Mosul. (Typically such corpses belong to Iraqi police). The US military imposed a curfew on Samarra, after an attack on one of […]

Draft Constitution Enshrines Islamic Law At Least 27 Dead in Guerrilla Violence Humam al-Hamoudi, the head of the constitution drafting committee in the Iraqi parliament, has called a leadership summit for Thursday and Friday to discuss the current draft. I interpret this move as a sign that the committee itself is deadlocked. The hope appears […]

Sunni Arabs Rejoin Constitution Committee The Sunni Arab members of the constitution drafting committee ended their boycott on Monday, and say they will attend Tuesday’s meeting. Parliament agreed to provide them bodyguards and conduct an investigation into the killing of two of their number last week. Reuters reports deaths in the ongoing guerrilla war: A […]