Juan Cole

Khatami on the challenges in the Middle East Outgoing Iranian president Mohammad Khatami Reflected on the challenges facing the Middle East in an interview with al-Hayat, translated/ paraphrased by Shahram Kholdi. Khatami sees Middle East publics as caught between three major forces: 1) Authoritarian governments. 2) Neocolonial puppet regimes. 3) Reactionary radical movements. You could […]

Summit on Constitution Postponed Sistani accepts Federalism in Principle Only 38 percent of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing in Iraq, a steep fall. The president in particular lost the trust on this issue of the suburban young soccer moms and of men with a high school education or less. Less than half […]

US Dependent on Saudi Arabia The Bush administration and its Neocons have shot themselves in the foot big time if they thought they could use Iraq to reduce US dependence on Saudi Arabia. If you want to understand the problem, look at it this way. The world produces about 80 million barrels of petroleum every […]

Marine Toll Rises to 18 Jaafari Says Iraq at War Guerrillas killed 4 more Marines later on Wednesday, one in Ramadi and 3 in Baghdad. This means the one-day total for August 3 was 18, not 14, because of the massive bomb that killed 14 early Wednesday at Haditha. Although a US military spokesman said […]

Cole on Saudi Arabia in Salon My article, What Michael Moore (and the neocons) don’t know about Saudi Arabia is at Salon.com. The blurb goes, “The left and the right have both crudely demonized the desert kingdom. But the ascension of King Abdullah gives the U.S. a chance to solidify relations with this flawed but […]

Sharon: “Bloodthirsty Jewish Terrorist” A soldier in the Israeli military who deserted over the Gaza withdrawal went up to a Palestinian-Israeli village in Galilee and shot up a bus full of innocent civilians. He killed four and wounded at least 12. The form of this attack was very similar to shootings undertaken by terrorists in […]

Al-Zawahiri, Bush and Aljazeera In the miscellaneous department, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two man in al-Qaeda, released a video tape Thursday that was shown on Aljazeera. At least in the afternoon and evening, what was interesting was that Aljazeera led with President Bush’s reactions to the new tape. Only after extensively reporting and translating his […]

Fool me once, shame on you Fool me–can’t get fooled again The bizarre report by Jim Miklaszewski of NBC news that US military sources are saying Iran is the source of more sophisticated bombs used by Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq seems so unbelievable because it is. Poor Jim is the victim of a high-level […]

Vietnam-Speak in Iraq Military historian Tom Collier writes with regard to the killing of 14 Marines in Anbar province with a huge improvised explosive device: ‘ There seem to be two developments in Iraq that are “more than eerily Vietnam speak.” The first is the increasing use of bigger and better mines: bundled 155mm artillery […]