Juan Cole

US Helicopter Shot Down, 2 Soldiers Dead PM Jaafari launches a Campaign around Baghdad Guerrillas shot down a US helicopter near Baqubah on Thursday, killing two US soldiers. Stephen Kamarow explains the reservations many Iraqis have about what strikes them as an indecisive leadership style in Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. His Minister of Defense, Saadoun […]

Blog-Casting and the Future of Blog Advertising Carl Bialik of the WSJ has an article on attempts to count various things about web logs, including how many there are, how many Americans read them, how much they are linked to, and what their readership is. Many of these questions are driven by Madison Avenue (i.e. […]

Bombings and Assassinations Continue US Military Sweep in Haditha Thursday morning’s 70 minutes of mayhem began at 7:20 a.m. Baghdad time. Guerrillas detonated two bombs, and carried out two drive-by shootings and a stabbing in a little over an hour. A roadside bomb targeted a US convoy, wounding at least one civilian. A bomb in […]

Islamism versus Secularism in Iraq: A Debate I saw this debate on al-Jazeera (Doha) on Sunday in Arabic at 17:15 GMT, on 22 May 05. It was some of the best television discussion of Iraq I’ve ever seen, and the BBC World Monitoring has translated it now (May 24, 2005). The al-Jazeera anchor was quite […]

Sometimes You are Just Screwed Readers occasionally write me complaining that I do not offer any solutions to the problems in Iraq. Let me just step back from the daily train wreck news from the region to complain back that there aren’t any short-term, easy solutions to the problems in Iraq. The US military cannot […]

14 US Troops Dead in 3 Days Civil War in Telafar The Associated Press reports that a car bomb in Baghdad killed 3 US troops, and a drive-by shooting killed a fourth on Tuesday. The deaths brought the three-day total of US military fatalities to 14. Guerrillas detonated a bomb near a girls’ school in […]

Zarqawi Wounded? The news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have been wounded, reported at a jihadi web site, dominated US television news on Tuesday. I’m not sure why. A report on a web site cannot be verified. Al-Zarqawi’s group may be trying to throw the United States off his trail. Or the report could be […]

49 Killed, 130 Wounded in Iraq’s Day of Rage Car bombs and other attacks killed at least 49 Iraqis on Monday and left at least 130 wounded, according to AP. Four American troops have also been killed in the past two days. Al-Zaman/ AFP : In Telafar, a largely Turkmen city in the north, two […]

Sadr Mediates Sunni-Shiite Dispute Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ DPA: Young Shiite nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr said Monday that the attempts of his aides to mediate between the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars and the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq’s Badr paramilitary had achieved advances. Deutsche Press Agentur reported that Sadr told them in Najaf, […]