Juan Cole

Oil for Food Scandal taints (gasp!) Houston We’ve had to put up for months with blowhards like Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota jumping up and down about the Iraq food for oil scandal at the United Nations. Coleman even called for the resignation of Kofi Annan, who hasn’t been shown to have behaved improperly himself. […]

At least 17 Killed by Bombs, 4 US Contractors Wounded AP reports that guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a US convoy, killing five Iraqis and wounding 4 US contractors. Two other explosions in the capital did little damage. A fourth set a fuel tanker ablaze near two US Humvees. AP adds: “Near Kirkuk, 12 […]

Neoconning the Media Eric Alterman’s “Neoconning the Media: A Short History of Neoconservatism” is a must-read account of the movement and its main institutions and media outlets. Alterman lists “half of the New Republic” as among the assets of the Neocons. That’s about right, though I suspect that the other half (In the Barefoot And […]

At least 10 Dead in Deadly blasts in Mosul, Telafar Wire services report that a suicide bomber killed five Iraqis in Mosul, and another killed five Iraqis in the largely Turkmen city of Telafar. Guerrillas attempted to assassinate a deputy interior minister, but killed his bodyguard and injured three others, while he escaped. On Monday, […]

Demonstration in Samarra Ash-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP: Hundreds of Iraqis demonstrated Tuesday in Samarra, demanding the withdrawal of American troops from their city. Clan elders and school and university students participated in the rally, which came in response to a call from the municipal council and the Association of Muslim Scholars. The demonstrators gathered close to […]

Iraq News Roundup Ash-Sharq al-Awsat does a report on Fallujah in which it alleges that of the residents who have returned after the US assault, many are living in tents because their homes are uninhabitable. It also says that Iraq is asking the UN Security Council formally to lift the sanctions and restrictions imposed on […]

Competent Intelligence Urged by Rumsfeld Ironies of Iraq today: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is afraid that the new Shiite religious government in Iraq will purge ex-Baathists placed in the army and intelligence services by US ally Iyad Allawi, a long-term CIA asset. Rumsfeld said that competent persons should be retained. This is the same […]

Sharon Defies Bush The AP headline gets it right: Sharon dismisses Bush Warning on Settlement Expansion. I would have called it “large-scale land theft” rather than “settlement expansion,” but it comes to the same thing. Wait a second. Isn’t that Ariel Sharon, whose government gets billions of dollars a year from the United States (who […]

What the Muslims think is Really Happening in Jerusalem The far-right Israeli extremists who demonstrated in Jerusalem were not just protesting the plan to remove Israeli colonists from Gaza, as was reported in the Western press. Rather, they were threatening to invade the al-Aqsa Mosque. The Muslim world understood this threat as an intention to […]