Juan Cole

5 Marines Killed, 4 Wounded 21 Bodies Found Sunnis Reject offer on Constitutional Committee Guerrillas killed 5 Marines near Haqlaniyah in Anbar Province on Thursday. Some 21 bodies were discovered near Qaim in western Iraq, some executed mafia style with a bullet to the back of the head. Two were beheaded. Twenty Iraqi soldiers were […]

Attacks in Yusufiyah, Mosul, Kut Islamic Parties Meet to Shape the Constitution A vehicle accident near Hit in Iraq left a Marine dead on Wednesday, according to AP. 1,683 US military personnel have died so far in Iraq. al-Sharq al-Awsat: A mortar attack aimed at a military site at Yusufiyah instead hit two civilian homes […]

Piles of Smoking Guns Kind readers have drawn my attention to other leaked documents on the British side that lend support to the implications of the Downing Street memo, which alleges that Bush had decided on a war against Iraq by summer, 2002 and would fix the intelligence around the policy. The Daily Telegraph for […]

The Downing Street Memo and “Fixing Around” At least one commentator has been quoted in the press as questioning what British Intelligence chief Richard Dearlove meant in the Downing Street Memo by the phrase “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” The full passage reads, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military […]

Hersh on Journalism and the Internet Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh is interviewed in The Guardian. He has some canny comments on journalism and blogging. Hersh is a giant in investigative journalism who broke both My Lai and Abu Ghraib, and without him the Republic would be in even worse shape. He makes the key […]

The Revenge of Baghdad Bob “The Revenge of Baghdad Bob” is my current piece in Salon.com about the bizarrely unrealistic assessments of the Iraq War by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. First para.: “The sheer dishonesty of the Bush administration whenever it speaks about the situation in Iraq was on display again during Bush’s […]

Talabani and al-Hakim Call for Role for Shiite, Kurdish Paramilitaries 4 US Soldiers Killed Guerrillas killed 4 US servicemen on Wednesday in separate incidents. Other guerrilla operations around Iraq took the lives of at least 9 Iraqis, including two government officials. Guerrillas kidnapped 20 Iraqi soldiers near the Syrian border. Al-Zaman: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani […]

33 Dead in Tuesday Attacks, over 70 Wounded At least 33 persons died in guerrilla attacks or from friendly fire on Tuesday. The Australian Broadcasting Co. reports, ‘ Nine people were killed in the northern city of Mosul, including four peshmerga militiamen reportedly shot dead by police after they were mistaken for insurgents and three […]

Kirkuk Police Defy their Dismissal by Interior Ministry More Car Bombs Wreak Havoc The Associated Press reports, ‘ Four car bombings within seven minutes killed six people, including at least three Iraqi soldiers, in northern Iraq, an army commander said. The first attack struck Hawija, about 65 kilometres south of Kirkuk, before three others exploded […]