Juan Cole

Shiite List to be Announced Hussein Shahristani, the Shiite scientist charged by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani with cobbling together a big comprehensive Shiite list, said Monday that the full listing of candidate names (in ranked order) would be made available on Tuesday. The list is being called the United Iraqi Congress. The list groups the […]

Clash on a Street called Haifa Guerrillas on Haifa Street in downtown Baghdad fought a running battle Monday with Iraqi police or national guards, and killed one civilian working for the US. The battle took place near the Green Zone, where the US embassy is sited. There were also attacks on an oil pipeline that […]

Carnage becoming Routine in Iraq: Another Bloody Sunday ArabNews summarizes the carnage in Iraq on Sunday. Tikrit: Guerrillas ambushed a bus as it let off Iraqis working for the US military at a weapons dump in Tikrit on Sunday morning around 8:30 am, spraying it with machine-gun fire and then fleeing. They killed 17 Iraqi […]

Abu Ghuraib Redux The Arabic satellite television programs showed the new Abu Ghuraib pictures repeatedly late last week, and they provoked a new round of disgust with the United States. Boing Boing tells the story of how these photos were tracked down on a photo sharing site by a reporter using the google search engine. […]

Blogging Fallujah, and the US Air War against Iraqi Civilians Thomas E. Ricks has a characteristically piercing examination of the way in which a single blogger has been able to challenge the public relations efforts of the entire US military with regard to the human cost of the Fallujah campaign. He contrasts the US military’s […]

Arab/Kurdish, Sunni/Shiite Violence Flares, Killing Dozens The violence in Iraq on Saturday, which killed at least 40 and wounded many more, was particularly worrying because it was again characterized by a strong element of ethnic warfare. In Mosul, a car bomber pulled alongside a bus bringing in Kurdish militiamen or peshmerga, who guard the offices […]

30 Killed in Tsunami of Attacks Arab satellite stations are reporting mortar attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad (where the US embassy and government offices are located), and showing thick columns of black smoke rising over the capital. Guerrillas launched several coordinated attacks on Friday, aimed at disrupting the country as it moves toward […]

Hollowness of War on Terror: Madrid hit Again Madrid was thrown into chaos on Friday when the Basque separatist organization ETA set off five bombs at gasoline stations around the capital of Madrid, just as Spaniards were trying to leave the city on a vacation that marks the advent of a new, democratic constitution in […]

Card wins Legal Action against Pipes Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer settled a libel suit out of court with University of Oregon instructor Douglas Card. They had accused Card of being anti-semitic (i.e. a racist) and of being a leftwing extremist. Pipes has a history of levelling wild charges against academics, and of being unreliable […]