Juan Cole

Of Iron Fists and Oil Sabotage Marine Killed in Anbar Guerrillas in Anbar Province killed a Marine on Thursday. US forces clashed with guerrillas in Samarra, signalling a breakdown of the truce earlier worked out between city elders and US commanders, which would have provided extensive reconstruction aid in return for the city’s acceptance of […]

Violence, Allawi, Sistani and Elections Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani continues to be concerned as to whether elections will be held in January in Iraq, and whether the outcome will reflect the Shiite majority in Iraq. He is worried that the system adopted, of nation-wide party lists, favors a small set of parties, mainly expatriate. Since […]

Iraq Violence Kills at Least 24, Wounds over 100 Sistani Criticizes Election Plans The guerrilla war and American military assertiveness together wrought havoc in several areas of Iraq once again on Wednesday. Baghdad In downtown Baghdad, guerrillas used a car bomb to strike at persons in a retail district who were waiting to sign up […]

Cat Stevens Deported I know that it is faintly ridiculous that Cat Stevens a.k.a. Yusuf Islam was deported on Wednesday from the US after the airplane he was on was diverted to Maine, on the grounds that he is a dire security threat to the country. David Letterman in his monologue allowed darkly as how […]

If America were Iraq, What would it be Like? President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country. What would America look like if it were in Iraq’s current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a […]

The Western Press on Religious Violence in Iraq Howard LaFranchi of the Christian Science Monitor gives further, searching consideration to the mysterious murder of clerics on Sunday and Monday and sees dangers of sectarian violence increasing in Iraq. Paul Wood of the BBC reports on the situation in the British-dominated South. It is not a […]

Bush Taunts Kerry I just heard President Bush taunt John Kerry for suggesting that the US was not safer because Saddam Hussein was deposed, and for saying that the US was in fact less safe because of the chaos in Iraq. Bush attempted to turn this statement around and suggest that Kerry was preferring dictatorship […]

The Case of the Three Dead Clerics Al-Zaman and Al-Jazeerah.net say that two important figures in the Sunni fundamentalist Association of Muslim Scholars [Board of Muslim Clerics] were assassinated on Sunday and Monday. Hazim al-Zaidi was found in front of the Sajjad Mosque in Sadr City, a largely Shiite area. Al-Zaidi had been imam to […]

Bin Laden Doesn’t Care Who Wins The remark of Speaker of the House Denis Hastert that al-Qaeda would like to manipulate the US election with a terrorist bombing and would be happier with Kerry as president is simply wrong. The Democrats are correct that such comments are a form of fear-mongering aimed at stampeding the […]