Juan Cole

US Warplanes Hit Samarra Kirkuk Official Assassinated Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that US war planes bombed two civilian vehicles in Samarra on Tuesday, killing two women and a child in the process. The US military in Fallujah fired tanks on guerrillas that attacked them. A high official of Turkmen extraction in the department of education in […]

Harold Rhode and Bernard Lewis The classic expose of Pentagon operator Harold Rhode was written by Bob Dreyfuss and Jason Vest last January, and aptly entitled “The Lie Factory.” It has long been known that Rhode has a close relationship with former School of Oriental and African Studies and Princeton historian Bernard Lewis. I received […]

Franklin Met with Naor Gilon The Israeli foreign ministry has confirmed that Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon’s top Iran desk officer, met repeatedly in Washington with “Naor Gilon, head of the political department at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and a specialist on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” Gilon appears already to have been under surveillance by […]

Republican Convention “We did not seek this War” The Republican National Convention in New York was All 9/11 All the Time. As one would expect, Senator John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani gave strong speeches (though Rudi came off as petty toward John Kerry in a way no one but Al Sharpton […]

Muqtada Plans Political Party AP reports that the young Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has called on his followers to cease fighting American and Coaltion troops and Iraqi police. He plans, his aides say, to have the Sadr movement contest the forthcoming elections to parliament. Al-Hayat argues that Muqtada’s decision was a compromise between hawks and […]

Brown’s “Public Diplomacy Press Review A really useful compendium of news items related to public diplomacy and Middle East policy is sent out by email by John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer, in conjunction with the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy. It deals with “issues pertaining to foreign public opinion, anti-Americanism, […]

Hollings on AIPAC I saw this in the press at the time, but a reader reminded me of it. Senator Hollings is retiring and speaking his mind. In my experience, this sentiment is very widespread on Capitol Hill, but politicians who are not retiring soon do not complain in public about it. Hollings said, ‘ […]

Johnson: FBI Furious at Leak Many thanks to Ken Henderson for the following: ‘ In a later broadcast on MSNBC, former CIA officer and NBC analyst Larry Johnson reported that for months he had been aware of an investigation that had led to tonight’s revelation, one that had originally focused on the source of a […]

Baldauf: Najaf Standoff Helped Muqtada CSM journalist Scott Baldauf, who has his ear to the ground in Iraq in a way that US officialdom seldom does, believes that Muqtada al-Sadr benefited politically from the recent standoff in Najaf. He writes, ‘ Six months ago, Sheikh Jawad al-Khalasi was what most would consider an Iraqi Shiite […]