Juan Cole

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 […]

More Violence in Iraq Associated Press reports that the fortified Green Zone (US offices and Iraqi government buildings) in Baghdad took heavy mortar fire on Thursday. A car bomb wounded two US soldiers in Baiji. There was heavy fighting in Mosul, leaving a dozen people dead. We only hear about a fraction of such violence […]

Psy-Ops and News The Los Angeles Times’s Mark Mazetti writes about a US military psy-ops campaign against the guerrillas in Fallujah in mid-October, in which military spokesmen convinced CNN that an attack on the city was imminent and got this “news” broadcast so as to observe how the guerrillas in the city reacted to it. […]

Election News Al-Hayat says that the Sunni tribal shaikhs with whom Prime Minister Iyad Allawi met in Jordan on Thusday pleaded with him to postpone the elections. The leader of the Sunni clans of the Dulaim, Majid Ali Sulaiman, told al-Hayat that the shaikhs of the Iraqi tribes “meet Allawi during the past two days, […]

Brown: A Meeting with Yasser Arafat Middle East expert Kenneth Brown shares the following guest editorial. (Iraq news follows, below.): A meeting with Yasser Arafat Kenneth Brown I first met Yasser Arafat in January of last year in Ramallah at the Muqata’a, the half demolished headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. I was part of a […]