Juan Cole

Tomdispatch: The Way we Were Veteran journalist Tom Engelhardt considers the impact of the past three years on the position of the US in the world. Speaking of the Bush-Cheney national security state, he observes: ‘ They identified an “arc of instability” that stretched east-west from the former Yugoslavia to the borders of China and […]

Mylroie as Bush Rasputine Peter Bergen, veteran journalist and al-Qaeda expert, raises the question of whether the bizarre and crackpot theories of Laurie Mylroie have undue influence high in the US government. Mylroie alleges that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, a thesis for which there is no evidence whatsoever. […]

Iraqi Parties Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has worked up a basic guide to Iraqi political parties. It has a Part One and a Part Two. See also their Guide to Armed Groups in Iraq.

John Edwards and the Iraq War Now that John Kerry has chosen John Edwards as his running mate, I looked around for some Edwards quotes on Iraq. Some good ones are at On the Issues. One thing that hadn’t been clear to me before was Edwards’ antipathy to Halliburton and his critique of “unbid contracts.” […]

Guest Comment on Fallujah and Kaplan: Nir Rosen Journalist Nir Rosen, who has spent most of the past year in Iraq and has fluent Arabic, recently reported on Fallujah for the New Yorker. He objects to many details and arguments in the reporting of of Robert Kaplan on Fallujah for The Atlantic Monthly. We print […]

2 US Pilots Wounded; Strike on Fallujah Mortar Strike in Basra US jets dropped 500-pound bombs on Fallujah again on Monday, targetting an alleged safe house of the al-Tawhid terrorist network. The Iraqi caretaker government announced that it had supported the move. A dozen or more persons were killed, according to local Iraqi observers. Guerrillas […]

Samarra in Chaos Az-Zaman reports that informed sources tell it that the city of Samarra is still in a state of complete chaos, after an armed group established domination there when the American forces withdrew at the end of June. The sources maintain that gunmen blew up the headquarters of the political party of Interior […]

The Crisis in Yemen: Guest Comment by Willis John M. Willis, who has taught Middle East at New York University’s Dept. of Education, writes in about Yemen: ‘ I just wanted to add a few notes to your reading of the recent violence in Haydan outside of Sa’dah in northern Yemen. The recent violence instigated […]

2 US Pilots Wounded; Mortar Strike in Basra Guerrillas in the southern port city of Basra fired mortar rounds at the local government headquarters, but missed and hit local houses instead, killing one Iraqi civilian and wounding four others. Largely Shiite Basra has been quieter than some other parts of Iraq, but has witnessed some […]