Juan Cole

Army of the Mahdi attacks US Base near Najaf The Shiite Army of the Mahdi launched twenty mortar shells against the US base near Najaf on Monday, and engaged in a 3-hour firefight with US troops at a checkpoint, but failed to inflict any casualties. US troops returned fire, estimating that they killed 20 militiamen, […]

Turki: Bremer “Didn’t Care” about Torture Evidence: Sa’idi: American Democracy is Dead save for the Facade Abdul Basit Turki, Iraq’s first Minister of Human Rights, had his resignation accepted on Sunday. He had tendered it in response to the way the US dealt with the situation in Fallujah, among other issues. He maintained that he […]

Fallujah and Abu Ghuraib: No Comparison There simply is no logical or ethical comparison between the killings and desecrations of the four private commandos at Fallujah by a mixture of guerrillas and mobs, and the systematic torture of Prisoners of War by a democratic country. Any equivalence would suggest that the United States military is […]

Chalabi Gave Sensitive Information to Iran: Newsweek Mark Hosenball of Newsweek reports that US intelligence has intercepted telephone calls among high-ranking Iranian officials that prove that Ahmad Chalabi has provided Tehran with sensitive information about US political plans in Iraq. ‘ top Bush administration officials have been briefed on intelligence indicating that Chalabi and some […]

Al-Dhari: It would be Yet another Piece of Stupidity for the US to go after Muqtada; US Troops Raid Sadrist Conference in Hilla Harith Sulaiman al-Dhari, the head of the Board of [Sunni] Muslim Clerics in Iraq, gave an interview with ash-Sharq al-Awsat in Cairo that appears in the Monday issue. He said that his […]

Abuse Allegations are ‘a Big Deal’: WP. Sewell Chan of the WP has an article today, “U.S. Official: Abuse Allegations Are ‘a Big Deal’ .” Now this is more like it. I’m quoted: ‘ “The public relations damage is profound and permanent,” said Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University […]

“Foreign Fighter” Myth Exposed Jim Krane of AP is throwing cold water all over the repeated allegations of the Interim Governing Council that foreign fighters are playing any significant role in the Iraqi insurgency against the US. In fact, almost all the Fallujah fighters are Iraqis, and the US has captured no one there for […]

Rant on US News Coverage It is remarkable how the US press allows themselves to be manipulated by the government. When the Abu Ghuraib story broke, Bush just issued a statement that he was disgusted, taking no responsibility. The headlines the next day? “Bush Disgusted by Photos.” The proper headline would have been “Permanent Damage […]

The US has Lost the Battle of the Photographs My essay, “The U.S. Has Lost the Battle of the Photographs,” is up through Tuesday at TomDispatch.com, veteran journalist Tom Engelhardt’s site for the Nation Institute. The war of guns is only part of any great military enterprise. It is always supplemented by a war of […]