Juan Cole

Clarke: Bush Pressured him to Find Iraq link to 9/11 Dick Clarke’s interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes struck me as powerful and credible. I was struck by the phrase that the Bush administration officials, like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, were still fighting the cold war and Iraq (“as though preserved in amber”) when they came back […]

Sistani: UN must not Legitimate Interim Constitution Reuters reports that Grand Ayatollah Sistani sent a letter to Lakhdar Brahimi, special envoy of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, demanding that the United Nations not endorse the interim constitution signed in early March by the Interim Governing Council. These are the Sistani quotes in the article: “The (Shi’ite) […]

Bremer enacts new Investment Law for Iraq ash-Sharq al-Awsat: Civil administrator Paul Bremer signed Law Number 64 on Sunday, altering the Iraqi law of corporations (which had been enacted in 1997), changing the legal climate for commercial enterprises in Iraq. The new law removes obstacles that had prevented the formation of Iraqi commercial institutions, permits […]

Reprisals by Assassination against Baathists az-Zaman: Iraqi sources connected to the ministry of the interior (=FBI in American terms, MI5 in British ones) say that 1,000 Iraqis were assassinated in the months following the fall of Saddam from among the cadres of scientists and artistic and cultural figures, the majority of them physicians, professors, engineers […]

Mudarrisi: Loose Federalism in Interim Constitution a Time Bomb Sayyid Muhammad Taqi al-Mudarrisi, a leading Shiite cleric of Karbala, has warned that there are explosive mines in the interim constitution, in the article on federalism. In an interview with az-Zaman, he said the law could lead to the outbreak of civil war in Iraq. He […]

More on Spain Check out Bill Scher’s well-reasoned opinion piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “Conservatives would like you to think that Spain wants to wimp out on the war against terrorism, and that the rest of Europe wants to follow suit. Why? Because the right doesn’t want you to start questioning the merits of President […]

1 Marine killed; Attack on PUK in Mosul, Police in Kirkuk leave 2 Iraqis dead AFP reports: ‘ a US marine was killed in an attack during security operations in western Iraq on Friday, the US military said Saturday. ‘ . . . ‘ In the latest violence, an Iraqi police officer was shot dead […]

Iraqi Minister calls Governing Council no more Democratic than Saddam In the speech he used to inaugurate his reelection campaign on Saturday, Bush boasted that the US had “liberated” 50 million persons in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is the problem with political rhetoric that it lacks all nuance or ambiguity. It is true that the […]

Muqtada calls for US withdrawal from Iraq From BBC World Monitoring: “HEADLINE: Shi’i cleric Al-Sadr denounces US presence in Iraq SOURCE: Voice of the Mujahidin, in Arabic 1200 gmt 20 Mar 04 BODY: Text of report by Iraqi Shi’i group’s Iran-based radio station Voice of the Mujahidin on 20 March On the first anniversary of […]