Juan Cole

Red Herrings on Discount at Washington Post Poor Dana Priest at the Washington Post caught the frankly shitty assignment of summarizing Undersecretary of Defense for Planning Doug Feith’s self-defense against Democratic critics. The article is a mere repeat of statements made to the press by Feith on June 4, 2003, and contains nothing new. It […]

ETA or al-Qaeda? Madrid Bombing’s Significance Unknown As Steve Komarow argues, the full implications of the sanguinary bombings in Spain on Thursday depend on who did it. If it was ETA, the Basque separatist organization, then it would tend to be seen by the rest of the world as of mainly local significance. If it […]

Sistani doesn’t Want Brahimi to Come Back al-Hayat newspaper maintains that it was told by a high Frendh official that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani opposes the return to Iraq of special UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. He is said to be happy with the Shiite majority on the Interim Governing Council, and to fear that Brahimi […]

US Intelligence Follies: Why Haven’t Cheney, Feith and Chalabi been Impeached? While everyone is beating up on John Kerry for letting it slip he thinks the Bushies are crooked, we might ponder the sort of thing that might have led him to this impression. It seems fairly obvious by now that the Bush administration likes […]

Sistani warns of his own Assassination, Civil War al-Hayat: Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, March’s president-for-a-month of the Interim Governing Council, revealed in a news conference on Wednesday that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had warned late last week that “the enemies of Iraq” were “plotting to kill him [Sistani] in order to spark a civil war in […]

Wave of Kidnappings Continues in Baghdad Jack Fairweather of the Independent reports that the wave of kidnappings that has racked Baghdad continues, at an average of 2 a day. The typical ransom is $25,000. If we extrapolate out that rate, it is 720 abductions per 5 million people per annum (.014 percent of the population […]

More on Interim Constitution Roger Myerson, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, shared with me the following on the Interim Constitution, and has kindly consented to my reprinting it here: “Article 55 . . .may be a key to the evolution of power in Iraq. This article specifies that any group that […]

1 US Soldier killed, 1 Wounded; Spanish Base Shelled Wire services say that one US soldier was killed and another wounded Tuesday in a roadside bombing by guerrillas near Baquba north of Baghdad. Also, on Monday night three mortar shells hit the Spanish base at Diwaniyah, but produced no casualties. Diwaniyah is in the south, […]

Sistani: No Demonstrations Over Interim Constitution az-Zaman: Ibrahim Jaafari, leader of the al-Da`wa al-Islamiyah Party in Iraq, who is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, revealed Tuesday that the ayatollah had pledged not to call for street protests against the Fundamental Law signed Monday. The son of Grand Ayatollah Ali Bashir al-Najafi, a Pakistani close […]