Juan Cole

30,000 Shiites march in Basra demanding Free and Fair Elections British troops estimated that 30,000 Shiites demonstrated in Basra on Thursday, with massive crowds beginning at two separate points and wending their way to the al-Abila mosque. Al-Hayat reported that they were demanding that the elections scheduled for late May be held on a one […]

One US Soldier Wounded, Several KBR Employees Killed, Samarra Guerrillas killed AP reported a flurry of attacks on US forces on late Tuesday into Wednesday, including “three road ambushes and a hand grenade assault.” Altogether 14 people died in various acts of violence. In one ambush incident near Samarra Tuesday night, US troops returned fire […]

Dean Calls Clark a “Republican.” As Wesley Clark increases his poll numbers despite not running in Iowa, Howard Dean has attacked his credentials as a Democrat, saying, “I truly believe he’s a Republican.” Dean pointed out that Clark had voted for Nixon and Reagan and had earlier supported some Bush administration officials. I doubt that […]

Kennedy’s attack on Bush Senator Ted Kennedy’s speech attacking Bush was a good summation of the liberal Democratic case against the administration. One allegation caught my eye, concerning Iraq: “He said Bush officials had failed to account for $1.5 billion of the $4 billion the war costs each month, citing a recent report by the […]

Wave of Demonstrations against Abrogation of Civil Personal Status Law az-Zaman reports a “storm” of street protests again on Thursday against the Interim Governing Council’s abolition of the 1958 civil personal status laws in favor of religious law. Az-Zaman, a modernist Arab nationalist newspaper close to Adnan Pachachi, ran several essays Thursday by Iraqi intellectuals […]

Sistani Plays the Tribal Card; Demonstration in Basra According to al-Hayat newspaper, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani held a meeting in Najaf at which he encouraged visiting clan (“tribal”) leaders of Rumaitha and Samawah (az-Zaman adds other middle Euphrates areas) to insist on general elections as a means of achieving a new, sovereign Iraqi government. He […]

Kidnappers have Private Prisons Patrick Cockburn reports from Iraq that the wave of kidnappings that began last summer has not subsided. Rather, it has become a crime of choice among Iraq’s many gangsters (estimated to number tens of thousands), and Cockburn say some now maintain their own private prisons to keep the hostages until ransom […]

Saddam Warned Baathists against Cooperating with Radical Islamists The New York Times revealed on Wednesday via a leaked document found with Saddam Hussein that the Iraqi dictator forbade his followers in recent months from cooperating with foreign radical Islamist fighters who had infiltrated the country. Saddam appears to have seen the resistance as a way […]

Hero of the Day Our hero of the day is Rabbi Arik Ascherman, who put himself in front of a bulldozer in a protest against the Israeli government’s razing of the home of the Maswada family in Beit Hanina. The Israeli government has demolished an estimated 9000 or so homes in the West Bank and […]