Juan Cole

al-Rubaie: No Sunni-Shiite Conflict; need for National Reconciliation In Nasiriyah, Interim Governing Council member Muwaffaq al-Rubaie affirmed that there are no disputes between Shiites and Sunnis. He said that these two branches of Islam had suffered intellectual and political persecution during the former regime, and they are both now standing in a single row, serving […]

2 US troops killed, 8 Wounded; Interpreter Killed, 8 Iraqi troops wounded Michelle Faul of AP reports that guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb at the Karada shopping district in Baghdad, killing one US soldier; wounding 5 other US troops; killing two Iraqi children; and wounding an Iraqi interpreter and 8 members of the Iraqi civil […]

MI6 Manipulated British Media Former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski called on Sunday (CNN) for an investigation into how the US was manipulated into the Iraq war. Speaking of the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq uranium purchases, he said that the problem was not only that the US lacked good human intelligence, but that it […]

(More) Hurdles for Iraqi Democracy The Neocon idea that a post-war, US-dominated Iraq would become a beacon of democracy faces more and more hurdles. The increasingly strident and increasingly controversial Kurdish demand for a consolidated Kurdish super-province with relative autonomy from Baghdad could well derail the new Iraq. The demand is not acceptable to Turkmen […]

Alawi: Saddam will be Tried in Secret; Withdrawal Timeline for US Troops to be Negotiated Saddam’s trial is unlikely to be public, according to Iyad Alawi, member of the Interim Governing Council and head of the Iraqi National Accord (mainly ex-Baathist officers who cooperated in 1990s CIA plots against Saddam). Alawi made the remarks in […]

Ken MacLeod’s Blog and Iraq As many of you know, I’m an old time science fiction fan, having grown up on Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, Delaney, Moorcock and the other greats. (I don’t care about divisions between the old Campbell stable and the New Wave of the late 1960s; I read it all). I subscribe to […]

Shiite Issues in the News Thousands of Shiites gathered in Najaf to mourn the 1999 assassination of Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr and other Shiite figures martyred by Saddam. The ayatollah’s followers tend to be puritanical and anti-American, but this gathering appears to have been peaceful and relatively devoid of politics. The ayatollah’s son, Muqtada al-Sadr, […]

10 US soldiers Wounded, 6 other Coalition Troops Killed, 36 wounded; Governor of Karbala Hospitalized with 80 other wounded Civilians Guerillas launched four massive car bombings on Saturday in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. Although Western news reports said that Karbala has been relatively quiet, in fact Coalition troops had on numerous occasionas come […]

Bam Earthquake Kills 20,000 The enormity of 20,000 persons being suddenly wiped out by an earthquake is just hard for me to fathom. There is an old custom in the Middle East and South Asia of seeing such incidents as a sign of God’s displeasure. That way of thinking strikes me as sick (even though […]