Juan Cole

Sistani Calls for UN Decision According to the Gulf Daily News, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani stands by his ruling that Iraq should go to early general elections on a one-person, one-vote basis. According to IGC member Muwaffak al-Rubaie, however, Sistani has indicated that he would back down on one condition. If Kofi Annan appoints a […]

1 US Soldier Killed, 14 wounded Three guerrillas drove a car filled with explosives near the Champion US Army Base at Ramadi on Thursday and blew themselves up, killing one soldier, wounding 3 badly enough to be taken to a combat field hospital, and lightly wounding 11 others (they got hit by flying glass and […]

Fadlallah Discourages formation of Militias Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, who resides in Beirut, Lebanon, has long had a following inside Iraq. He was born and educated in Najaf and is an Iraqi. The Shiite al-Da`wa Party is said to favor him. According to al-Sharq al-Awsat, he was asked recently by Iraqi Shiites if the […]

IGC Negotiates with Sistani The Interim Governing Council sent a delegate Thursday to conduct talks with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, which were described as “tough but sincere.” (-AFP via ash-Sharq al-Awsat). They discussed the instruments whereby sovereignty would be transferred to the Iraqi people from the Coalition Provisional Authority on July 1, 2004. The delegation […]

Wolfowitz throws Tantrum at France, Germany, Russia and Canada: The Failure of Emotional Intelligence It transpires that the Pentagon order denying Iraq reconstruction contracts to France, Germany, Russia and Canada was issued by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. It created enormous anger in the US allies of NATO. They feel that they have been […]

2 US Troops Killed, 4 Wounded in Mosul Guerrillas killed 2 US troops in a roadside bombing and a shoot-out in two separate incidents in Mosul on Wednesday. Four others were wounded in the engagements. US troops returning fire shot and killed a civilian Iraqi driver, later identified as a a member of a Kurdish […]

Shiite Mosque attacked Unknown assailants razed a Shiite mosque in Baghdad on Wednesday. According to local eyewitnesses, the act was revenge for the bombing of a Sunni mosque on Tuesday, which killed 4 persons. The caretaker of the Shiite mosque maintained that the attackers had come from the funeral procession for those killed at the […]

Human Rights, Anti-Terror (and somewhat Anti-American) Demonstrations The demonstrations for human rights and against terrorism in several Iraqi cities on Wednesday were organized by parties represented on the Interim Governing Council. Althought the US press has tended to portray these rallies as pro-American, they were far more ambiguous than that. The organizers were able to […]

CPA Halts Effort to Tally Iraqi War Dead AP is alleging that an ongoing program by the Iraqi ministry of health aimed at totalling up the civilian casualties in the Iraq War of last spring has been shut down. The report claims that the Iraqi minster of health stopped it, on orders from the US-led […]