Juan Cole

Sunni walks out of Tourism Conference AFP reports that Adnan Doulami, the religious director for Sunni Muslims walked out on a tourism conference on Saturday. He was protesting the remarks of Hussein al-Shami, director of Shiite pious endowments. Al-Shami attacked Wahhabis for denigrating shrines and saints, insisting that the shrines of the Shiite Imams are […]

More on SA-14 Missiles BruceR has further technical analysis of the SAM missile attacks on the DHL cargo plane on Nov. 22. Apparently the guerrillas thought they were hitting a military plane! He also translates the French Paris Match article on the incident.

Bush to Sistani: Good to Have you Working with Us It turns out that President George W. Bush did meet on Thursday with four members of the Iraqi Interim Governing Council. All 24 had been invited to a Thanksgiving Day event at the Baghdad Airport, but they were not told the nature of the event. […]

Two Us Troops Killed; US kills Sisters Guerrillas in Mosul killed a soldier with mortar fire that hit the 101st Airborne Division HQ on Friday. On Thursday, a US soldier had been shot to death inside a military base in Ramadi. The CPA is strongly denying a wire service story (earlier mentioned here) that US […]

Bush Sneaks in and Out of Baghdad W. must have envisaged his triumphal first trip to Baghdad very differently. Last spring, before the war, he was told by Ahmad Chalabi via Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, that the Iraqi people would welcome him this November with garlands and dancing in the […]

Sistani’s Fatwa to the Americans In the meantime, Bush’s team at the Coalition Provisional Authority were scrambling to respond to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s critique of their plans for Iraq. Sistani dislikes the plan to base voting on caucuses hand-picked by Iraqis who were in turn hand-picked by the US. Why, the ayatollah wants to […]

Sistani Raises Objections to Latest Coalition Plan According to al-Hayat, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and a member of the Interim Governing Council, met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Tuesday, and then held a news conference in Najaf on Wednesday. He revealed that Sistani has substantial […]

2 US troops wounded in Mosul; Italian Embassy in Baghdad Hit by Rockets Guerrillas fired a rocket or mortar round into the second floor of the Italian embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday. The attack caused structural damage, but no casualties were reported. Two weeks ago, guerrillas killed 19 Italians in suicide bombings at their police […]

Iraq War damaging US War on Terror Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder points out that many counter-terrorism analysts are convinced that the real war on terror is being hurt by the drain of resources to the Iraq war.