Juan Cole

Chalabi Outlines Goals of New Iraqi Government Addressing the UN, Iraqi member of the US-appointed Interim Governing Council Ahmad Chalabi laid out his vision of a new Iraqi government. Chalabi said that, “The pillars of this system are, first, a separation of powers,by writing a constitutional framework that ensures noninterference between the judicial, legislative, executive […]

CIA Spy Case: Blaming the Victim The Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them Machine has been revved up against Ambassador Joe Wilson for daring dispute the Bush administration. Attempts are being made to tag Wilson as a leftie Democrat with an axe to grind against Bush. But Wilson served under Republican as well […]

IGC Forbids Parties to Interfere in Government Appointments The Interim Governing Council on Thursday prohibited political parties from intervening in the appointment process in government ministries. Political Parties are not to open offices or hold party meetings on the premises of any of the Ministries. (Usually things are only forbidden if they are actually already […]

The More you Watch, the Less You Know Americans who watch Fox Cable News are more likely to hold at least one of three major misconceptions about the Iraq war, according to a major poll done by the Program on International Policy Attitudes of the University of Maryland in College Park, and the polling firm, […]

Two US Soldiers Killed, Four Wounded Guerrillas in Tikrit set off a bomb near the entrance of the 4th Infantry Division base on Wednesday, killing a female US soldier and wounding three others. In the well-off Mansour District of Baghdad, a guerrilla shot two US soldiers with a small caliber handgund, killing one and ounding […]

Sunni-Shiite Violence in Basra Kills 10 Extremist Sunnis called Salafis appear to have been behind the recent bombing of a Shiite mosque in the Abu al-Khasib district in the south of Basra. In response, al-Zaman says that members of the Shiite al-Da`wa party targeted the Basra Salafis and has assassinated 10 of them. Funeral processions […]

Bush White House’s Outing of CIA Operative Serious I find journalist Robert Novak’s defense of his naming of a CIA operative on July 14 unconvincing and, indeed, rather sickening. Novak now says he did not know that the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson was a covert operative who ran agents. This assertion isn’t plausible, since […]

Shiite Demonstrations in Baghdad US soldiers briefly detained a Friday prayers mosque preacher in Shiite East Baghdad after he gave a particularly fiery sermon On Wednesday a crowd gathered to demonstrate against his incarceration. He was released. The crowd leaders are now demanding an American apology and threaten to turn against the US presence in […]

Unemployed Riot in Baghdad A demonstration organized by the Union of Unemployed Workers in Baghdad, which is backed by the Iraqi Communist Party, turned violent on Wednesday. The demonstrators maintain that they were peaceful, and that the reconstituted Iraqi police fired on them for no good reason. The police wounded three. The demonstration then turned […]