Juan Cole

Aqila al-Hashimi Dies Interim Governing Council member Aqila al-Hashimi, a long-time official in the Iraqi foreign ministry, died of her wounds on Thursday. She had been shot on Saturday by gunmen. Most informed sources in Baghdad blame the Baathists. Because she had been close to Tariq Aziz, it is possible that they were especially incensed […]

Talabani’s Mosul HQ Attacked; Al-Qaeda Connection Gunmen sprayed machine gun fire at the party offices in Mosul of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headed by Jalal Talabani at 9 pm Thursday night Iraqi time, according to Al-Sharq al-Awsat. No one was wounded in the attack. Party officials blamed the attack on Ansar al-Islam, a small […]

Edward Said Dies I am at a conference and cannot make a long entry today, but wanted to express my condolences to the family and friends of Edward Said, among the greatest scholars of the twentieth century. A Palestinian-American intellectual who illuminated for us everything from Joseph Conrad’s fiction to the impact of empire on […]

Dozens of Iraqis Wounded, several Killed Guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb in the Azamiya district of West Baghdad Wednesday, missing their target of a US military convoy but hitting an Iraqi bus instead. One passenger was killed and 21 were wounded. In Mosul, assailants killed three patrons in a movie theater and wounded 52 others […]

Wesley Clark: Bush has 7-Nation Hit List A Malaysian newspaper claims to have gotten an advance peek at statements in the new book by Wesley Clark, excerpted in Newsweek. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the report, but here it is: “It quoted former North Atlantic Treaty Organisation commander General Wesley Clark as saying […]

Governing Council backs off from Total Economic Liberalization The Interim Governing Council said Wednesday that Finance Minister Kamil al-Kaylani’s remarks on Monday were merely his on opinion and did not represent the views of the IGC. (-al-Zaman) Al-Kaylani had announced a virtual firesale of the Iraqi economy, allowing foreign firms to own 100% of Iraqi […]

Mudarrisi Criticizes Planning for new Constitution Sayyid Hadi al-Mudarrisi, a major cleric of the holy shrine city of Karbala, issued a denunciation Wednesday of the process whereby preparations are being made to draft a new Iraqi constitution. He said that the IGC owed the Iraqi people much more transparency about the process. (al-Zaman) He complained, […]

Aqila al-Hashimi “Gravely Ill AP reports that Interim Governing Council member Aqila al-Hashimi, wounded by machine gun fire in an assassination attempt on Saturday, has taken a turn for the worse and is “gravely ill.”

Bush address to UN Disappointing The US needs three things from the United Nations desperately with regard to Iraq. The first is legitimacy. It needs a UN mantle for its activities in that country, which will make those activities more acceptable to Iraqis and to the Arab and Muslim worlds, as well as to France […]