Juan Cole

Petroleum Smuggling The British navy intercepted 7 ships smuggling petroleum out of southern Iraq to the Persian Gulf, according to al-Zaman. Smuggling reduces the country’s ability to produce electricity and the availability to Iraqis of fuel. Such shortages provoked heavy rioting in Basra last month. Meantime, a Coalition spokesman expressed confidence that the new Iraqi […]

FAO Says Millions of Iraqis Suffer Hunger The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) issued a report on Tuesday saying that almost half of the Iraqi population (24-26 million) are poverty-stricken and in need of aid. An estimated 60% are unemployed. They say that chronic malnutrition afflicts several million […]

6,000 US Troops have come home Sick or Wounded Although the number of troops wounded in action in Iraq is still a little less than 1200, several thousand more have fallen physically or mentally ill in Iraq and the military has been forced to bring them home. The total may run to 6,000. http://www.finalcall.com/ artman/publish/article_1024.shtml

Ambassador Wilson interview by Josh Marshall, part 2 Talkingpointsmemo has posted the second part of a long interview with Joe Wilson, who served in the embassy in Baghdad just before the last Gulf War, who investigated and disproved the fraudulent claims that Iraq had tried to purchase Niger uranium, but who was ignored by the […]

$8.5 Billion in US Loans to Turkey The US Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, signed an agreement Monday that loans Turkey $8.5 bn. to make restitution for the damage done to the Turkish economy by the Iraq War. Snow claimed that the loans were not related to the US request that Turkey send 10,000 […]

Muqtada Supporter: Arab-Turkmen Unity against Kurds A radical young follower of Shiite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr has called for an Arab-Turkmen alliance against the Kurds in Kirkuk. Abd al-Fattah al-Musawi, from a poor family in Karbala, complained bitterly about the secular atmosphere in Kirkuk and the dominance of Kurdish parties. A few weeks ago, Sunni Kurds […]

Attacks in Mosul, Baquba Iraqi eyewitnesses reported that an automobile exploded Monday in front of the police station in the northern city of Mosul, wounding a number of people. Guerrillas also mounted a mortar attack on US troops in the eastern city of Baquba, but it was not clear if they hurt any of them. […]

Videotape Shows Powell, Rice, knew WMD Claims False Australian journalist John Pilger claims to have incontrovertible proof that the Bush administration knew that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and its major figures admitted as much in spring of 2001. Pilger showed video footage of US Secretary of State Colin Powell saying in […]

Soldier Suffers Neurological Damage from Bomb in Iraq For the story of one US soldier wounded in Iraq, which brings home some of the horror, see: http://www.floridatoday.com/ !NEWSROOM/localstoryA13692A.htm