Juan Cole

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 […]

INC Moves to Take over Iraqi Finances, Economic Policy More on the ambitious “shock treatment” of the Iraqi economy announced Monday. Apparently Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress pushed for the plan on the Iraq side, even as proponents of the Washington Consensus did so on the American. The INC managed to get Kamil Mubdir al-Kaylani […]

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 […]