Juan Cole

Two US Soldiers Killed On late Thursday, guerrillas fired a rocket propelled grenade at military vehicles near Kirkuk, killing a soldier from the 173rd Airborne Brigade and injuring two others. In Tikrit, a US soldier, from the 4th ID was killed by a fire in an abandoned building, and another was wounded.

Sadrist Militia interferes with Burial Rites for Aqila al-Hashimi Aqila al-Hashimi, a Shiite member of the Interim Governing Council, was buried in Najaf on Friday after having been assassinated, probably by Baathist goons. Ordinarily the body would have been carried to the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kazim at al-Kazimiya, a suburb of Baghdad, for prayers […]

Judicial Board Constituted CPA head Paul Bremer signed an order creating an independent judicial council to oversee the Iraqi legal system. It will be supervised by the interim minister of justice, Hashim al-Shibli. This system of law is a secular one. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and other Shiite clerics, as well as Ahmad al-Kubaisi on […]

Guerrillas wound 8 US Soldiers; Kill 8 Iraqis Guerrillas wounded 8 US soldiers on Thursday, leaving one in critical and two in serious condition. Two roadside bombs blasted their convoy in or near Mosul as it went by. On Thursday night, guerrillas fired mortars into a Baquba market, killing 8 Iraqis and wounding 13. Donald […]

Bombing Foiled in Najaf The shrine police in Najaf accosted two suspicious men carrying bags in that city in the middle of the night of Weds-Thursday. The men opened fire at a police vehicle, but no one was wounded. They then ran away, leaving the bags behind, which were revealed to contain home-made bombs of […]

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 […]