Juan Cole

*It is now being reported that interrogations of top al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and Abu Zubayda reveal that the organization avoided entanglement with Saddam Hussein, on orders of Usama Bin Laden himself, because they didn’t want to end up being manipulated by him. I have long held that there was no plausible linkage of […]

*”Operation Rockingham” was the name of a covert operation within the Defense Intelligence Staff of the UK’s Ministry of Defense that aimed at skewing intelligence on Iraq so as to emphasize Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and to play down evidence to the contrary. So reports Neil McKay of the Sunday Herald. I […]

*Things are not going well again between the US and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim. Al-Hakim has said his organization refuses to participate in a leadership council appointed by the American civilian administrator Paul Bremer. Originally the plan was for the 7 parties appointed by Jay Garner […]

*Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, 30, is in Iran for talks, according to az-Zaman. In the seminary city of Qom, he met with Ayatollah Kadhim al-Ha’iri, whose representative in Iraq he is held to be. He also met with other clerics. He had complained bitterly after the fall of Saddam about the stranglehold the Iranians […]

*Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani threw his weight behind the desirability of a near-term interim government in Iraq, during a meeting with Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani. and calling for elections to a national assembly for Iraqis to produce a new constitution, according to Patrick Tyler of the New York Times.Sistani is deeply unhappy with current conditions […]

*“BAGHDAD (Reuters) – One U.S. soldier was killed and five were wounded when an assailant fired a rocket-propelled grenade at them in the restive Iraqi town of Falluja on Thursday, the U.S. military said. It said the wounded soldiers, from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, had been driven to a […]

*“Protests against U.S. actions in Iraq continued Tuesday in the streets of Baghdad with some 3,000 Muslim religious students demanding the release of a Shiite cleric rounded up by U.S. occupation forces last weekend.”–UPI. Sheik Jassem al-Saedi was arrested by US troops on Sunday. The crowds also chanted against the US decision not to hold […]

*The stockpiling of arms in mosques has been denounced on Coalition radio in Iraq according to AFP/az-Zaman. The broadcast condemned the desecration of holy places in this way and pointed out that attacks on coalition forces with such heavy weapons typically injures innocent Iraqi civilians, as well. US troops in Falluja recently came under fire […]

*The formula for the transitional government in Iraq keeps changing an almost daily basis as Paul Bremer searches for a way out of the various dead ends that his predecessors had set up for him. Now he is talking, according to various reports including Az-Zaman and al-Hayat, about cancelling the Iraqi convention planned for July […]