Juan Cole

Sunni-Shiite Violence in Basra Kills 10 Extremist Sunnis called Salafis appear to have been behind the recent bombing of a Shiite mosque in the Abu al-Khasib district in the south of Basra. In response, al-Zaman says that members of the Shiite al-Da`wa party targeted the Basra Salafis and has assassinated 10 of them. Funeral processions […]

Bush White House’s Outing of CIA Operative Serious I find journalist Robert Novak’s defense of his naming of a CIA operative on July 14 unconvincing and, indeed, rather sickening. Novak now says he did not know that the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson was a covert operative who ran agents. This assertion isn’t plausible, since […]

Shiite Demonstrations in Baghdad US soldiers briefly detained a Friday prayers mosque preacher in Shiite East Baghdad after he gave a particularly fiery sermon On Wednesday a crowd gathered to demonstrate against his incarceration. He was released. The crowd leaders are now demanding an American apology and threaten to turn against the US presence in […]

Unemployed Riot in Baghdad A demonstration organized by the Union of Unemployed Workers in Baghdad, which is backed by the Iraqi Communist Party, turned violent on Wednesday. The demonstrators maintain that they were peaceful, and that the reconstituted Iraqi police fired on them for no good reason. The police wounded three. The demonstration then turned […]

Iraqi Exiles in Syria Fomenting Violence? A Kurdish commander associated with Masoud Barzani has charged that some high ranking Iraqi Baath officials had escaped over the border into Syria, and that they were directing attacks on US troops from there. (-al-Hayat) This story strikes me as a little unlikely. How exactly are they communicating with […]

References See http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ ny-woiraq0930,0,235932.story?coll=ny- worldnews-headlines http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?story_id =1018545&t=Nation+%2F+World&c=26,1018545

Interim Governing Council Allows Real Estate Deals The Iraqi Governing Council abrogated on Wednesday Baathist laws that had forbidden Iraqis from owning real estate, especially in Baghdad (-al-Sharq al-Awsat). Real estate ownership in the capital was only recognized, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat, if the deed to it was dated before the 1958 coup. The new […]

One US Troop Killed, another Wounded Guerrillas killed an American soldier near Falluja with an explosion on Tuesday. Guerrillas wounded another US soldier in a roadside bomb attack in West Baghdad (al-Zaman via CNN). An average of more than 8 US troops are being wounded each day in Iraq, but we do not hear about […]

Special Counsel Needed for Plame Case The FBI will investigate the outing of Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife as a CIA operative by high White House officials. This criminal act came as an attempt to punish him for making public his findings that Iraq was not buying Niger uranium. John Ashcroft said Tuesday that the investigators […]