Juan Cole

*For anyone who hasn’t been near news this morning, the US military has taken several key sites in downtown Baghdad in a dramatic show of force. Taking and pacifying a city of 5 million will take some time, but apparently the Iraqi military has collapsed to the point where the US can just walk into […]

*Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are giving Jordan three months of its oil supplies free to make up for the interruption of its petroleum imports from Iraq. Jordan is being economically hurt by the Iraq war, and its people are boiling over with rage about it. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have just made an extremely important […]

*With news of the advance of the US Third Army to the edges of Baghdad and the fall of the airport, it is easy to forget how much of Iraq the Anglo-British forces do not control. The British have just crossed the Shatt al-Basra waterway and have established a beachhead in southern Basra proper for […]

Well, the latest reports still are saying that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf issued a fatwa or legal ruling today that urges Shiites not to interfere with the US troops as they take control of Iraq. The confusion was caused by al-Jazeera, which carried a denial. It is not impossible that the confusion is […]

*The Shiite expatriate group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq in Tehran, has condemned the Baath regime of Iraq for putting its soldiers into the mosque complex at the shrine of Imam `Ali in Najaf. This was a ploy to trick the US into shelling the shrine, in a bid to turn the […]

*US troops have entered the southern reaches of the Shiite holy city of Najaf and are receiving a relatively warm reception from the 560,000 largely Shiite locals. They have been engaged in a fierce battle with Republican Guards for the city, which is on a key strategic route linking the south of Iraq with Baghdad. […]

*The killing of some 7 Iraqi civilians by US troops because their vehicle refused to stop at a checkpoint demonstrates the kind of public relations difficulties the US is being drawn into during the Iraq War. The suicide bomber who earlier took advantage of the troops at that checkpoint did more than kill four of […]

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*The British are announcing that they have taken an important suburb of Basra, al-Qassib, after a fierce firefight with Iraqi military forces. This is said to have been the biggest battle of the war so far for the British troops. They have been infiltrating commandoes into the city for days to establish forward posts from […]