Juan Cole

Iraq and al-Qaida (Again) The attempts to tie Baathist Iraq to al-Qaida continue among the hawks in Washington, and they continue to be without logical or evidentiary foundation. Al-Qaida wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It hates him. Bin Ladin was angry at the Saudi government in 1990 for not doing in Kuwait what was done […]

Whatever Happened to the Iraqi Airforce (Iran-Iraq relations) Someone asked of the 1990 pilot defections: >1) Were these defections spontaneously carried out by Iraqi pilots, >or were they part of an some kind of official Iraqi policy (perhaps t>o maintain a force-in-being in a neutral country)? Since Iraq had just fought a long and bloody […]

Iraqi Terrorism and War with Iraq? There is a double standard in Western approaches to Middle Eastern movements. On the whole and by and large, few sane observers suspected the United States government of supporting Communist movements for Machiavellian purposes during the Cold War. I am not speaking of WW II, when the US saw […]

The Guardian Blows the Whistle on the Ersatz Middle East Experts http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,777100,00.html: US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy Brian Whitaker reports on the network of research institutes whose views and TV appearances are supplanting all other experts on Middle Eastern issues See also: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest The Nation, September 2 The Men From JINSA and CSP […]

No Iraq link to al-Qaida Thanks to M.S. for his further comments. There is also, however, no credible evidence of *indirect* Iraqi, Baathist support for al-Qaida. The US has an enormous number of documents bearing on funding for al-Qaida, gathered from Afghanistan and elsewhere, and no money comes from Iraq. No training of al-Qaida fighters […]

Iran has turned over 16 al-Qaida terrorists to Saudi Arabia, according to Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. These were Saudi nationals who had escaped from Afghanistan to Iran. This report challenges earlier charges by Pentagon officials that Iran was deliberately giving safe haven to and harboring al-Qaida remnants. This allegation never made much […]

al-Qaida acted alone For anyone interested in the documents on Usama Bin Laden, a very useful web site is: http://www.robert-fisk.com/understanding_enemy.htm The September 11 operation was neither complex nor expensive, and well within al-Qaida resources. Almost all the money has been traced by the FBI, which came via either al-Hasawi in the UAE or other cell […]

US Isolation on Iraq There were several international and national developments with regard to the coming US attack on Iraq on Wednesday. On Wednesday, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder warned in Bild that “any military attack on Iraq could destroy the international coalition against terrorism.” He said, “This fight (against terrorism) is not yet won and […]

Realism vs. Humanitarianism in Afghanistan and Iraq One element of this debate, it seems to me is not in actual doubt. That is the very early and correct Bush administration identification of al-Qaida as the source of the attack. Moreover, this assessment was based on intelligence to which any president would have had access. The […]