Juan Cole

The NYT reports that a suicide bomber killed 33 persons and wounded over 60 at Abu Ghraib, striking at a meeting of tribal sheikhs accompanied by military officers. Seven of the dead were officers, including the commanding officer of the newly opened Abu Ghraib prison, according to al-Hayat writing in Arabic. Also killed was a […]

Al-Iraqiyah, Al-Sharqiyah Roundup: Thirty Killed in Baghdad Suicide BombingIraq — OSC SummarySunday, March 8, 2009 Document Type: OSC Summary . . . Baghdad Al-Iraqiyah Television in Arabic, government-sponsored television station, run by the Iraqi Media Network, carried the following reports between 1500 GMT and 1700 GMT . . . — “Iraqi Government Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh […]

Below is a note former MEPC president, Chas Freeman, sent to friends and supporters. Begin Text: To all who supported me or gave me words of encouragement during the controversy of the past two weeks, you have my gratitude and respect. You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis […]

The Pakistani Taliban are not going to take over the Pakistani government. That worry doesn’t keep me up at night. They are small, and operate in a rugged, remote area of the country. They can set off bombs and be a destabilizing force. But a few thousand tribesmen can’t take over a country of 165 […]

George W. Bush set stem cell research back 8 years and violated the principle of the separation of church and state by issuing what was essentially executive-branch legislation that imposed on a whole country Bush’s religious views. Bush’s move had no principle of popular sovereignty behind it. And likely he didn’t even really believe the […]

The Obama administration will not replace two US brigades (12,000 troops) that are departing Iraq. There are 140,000 US troops in that country, down from 160,000 in 2008 during the Bush troop escalation or “surge.” The two brigades will likely be brought out of al-Anbar Province and Baghdad. Al-Anbar, once one of the most violent […]

In an interview in the New York Times, President Barack Obama admitted that the US is not winning in Afghanistan. He also allowed that it might be possible for the US to peel off and negotiate with more moderate elements of the Taliban, though he admitted that Afghanistan is more complex than Iraq and that […]

Harvard political scientist Stephen Walt, who blogs for Foreign Policy takes on the critics of Chas Freeman’s possible appointment as chair of the National Intelligence Council, and critics of Walt for defending him. Freeman is a man of enormous diplomatic experience, both a China expert and a Middle East hand, and is the former US […]

In the Obama administration’s first formal overture to Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that Iran might be invited to an international conference on Afghanistan scheduled for March 31. In 2001, Iran proved helpful to the US war on the Taliban, but Neoconservatives David Frum and Richard Perle deliberately stopped the movement toward […]