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Barnett Rubin relays a message from a well-connected friend in Washington on the Cheney Administration’s plans to roll out a military confrontation with Iran in September. He writes at the Global Affairs blog: ” My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way: […]

First Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was read to step into the vacuum when the US was forced out of Iraq. He oddly said that Iran’s friends, including Saudi Arabia, would help in this task. The hyper-Sunni Saudi government is actually not very friendly with Shiite Iran at all. Then Bush rattled sabers […]

The great shame of it all is that Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as Attorney General despite it being widely known that he had played a central role in attempting to authorize the use of torture on prisoners in US custody. He had tossed aside the US Constitution’s own prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” (such […]

At the Global Affairs group blog, Farideh Farhi tells us how Tehran is reacting to the Bush adminstration’s threat to declare sections of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a ‘terrorist organization. She argues that through such threats, Bush is merely strengthening the Iranian Right.

John S. Williams writes: “One of the most curious comments in Incurious Boy George’s recent speech before the Veterans of Foreign War in Kansas City was his totally uninformed reference to Graham Greene’s novel about American involvement in Vietnam, The Quiet American. Perhaps the best article on the matter I’ve read thus far is one […]

At the Global Affairs group blog, Barnett Rubin gives us the second in a series of three posts on the effort to confront narcotics production and trafficking coming out of Afghanistan. It is an issue intimately tied up, potentially, with counter-terrorism efforts, but is often neglected by analysts. Rubin is among our foremost Afghanistan experts.

Catch my interview at Air America with Sam Seder on Sunday, August 26 at 6 pm, regarding my new book, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East.

This talk will be broadcast on C-Span at some later date, but will be available later on Friday at the web site of the New America Foundation. New America Foundation Juan Cole: Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East Friday, August 24, 200712:15 p.m. – 1:45 p.m. New America Foundation1630 Connecticut Ave, NW, […]

The USG Open Source Center rounds up Iraqi media reaction to the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to Damascus. Iraq-Syria: Media, Officials Call Al-Maliki Visit ‘Success’ Despite Differences Iraq, Syria — OSC Report Friday, August 24, 2007 Document Type: OSC Report Word Count: 749 Iraq-Syria: Media, Officials Call Al-Maliki’s Visit ‘Successful’ Despite Differences […]