Juan Cole

3 bombings in the largely Shiite neighborhood of Kasrah in mostly Sunni Adhamiya on Monday, killing 31 and wounding 71. There are lots of reasons for such an attack, but it is in part aimed at scaring Shiites living in Adhamiya into leaving; i.e. it was aimed in part at further ethnic cleansing of the […]

I’m shocked, shocked that allegations are emerging at the International Atomic Energy Agency that US-supplied “documents” from a laptop acquired in 2004 indicating a secret Iranian weapons program were probably forgeries. The IAEA clearly hopes that the Obama administration will end the previous administration’s attempts to undermine it and will stop the Washington habit of […]

Guerrilla attacks killed 10 persons and wounded dozens on Sunday. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the al-Maliki government will in coming months show the draft security agreement it has negotiated with the Bush administration to the main blocs in parliament to gauge whether they will accept the amendments it has wrung from Washington. A source […]

Prospective Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has taken a lot of heat in the Middle East and in the left blogosphere because there are fears that he will push for the positions of the Israeli right wing. His father lives in Israel and was a member of the Irgun. Rahm Emanuel gave […]

Democrats.com has taken up my call from last week for the television networks to avoid inviting commentary from politicians who are criminals of various sorts. (I hear the snickers; yes, there would be someone left.) The networks put on a Tom Delay because he is controversial and makes good copy, but it is a disservice […]

The US military has admitted to having killed 37 civilians during an air raid on militants at Shah Wali Kot in Afghanistan last week. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called on Barack Obama to reverse George W. Bush’s decision to depend heavily on air strikes in pursuing the struggle against the neo-Taliban.

Implementing solar power in the greater Mediterranean, with the Sahara generating Germany’s energy, may contribute to Middle East peace.

Some 6,000 Muslim clerics from around India have endorsed a formal legal ruling or fatwa condemning terrorism. There have been many such endorsements, as I pointed out in 2005 in response to Tom Friedman. Of India’s population of roughly 1.1 billion, about 147 million (13.4%) are Muslims, giving India the fourth-largest Muslim population in the […]

Unnamed Secret Service field officers have revealed to the press that Sarah Palin’s attacks on President-Elect Obama provoked numerous white supremecist assassination plots against him: ‘The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of “palling around with terrorists”, citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near […]