Juan Cole

Here is what Pope Benedict really thinks of Bush and his Iraq War: Is the war that has been announced against Iraq a just war? “All I can do is invite you to read the Catechism,” [the present Pope when he was still] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger replied with a mischievous grin, “and the conclusion seems […]

Aljazeera English reports on the increased Sunni-Shiite divide in Baghdad. The video of blast walls and closed bridges is worth the price of admission. My only puzzlement is why they did not say more about the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis from Iraq, such that the city is now overwhelmingly Shiite. Also, for those of […]

The USG Open Source Center translates a speech by Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, the putative leader of the radical Islamic State of Iraq, which has committed many bombings in the center-north of the country. FYI — ISI Leader Al-Baghdadi Announces Agreement with Sunni Tribal LeadersJihadist Websites — OSC SummaryTuesday, April 15, 2008 . . . On […]

The massive violence in Iraq on Tuesday underlines that in the north, the US is mainly fighting Sunni Iraqis, some of them neo-Baathists. It is a misnomer to call the resistance “al-Qaeda,” since most of them are not foreign fighters but Iraqis, and none of them has Usamah Bin Laden’s telephone number. The recent propaganda […]

AFP reports: ‘ A surge of violence killed 28 people in the past 24 hours in Iraq, among them 12 members of the Kurdish peshmerga forces who died in a bomb blast near the Syrian border, officials said on Monday. The country’s north bore the brunt of the violence, with the attack on the [Kurdish] […]

Fantasizing Democratic Freedoms in Iraq Madhavi Bhasin Associated Press (AP) photographer Bilal Hussein has been held for two year on being suspected of helping Iraqi insurgents, but without being formally charged by the US military. On April 9, 2008 the Iraqi judges dismissed the accusations against him and ordered his release under the Amnesty Law. […]

The intrepid Hannah Allam of the McClatchy news service has more on the visit of Ahmad Chalabi to Sadr City to present his condolences to the slain Sadrist aide Nuri al-Riyadh, killed in Najaf last weekend . Highlights: ‘ Believe what you will about Chalabi being a has-been (or worse); precious few other Iraqi politicians […]

The Iraqi government has discharged 1300 officers, troops and policemen who declined to fight the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in late March. Most of them had been in Basra and Kut. Although the Iraqi and US governments are trying to spin the dismissals as having to do with laziness or cowardice, it seems obvious […]

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney initially rejected the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report, which advised that Iraq could not be solved militarily and that regional diplomacy and engagement would be necessary. Bush chose instead to pursue an escalation of the war, which he euphemistically called a ‘surge.’ This tactic backfired when Bush inadvertently allowed […]