Juan Cole

Mahdi Army Lowers Profile Sunni Guerrillas now Mainly fight Shiites McClatchy reports that Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad have adopted a low profile as they await the arrival of extra US troops, storing their weapons and taking down their checkpoints. The weapons, says one informant, are still nearby. Ghaith Abdul Ahad of the Guardian sheds […]

If the Shoe were on the other Foot Europeans who use a credit card to buy an airplane ticket to the United States open themselves to further scrutiny by US authorities. Even special food preferences indicated to the airline would be communicated to US law enforcement (i.e. if you order a kosher, vegetarian or halal […]

Attempts at Marginalizing Carter Intensify Fourteen members of the Carter Center have resigned in protest over former president Jimmy Carter’s book,”Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” AP hints that they were mostly themselves Jewish Americans. The Jerusalem Post says all were. This is only 7% of his board, which has 200 members. The lobby is drawing wagons […]

Maliki Said to Have Pledged Mahdi Crackdown Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that its sources in the Iraqi government are saying that there are some secret paragraphs to the agreement between the Bush administration and the al-Maliki government in Iraq to act against militia leaders. The article suggests that the model of the US raid on […]

Cole in Salon: Did the US just Provoke Iran? My article, “Did the US Just Provoke Iran,” about the Irbil attack and other US-Iranian tensions over Iraq, is just out in Salon.com.

Terror Attack on US Embassy in Athens Terrorists fired a rocket from across the street into the US embassy in Athens on Friday morning. The rocket exploded in the bathroom on the third floor but did not cause casualties. Greek leftist groups have targeted the US embassy and its personnel in the past, and passions […]

US Forces Storm Iranian Consulate in Irbil The US military stormed the Iranian consulate in the northern Iraq Kurdistan city of Irbil on Thursday. Irbil is the fief of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. The Kurdistan Regional Government, which he leads, is semi-autonomous and maintains a regional army, the Peshmerga, of 60,000 men. Kurdistan authorities say […]

Bush Sends GIs to his Private Fantasyland To listen to Bush’s speech on Wednesday, you would imagine that al-Qaeda has occupied large swathes of Iraq with the help of Syria and Iran and is brandishing missiles at the US mainland. That the president of the United States can come out after nearly four years of […]

Groundhog Day in Purple Heart Boulevard 50 Dead in Clashes, 46 Bodies Found US and Iraqi forces fought a significant street battle at Haifa Street in the Karkh section of Baghdad on Tuesday. Ground forces were supported by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships. The fighting left 50 persons dead, which the US said were […]