Juan Cole

33 Dead in Civil War 7 US Troops Killed over Weekend Basra in Chaos as Tribes Feud On Monday, scattered bombings and shootings left at least 33 persons dead by my count. Dozens more died over the weekend in fighting between guerrillas and US troops. Al-Zaman says that security has collapsed in Basra, with fighting […]

Monday Afternoon Scandals David Swanson says that angry veterans surrounded and berated Richard Perle, a major architect of the Iraq War, when he showed up at one of their events for a PBS photo op. Raw Story says that the Bush administration is tracing the telephone calls of ABC and other reporters in an attempt […]

Guerrilla Violence Kills 48Al-Maliki May announce Government without Interior, Defence On Monday morning, guerrillas in the south launched a mortar barrage of 40 shells against the British Abu Naji base near Amara, wounding 4 British soldiers. Two had been killed by a roadside bomb on Saturday. This sort of operation strikes me as likely to […]

Iranian Paramilitaries Pledge to Defend Iran Since the US military has most trouble with asymmetrical forces and paramilitaries, it is worthwhile noting that Iran’s paramilitary forces, the Basij and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, are threatening a Long War of attrition against any foreigners who try to come into the oil-rich Khuzistan province. An American […]

Lying and Ordering others to Lie Bush not only continued to lie about mobile biological weapons labs in Iraq even after weapons inspectors discovered that the story was false. Now it comes out that he also ordered the information itself to be suppressed: ‘ A year after Bush administration claims about Iraqi ”bioweapons trailers” were […]

Mearsheimer and Walt Again Mearsheimer and Walt on the “Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy” stay in the news. The Forward’s Ori Nir did an excellent piece on anxieties in the American Jewish community about Bush’s attempts to tie his aggressive comments on Iran to the protection of Israel. This is also interesting: ‘ more […]

Basra Police Chief Dismissed 8 Bodies found in Najaf The political violence in Iraq continues apace. 11 bodies were found dead in Najaf. One of them was an Iranian. This according to al-Hayat. A roadside bomb killed an American soldier Saturday morning. Basra Governor Muhammad al-Wa’ili suspended his police chief, Major-General Hassan Swadi, for being […]

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4 Marines Die Fadila Withdraws from Government Friday’s guerrilla violence was relatively muted, though there were bombings and killings. The most serious incident was a firefight in Dhulu’iyyah between Shiite and Kurdish units in the Iraqi Army, which left 4 Iraqi soldiers and 7 civilians dead. Four Marines died when their tank rolled off a […]