Juan Cole

US Abusing its Mandate in Iraq: UN Rights Official Extraodinary Rendition and the Attack on the US Constitution Reuters’s Paul Tait reports from Baghdad that John Pace, human rights chief for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), charges the US military with overstepping its mandate from the international body by detaining thousands of […]

Allawi Attacked by Mob in Najaf; In Baghdad, 2 GIs Killed Former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi and his entourage were attacked by mobs on Sunday. Najaf governor Asad Abu Kalal complained that Allawi had not cleared his visit with the provincial authorities, but had suddenly shown up with a bodyguard of Western security guards. […]

Sistani Endorses Religious Candidates 19 Iraqi Soldiers Killed Guerrillas near the town of Adhaim, northeast of Baghdad, mounted a coordinated ambush of Iraqi troops on Saturday, killing 19 and wounding 4. The Bush administration ties US troop withdrawals from Iraq to the ability of the new Iraqi army to deal with the guerrillas itself. More […]

How Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq My article, “How Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq, is now up at TruthDig.com. It begins, “The Bush administration naively believed that Iraq was a blank slate on which it could inscribe its vision for a remake of the Arab world. Iraq, however, was a witches’ brew of […]

18 GIs killed in 72 Hours Anti-Prison Demonstrations in Baghdad From Wednesday to Friday, guerrillas in Iraq killed 18 US troops. The most tragic single incident came on Friday, when guerrillas used old Baath rocket parts to make an enormous bomb that killed 10 Marines near Fallujah and wounded 11. CNN points out that Marine […]

Guerrillas Gather at Ramadi US Riposte Iraq has banned non-Iraqi Arabs from coming to Iraq in the build-up to the December 15 elections. I think they would have been better off banning all civilians of any nationality from coming in; this way of doing it smacks of racism. Aljazeera is reporting, based on video released […]

Questions about Readiness of Iraqi Army New US Assault The strategy of the Bush administration in Iraq depends heavily on standing up battle-ready units of the new Iraqi army. The USA Today quotes experts on how unrealistic that plan is in the short to medium term. I have heard from contacts in Iraq that the […]

Guest Editorial: Achcar & Shalom, on US Withdrawal “Strategic Redeployment” vs. “Out Now” Gilbert Achcar and Stephen R. Shalom Whatever the limitations of Rep. Murtha’s call to redeploy U.S. troops from Iraq that we have already emphasized (“On John Murtha’s Position,” ZNet, Nov. 21), he went much too far for most Democrats or for the […]

Poll Shows Mixed Results for Bush Highlights of the CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll on Bush and Iraq. It is a very small poll with a whopping plus or minus %5 percent margin of error, but presumably the errors should all run the same way, so it does tell us something. Does Bush have a plan that […]