Juan Cole

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 […]

Cole in Salon and Truthdig In Salon.com today, I ask “Did Bush plan to Bomb al-Jazeera?” And present new evidence that Rumsfeld considered the Arabic satellite station’s reporting to be a form of murder. My article on Rumsfeld’s complicity with Saddam Hussein when he was using chemical weapons is at Truthdig.com, a new site, the […]

Wilkerson: Cheney May be a War Criminal Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff of Colin Powell, told the BBC that Vice President Dick Cheney may be guilty of war crimes for arguing that all restrictions on torturing prisoners should be done away with. The Wilkerson transcript is here. Money grafs: >BBC: But you’re talking about […]

Shiite Militiamen Terrorize Sunni Arabs Khalilzad Agrees to Talk to Sunni Guerrillas Now terrorists are killing Christian (Chaldo-Assyrian) politicians. The New York Times seems to have become convinced of the credibility of Sunni Arab charges that Shiite religious militiamen have infiltrated the new Iraqi army and security forces, and are conducting a campaign of murder […]

Khalilzad to talk to Iranians Monday in Iraq was characterized by the usual mayhem, much of it with a dark sectarian character. Two prominent members of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party and a third politician from the Association of Muslim Scholars (hard line Sunni) were assassinated in Baghdad. South of the capital, two Britons of […]