Juan Cole

Party Over? On Cindy Sheehan Bob Harris has a must-read meditation on what things are important to George W. Bush and what aren’t, in light of the treatment of bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan, who wants to know from Bush why her son was killed in Sadr City in April, 2004. I found her account of […]

Courage of Peter Jennings As we comemorate the late Peter Jennings, one of the country’s great broadcast journalists, it is worth remembering, as Lila Rajiva does, that he was perhaps the first major news figure to break with the cheerleading consensus on the Iraq War. He was blasted by the US Right for doing so. […]

Joke of the Day CONSTITUTION “They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it’s worked for over 200 years and we’re not using it anymore.”

Constitution Still Deadlocked 35 Dead in Guerrilla Violence AP’s Bassem Mroue reports that the two-hour convocation of Iraqi political leaders at President Jalal Talabani’s home in Baghdad on Sunday produced no breakthroughs. Sunni Arabs are still rejecting the concept of federalism, preferring a French-style centralized state. Kurds absolutely insist on federalism, and Kurdish leader Massoud […]

2 US Troops Killed Kirkuk Tense A roadside bomb in Samarra, about an hour’s drive north of Baghdad, killed two US soldiers and wounded three others late on Saturday evening. It was announced on Saturday that the previous Thursday, guerrillas killed Private First Class Nils Thompson of the US military in MOSUL. UPI reports that […]

Khatami on the challenges in the Middle East Outgoing Iranian president Mohammad Khatami Reflected on the challenges facing the Middle East in an interview with al-Hayat, translated/ paraphrased by Shahram Kholdi. Khatami sees Middle East publics as caught between three major forces: 1) Authoritarian governments. 2) Neocolonial puppet regimes. 3) Reactionary radical movements. You could […]

Summit on Constitution Postponed Sistani accepts Federalism in Principle Only 38 percent of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing in Iraq, a steep fall. The president in particular lost the trust on this issue of the suburban young soccer moms and of men with a high school education or less. Less than half […]

US Dependent on Saudi Arabia The Bush administration and its Neocons have shot themselves in the foot big time if they thought they could use Iraq to reduce US dependence on Saudi Arabia. If you want to understand the problem, look at it this way. The world produces about 80 million barrels of petroleum every […]

Marine Toll Rises to 18 Jaafari Says Iraq at War Guerrillas killed 4 more Marines later on Wednesday, one in Ramadi and 3 in Baghdad. This means the one-day total for August 3 was 18, not 14, because of the massive bomb that killed 14 early Wednesday at Haditha. Although a US military spokesman said […]