Juan Cole

Talk of Foreign Troop Withdrawals as Bombs strike Kirkuk, Tal Afar Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said on Tuesday that some Iraqi cities were secure enough so that US and Coalition troops could withdraw from them soon. He defended, however, a US military presence in the short term, and opposed a precise timetable for US withdrawal. […]

Daily Kos Must Diaries Daily Kos’s Mike Pridmore has started an informed and enlightening discussion of Kramer’s attack on Middle East Studies professors in the US. See also Susan Hu’s diary on the indications that some military bases may be blocking Informed Comment and presumably other similar sources of information on Iraq. I have a […]

Rove Unfit for Public Office Whether the courts can and will punish Karl Rove for telling Time Magazine’s Matthew Cooper that Joe Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative should be beside the point. That’s for the courts to decide. The real question is whether we want a person to occupy a high office in the […]

35 Killed in Clashes, Guerrilla Attacks on Monday Al-Zaman reports that 2 members of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite political party, were killed in Latifiyah. The circumstances were not reported, but that area of Iraq has seen repeated Sunni-Shiite violence. Reuters reports security incidents in Iraq for Monday: In […]

London, Terrorism and Iraq A Majority of Americans says Iraq War has made them Less Safe The UK will have two minutes of silence on Thursday in honor of the victims of the the July 7 bombings. We should have it in the United States, as well. If we cannot synchonize with the British timing […]

Jerusalem and Terrorism The Ariel Sharon government in Israel has announced that it will build a huge wall on someone else’s land through Jerusalem, cutting off 55,000 Arabs from the city (they’ll have to go through nasty Israeli checkpoints every day to get into their own city!) This is land theft on a massive scale. […]

Guerrilla Violence Kills 48 Jaafari Criticizes US Rules of Engagement Guerrillas launched a new wave of bomb attacks in Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 48 persons and wounding dozens more. AP reports: In Baghdad, a suicide bomber targeted a recruiting center for the new Iraqi military. He killed 25 and wounded nearly 50 persons, […]

Update on London Bombings Larry Johnson writes knowledgeably on the possible types of explosives used in the July 7 London bombing at Pat Lang’s very interesting Weblog. The leader of the Muhajirun group predicted last year that London would be hit by extremists. Fareed Zakaria nails it. The piece is well worth reading for his […]

22 Killed in Iraq Guerrilla Violence US, UK, to Massively Draw Down Troops during Next Year Reuters has picked up on a report that first appeared in The Guardian on July 6, that the British are planning to draw down from 8,000 to 9,000 troops in Iraq now to 2,000 to 3,000 by spring-summer of […]