Juan Cole

US Public Confidence on Iraq Plummeting A new Harris Interactive poll shows that US public confidence in the Iraq venture is falling rapidly. Question: How confident are you that U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful? May 2005 Confident: 25%Not confident: 54%Not sure: 20% Mar. 2005 Confident: 30%Not confident: 49%Not sure: 21% Thinking about everything […]

Saturday Satire Not to be outdone.

Sadrists Clash with Police in Nasiriyah Baghdad Sunni Mosque Protest Ramadi Demonstrations against Koran Desecration Thousands of protesters rallied in Iraq (some reports say 6,000) on Friday denouncing the continued US military presence in the country. Many of the demonstrators in the south were followers of nationalist Shiite young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and they […]

Why Jacoby is Wrong Jeff Jacoby argues that there is something peculiar about the reaction of Muslims to the allegations that the Koran was disrespected at Guantanamo prison by US military interrogators. Jacoby’s position is pure bigotry. We have to be clear about this. Anti-muslimism is a form of racial prejudice no different from any […]

23 Die In Iraq Violence Shiite Cleric Assassinated Guerrilla attacks killed 23 persons in Iraq on Thursday, including one US serviceman. One bomb blew up near a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, and an important Shiite cleric was killed. Al-Sabah says that when Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi met with Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf on […]

Best of the Web Scientists in South Korea, unhampered by the tradition of anti-intellectualism that still bedevils the United States, have made a major breakthrough in stem cell research. They took eggs from volunteers, snipped out the nuclei, and inserted nuclei from the skin of eleven patients sick with various disorders. They then jump-started cell […]

Oil Official Killed Jarba’s Home Attacked, 8 Dead Ahmad Seif of Reuters reports that An Oil Ministry official, “Ali Hameed, was shot outside his home as he left for work, police said.” He adds that guerrillas in Mosul attacked the home of Fawwaz al-Jarba, killing 8 persons before US troops backed by helicopters came to […]

The Lies that Led to War My article is online at Salon.com about the Downing Street memo “The lies that led to war”: A leaked British memo, and other documents, make it clear that Bush intended all along to invade Iraq — and lied about it to the American people. The full gravity of his […]

Dhari, Amiri trade Charges Sunni-Shiite relations in Iraq at Nadir Al-Zaman/AFP/Reuters: “The Association of Muslim Scholars called upon Minister of the Interior Bayan Jabr and Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi to resign. AMS leader Hareth al-Dhari essentially laid the responsibility for the kidnapping and killing of Sunni clerics at the feet of Mr. Jabr, a member […]