Juan Cole

Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven I saw Kingdom of Heaven Sunday. The film has many virtues, with its attention to costume and scene. I could quibble. Medieval European swords of the 1100s could not be wielded in the way they were shown here; they were very heavy. And I doubt that whatever the catapults were […]

Mistaken Identity? Christina Lamb and Mohammad Shehzad in Islamabad suggest in the London Times that Abu al-Faraj al-Libi, arrested recently in Pakistan, is being confused with Anas al-Libi, a mastermind of the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa. Abu al-Faraj the Libyan, some observers suggest, is a third-tier al-Qaeda member largely known for involvement […]

2-Day Bombing total of 100 Dead, Hundreds Wounded Zarqawi Threatens to Hit American Homeland On Saturday, Guerrillas in Baghdad targeted a convoy of vehicles of the sort used by notables with a massive bomb that tossed armored SUVs about like toys, and left 29 dead and 54 wounded, as a small mushroom cloud billowed into […]

Will Iran get the Bomb? It seems pretty obvious that Iran will get the nuclear bomb and there is not much anyone can do about it. I’m not saying it is a good thing. I’m just saying that I can’t imagine what would stop it. One thing that might have stopped it was direct military […]

Salon Article on Iraq Strife My article on the bombing campaign and increased ethnic strife in Iraq is at Melting pot of blood, is at Salon.com

Secret British Memo Shows Bush Tampered with Iraq Intelligence A top secret British memorandum dated 23 July 2002 was leaked in the run-up to yesterday’s parliamentary elections in the UK (which Blair won, though his Labour Party was much weakened by public disgust with such shenanigans as the below). I mirror the memo below, from […]

30 Killed in Bombings in Iraq, Dozens Wounded Ash-Sharq al-Awsat estimates the number of dead in Iraq from bombings and attacks in Iraq on Thursday at 30. AFP, apparently filing a bit earlier, put the toll at 26. A string of bombings targeted police and military targets in Baghdad. In the 5 days from 30 […]

Irbil toll Rises to 60 dead, 100 Wounded The death toll in Wednesday morning’s Irbil bombing has risen to 60, with 150 wounded, according to the New York Times. The Ansar al-Sunna, an offshoot of the old Ansar al-Islam terrorist group, claimed responsibility. But I am suspicious that all the major incidents in Iraq are […]

Sunni-Shiite Rioting at Baghdad University Sunni, Kurdish Recriminations on Cabinet A riot broke out at Baghdad University on Tuesday and continued Wednesday, pitting furious Shiite students against Sunni Arab students and professors, over the killing of a Shiite student. Al-Zaman reports that the Kurdistan Alliance in the Iraqi parliament is furious that a phrase was […]