Juan Cole

Is it George’s Fault? Laura Bush Heckled at Wailing Wall over Pollard Affair And at Temple Mount by Palestinians I was alarmed at the tenor of the reporting about First Lady Laura Bush’s close brush with both Israeli and Palestinian protesters, at the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock respectively. Suzanne Malveaux, who […]

Muqtada Tries to Mediate Between Sunnis and Badr Three Sunni Arab organizations arranged a meeting of 1,000 Sunni notables on Saturday, in an attempt to form an umbrella group with greater political clout. The LA Time reports that, ‘ Meanwhile, a tribal leader from Madaen told the gathering that if security conditions didn’t improve in […]

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 […]