Juan Cole

Two Car Bombings of US Troops Iraqi Politics Still Unsettled Wire service report that ‘ Insurgents attacked US troops with two suicide car bombs in the western Iraqi town of Haditha on Friday, local witnesses said. They said a suicide bomber detonated a car next to a US patrol after American troops entered the town […]

Wolfowitz’s Plot to Destroy OPEC And Why it was always Ridiculous Joe Conason presents some excellent reasons why Paul Wolfowitz should not head the World Bank. But there may be others. The BBC Newsnight reports the titanic struggle between the Neoconservatives and Big Oil over Iraqi petroleum. If this story is true, it is some […]

Poll Shows Bush Popularity on Iraq Plummeting A new ABC/Washington Post poll shows the number of Americans who approve of Bush’s handling of Iraq way down. Gary Langer tells us: * ‘ [Bush’s] approval specifically on Iraq was 75 percent as the main fighting ended [in 2003]; it’s 39 percent now, a career low. ‘ […]

Iraqi Parliament Meets to Sound of Bombs Al-Zaman: Guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a US facility in southern Baghdad on Tuesday, but only managed to kill an Iraqi and to wound 12 others. Another bomb exploded at the offices of the Mirror, the only English-language newspaper in Baghdad. Police colonel Yusuf Chalabi was assassinated […]

Democracy by George? My essay, “Democracy — by George? President Bush and his supporters are taking credit for spreading freedom across the Middle East. Here’s why they’re wrong” – is out today at Salon.com’s opinion section. My op-ed, “US Caught in the Cross-Fire,” which takes stock of what is likely to happen in Iraq during […]

Women bloggers (and other quiet people) Jeanne at Body and Soul has some thoughtful and right-on observations on the Levy/ Jarvis debate I discussed below, on whether the white male dominance of the more popular parts of the blogosphere is a good thing.

The Blogging Phenomenon Steven Levy at Newsweek asks why blogging is dominated by white males, and what the implications of this configuration are if blogging replaces traditional media. He quotes presenters at a recent Harvard conference who worried that the newsrooms of the major print media have only recently begun to be diversified with regard […]

Parliament Meets with No Government Guerrillas detonated at least five car bombs in Iraq on Tuesday. They detonated another at Baqubah early on Wednesday, killing 3 Iraqi soldiers and wounding several others. The Iraqi parliament meets for the first time Wednesday, but it is mainly a ceremonial event. The natural function of such a meeting, […]

Citizenship Requested for Sistani Kurdish-Shiite-Sunni Negotiations Al-Zaman The provincial council of Najaf, now dominated by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, requested that the first act of the Iraqi parliament once it is seated on March 16 be to grant Iraqi citizenship to Grand Ayatollah Alis Sistani. Sistani’s family immigrated to Iraq from […]