Juan Cole

Clashes in Mosul, Samarra The massive bomb in Baghdad that killed 30 persons and wounded 25 the night of Tuesday- Wednesday turns out to have been an ambush. Guerrillas contacted the Iraqi police, told them the house was a safe house, and when the police approached, they blew it up. They also flattened ten houses […]

Bush and the Tsunami The transcript of President George W. Bush’s remarks on the Tsunami is now available. After days of silence and invisibility, Bush finally came out on Wednesday to address perhaps the greatest natural disaster of our times. He said he had called four heads of state to express his condolences and was […]

Tsunami Toll Nearly 70,000 and Rising Where’s Bush? The known death toll from the tsunami keeps rising so rapidly that a daily weblog cannot hope to keep up with it. Early Wednesday am Reuters was giving 68,000. The largest number of dead were in Indonesia, then Sri Lanka, then India and then Thailand. The horrific […]

Dozens Killed in Iraq Early Wednesday morning, a huge explosion rocked West Baghdad, flattening several houses and killing 28, including 7 policemen. Iraqi police were raiding the building, a suspected safe house for guerrilla forces, when it went up in flames (presumably because munitions stored there caught fire). Dawn estimates the number of dead in […]

Bin Laden votes in Iraq and Shoots himself in the Foot Usamah Bin Laden’s latest video was broadcast on al-Jazeera on Monday, in which he commanded Muslims to boycott the January 30 elections in Iraq, and expressed his approval of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi had been a rival of Bin Laden’s in Afghanistan […]

Iraqi Islamic Party Withdraws Dispute over Theocracy among Iraqi Shiites The near assassination on Monday of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a leading Shiite cleric and politician, raised new fears of sectarian strife in Iraq. Al-Hakim himself, however, urged Shiites to concentrate on winning the January 30 elections and to avoid doing anything that would derail them. […]

Arato Guest Editorial: The Iraqi Constitution The Iraqi Constitution: A Modest Proposal Andrew Arato Iraq is on the verge of a disaster that is ultimately of our making. The United States has imposed a political process on Iraq characterized by the exclusion of the main representatives of militant, and organized actors fully capable of acting […]

Tsunami a Foretaste of Global Warming The horror of waves caroming across the Indian ocean at 500 miles an hour (the speed of a commercial jet liner!) and then crashing into beaches and shorelines at a height of as much as 30 feet, for all the world like liquid Godzilla, crushing sunbathers and carrying hapless […]

Suicide Bomber Kills 9, Wounds 39 Outside Home of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim A carbomber detonated his payload Monday morning outside the home in Baghdad of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, killing at least 9 persons and wounding 39. Al-Hakim’s mansion, taken over from former senior Baath official Tariq Aziz, is in the Jadiriyah quarter, and serves as […]