Juan Cole

Massing on Iraq Press Coverage The way in which so much of the US press neglected to exercise their faculties of critical reasoning in the face of Bush administration claims about Iraq has generated remarkably little writing or self-reflection. It is in fact quite striking that talking heads and journalists who were completely wrong about […]

Turkish Role Neighboring Turks take a dim view of the “Iraqi resistance” in the Sunni Arab heartland of Iraq, given that it has slaughtered 64 Turkish truck drivers. The Turkish Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, is clearly petrified with fear that US tensions with Iran will spin out of control. The region, he says, cannot bear […]

Vote Set for January 30 The interim government of Iyad Allawi set the elections for Jan. 30, on Sunday. Even as the announcement was made, major violence broke out in Ramadi and Latifiyah, strong Sunni Arab areas, leaving some 22 persons dead on Sunday. The next stage is the meeting of the neighboring states plus […]

Large Protests Against Fallujah Campaign, Mosque Killing US Hated From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli In Baghdad itself, AP’s Hamza Hendawi writes, tensions rose to a fever pitch over the US assault on Fallujah, the marine mosque shooting filmed by Kevin Sites (on which he has now commented), and the Friday […]

Fallujah Operation Does not Bring Peace Wire services report dozens of violent deaths in Iraq on Saturday. Guerrillas attacked a police station in Baghdad, killing one American serviceman and wounded 9. Guerrilla attacks elsehwere took some 50 lives altogether.

Engagement of the Rules Rod Nordland and Babak Dehghanpisheh of Newsweek believe that the US military simply cannot win hearts and minds in Iraq. That’s a pretty safe conclusion by now. Quite the opposite, it seems clear that more and more Iraqis simply hate the Americans, and especially American troops. I personally agree that there […]

Iraqi National Guards, US, Raid Mosque of Abu Hanifa, Kill 2 Iraqi security forces backed up by US troops raided the famed mosque of Abu Hanifa on Friday and arrested its prayer leader, Shaikh Muayyad Adhami. They set off stun grenades and appear to have killed two of the worshippers. Abu Hanifa founded the Hanafi […]

Will Osamah Bin Laden Benefit from Arafat’s Death? My opinion piece on the implications of Arafat’s passing for al-Qaeda has appeared at Newsday. Excerpt: “Arafat’s secular nationalism was supple enough to compromise with Israel and to imagine a two-state solution, even if the road of negotiations remained rocky. The continued Israeli colonization of the occupied […]

Reagan, First Bush Administrations Cynically winked at Saddam’s use of Chemical Weapons: Salon.com Barry Lando, writing in Salon.com, surveys the ways in which Reagan and Bush senior winked at Saddam’s use of chemical weapons. Excerpt: Lando: “More than a decade earlier, the United States performed the same sleight of hand — now we condemn civilian […]