Juan Cole

US Casualties in Iraq: Gustafson Erik Gustafson writes: “Setting the record straight, sort of… Last week Clive Astle wrote, “Molly (Ivins) appears to have omitted counting the number killed but unidentified pending notification of kin. Total US dead is reported at 1012 as at end of August…” Clive is double counting some U.S. military deaths. […]

The Fate of Iraq’s Christians: Eden Naby Guest Editorial for Informed Comment by Eden Naby Just after celebration of the Festival of the Cross (Aida d-Sliwa) on Friday, 10 September, the village of Baghdeda, located southeast of Mosul, on the Nineveh Plains, in the Ninawa Governorate, came under mortar attack. Thus far a complete tally […]

Violence in Baqubah, Basra, Tal Afar, etc. The Washington Post finally gives us a description of the guerrillas fighting in the Shiite Turkmen city of Tal Afar (pop. 250,000). They are said by the US military to be “a collection of Sunni Muslim extremists, Baath Party holdovers and foreign fighters, possibly Saudis.” I don’t believe […]

Iraq, Vietnam and the Philippines: Guest Editorial Harold Cole of the UCLA Economics Department (no relation) has kindly permitted me to share a message of his here as a guest editorial. Eerie parallelism The anniversary of September 11 seems to be generating a bit of a reflection on where we are and how are we […]

September 11 and Its Aftermath In order to evaluate the aftermath of September 11, we first must understand that event. What did al-Qaeda intend to achieve? Only if we understand that can we gauge their success or failure. From the point of view of al-Qaeda, the Muslim world can and should be united into a […]

US Operations Kill 57 at Tal Afar, Fallujah The US military conducted major operations against Tal Afar and Fallujah on Thursday, in the course of which 57 persons were killed and dozens wounded. National Public Radio reports that fighters have infiltrated the largely Turkmen Shiite [actually mostly Sunni, it seems] city of Tal Afar and […]

VP Jaafari slams US Iraqi vice-president Ibrahim Jaafari, a leader of the Shiite al-Da`wa Party, vehemently criticized the US in an interview in El Pais (Spain). He said the US had ridden into Iraq “like “an elephant astride its war machine.” He said it was a mistake to dissolve the Iraqi army and to leave […]

Cheney Implies Perpetual War Dick Cheney’s statement that if Americans elected John Kerry they would suffer another terrorist attack like 9/11 has provoked outrage among Democrats. But what is interesting to me is the policy implications. Cheney seems to be saying that the reason there won’t be another attack if he is reelected is because […]

Iraq Developments A roadside bomb in Baghdad killed one US soldier and wounded two others. Another roadside bomb, near Balad north of the capital, killed one soldier and wounded another. The US bombed Fallujah again, killing 6 Iraqis and wounding 23. Guerrillas kidnaped the deputy governor of al-Anbar Province, Col Ismail Al Ayal, on Wednesday. […]