Juan Cole

Cheney Pressured CIA Philip Sherwell’s article for the Telegraph about the bad feeling between the Bush administration and the old guard at the CIA has an interesting tidbit buried in the middle of it. ‘ In the latest clash, a senior former CIA agent revealed that Mr Cheney “blew up” when a report into links […]

Women’s Issues in Iraq Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Safiya al-Suhail, the shaykha or female tribal leader of the Banu Tamim tribe, has been appointed Iraqi ambassador to Egypt, and that Egypt has accepted her credentials. On Monday the first national women’s conference in the new Iraq was held, with panels on security issues and women, […]

Al-Qaeda, Baader-Meinhoff and the Patriot Act David K. Moore writes: ” I have to bring something up about the analogy to the Red Army Faction. I was in college in Germany 75-76, when Baader and Meinhoff were killed (or committed suicide). What happened to Germany due to their actions is a cautionary tale for America. […]

How Would Cheney Complete the “War on Terror”? Vice President Dick Cheney today attacked John Kerry. ” Cheney and two other speakers at the rally also criticized Kerry for saying in a recent interview in The New York Times Magazine that, “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not […]

21 Dead, 16 Injured in Car Bombs 2 US Soldiers announced Killed Associated Press reports that 2 car bombs killed 11 and wounded dozens on Sunday in Iraq, and that heavy fighting broke out in the western Sunni city of Ramadi. The Iraqi newspaper al-Zaman put the death toll at nearly double this estimate. Guerrillas […]

Walbridge: Bush War on Terror Discounted in Bazaar John Walbridge of Indiana University, who has long experience in the Middle East and Pakistan, writes: ” Your readers might be interested in my private index of the progress of the War on Terror: the exchange rate of the dollar against the euro and the Pakistani rupee: […]

Shopping in Iraq An informed observer writes: ” The thrust of the Farnaz Fassihi email, now, if not before, in the mainstream, and Dexter Filkins’ addendum in the NY Times today, was apparent before, but not in confirmed and undeniable detail. Among other things, those two reports render the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz complaints about the press beyond […]

Bombs in Taba, Multan, Baghdad Signal Failure of War on Terror Three major bombs went off between the Nile and the Indus rivers on Thursday. Do they have anything in common, and what do they tell us about the world that Bush has made? In Baghdad, guerrillas fired Katyusha rockets into the Sheraton Hotel, frequented […]

Conditions in Iraq Zaid al-Ali, an Iraqi attorney who has practiced in New York and Paris, returned to his native land recently and wrote about what he saw. Excerpts: ” [HOSPITALS]: As we walked through the hospital, I spoke with some of the staff and soon realised that all the things that I had read […]