Juan Cole

7 Dead in Latifiyah Iraqi National Guards headed south to Latifiyah to combat militants there in the wake of the attempted assassination near there of Ahmad Chalabi. They killed 7 and suffered nine wounded themselves, they say. Chalabi’s militia went down to try to recover the bodies of his body guards, four of whom are […]

Ivins: US Losses up from Last Year Molly Ivins’s column today is all the refutation necessary to Dick Cheney’s strangely diffident speech Wednesday night. She writes: ‘ RECORD. We have already lost more American soldiers (488) in Iraq in 239 days of this year than we did in 287 days last year (482), when there […]

Chatham House: Iraq from Bad to Worse Chatham House, formerly the Royal Institute for International Affairs, has issued a highly pessimistic report (in pdf format) on Iraq. At best, it argues, the US and the UK will just muddle through in Iraq, but will fail to attain goals like installing a democracy, and stability will […]

Chalabi Survives Assassination Attempt Sadr Aide Assassinated Ahmad Chalabi’s convoy came under fire as he was returning to Baghdad from Najaf. Two of his bodyguards were injured, but he escaped harm. He was in Najaf consulting with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani before returning to the first meeting of the National Council, in the capital. Chalabi […]

Spy Scandal’s Roots are Deep Jim Lobe argues that the FBI investigation that caught up Pentagon Iran expert Lawrence Franklin is much wider than initially thought, and focuses on the unauthorized transfer to Israel of highly sophisticated military software and designs. Since many Israeli arms merchants connected to the government in Tel Aviv sell to […]

Charles Smith on Bush and Sharon Guest Editorial By Charles Smith: “Bait and Switch: Ariel Sharon, the Bush Administration, and the West Bank” Much attention has focused recently on Ariel Sharon’s travails in Israel where a majority of his Likud Party oppose his intent to withdraw all Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip as part […]

US Warplanes Hit Samarra Kirkuk Official Assassinated Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that US war planes bombed two civilian vehicles in Samarra on Tuesday, killing two women and a child in the process. The US military in Fallujah fired tanks on guerrillas that attacked them. A high official of Turkmen extraction in the department of education in […]

Harold Rhode and Bernard Lewis The classic expose of Pentagon operator Harold Rhode was written by Bob Dreyfuss and Jason Vest last January, and aptly entitled “The Lie Factory.” It has long been known that Rhode has a close relationship with former School of Oriental and African Studies and Princeton historian Bernard Lewis. I received […]

Franklin Met with Naor Gilon The Israeli foreign ministry has confirmed that Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon’s top Iran desk officer, met repeatedly in Washington with “Naor Gilon, head of the political department at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and a specialist on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” Gilon appears already to have been under surveillance by […]