Juan Cole

More on Why Partitioning Iraq is a Very Bad Idea Jack Straw alluded to the dangers of a break-up of Iraq in a news conference in Baghdad on Wednesday, and said the only way to forestall such scenarios was to transfer sovereignty back to the Iraqi people as quickly as possible. (al-Sharq al-Awsat). Journalist Nir […]

10 US soldiers wounded each day Even the fall in attacks does not obscure the bad news for Ken Dilanian of Knight Ridder. He notes that hostile fire had wounded 2,076 US soldiers as of Nov. 24, including 1,200 hurt after May 1. He says, “Although that number is small compared, say, with Vietnam, it’s […]

Bombs in downtown Baghdad; Two Iraqi Police Wounded Guerrillas fired mortars at US troops in Tikrit early on Tuesday but failed to inflict any casualties. In response, US troops wounded one assailant and knocked out another. Guerrillas injured two Iraqi policemen with a rocket-propelled grenade attack near a Baghdad gasoline station. They also fired rockets […]

SA-14 used in Attack on DHL Plane A videotape of guerrillas’ attack on the DHL plane at Baghdad airport was given to a French reporter for Le Nouvel Observateur. It was seen by AFP, which reports that it clearly shows the use of an SA-14 Gremlin missile launcher, not an old SA-7 as the US […]

Sistani’s Fatwa trumped Bremer Rajiv Chandrasekharan has a wonderful article in the Washington Post on the way Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s fatwa of June 28 stymied US civil administrator Paul Bremer. . This was the substance of my remarks on Nightline on Monday night, as well. Sistani insisted that drafters of a new Iraqi constitution […]

IGC Can’t Let Go Some members of the Interim Governing Council, which was set to be dissolved in June on the election of a new transitional government, are now saying they don’t want the IGC dissolved. They hope for it to stick around as a sort of Senate. Apparently the Shiites, like Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, […]

Banning al-Arabiya The real reason that al-Arabiya satellite television is being banned in Iraq is not that it showed videotapes of Saddam, but that it is a prime source of videotape of damage done to US troops by the guerrillas. Rumsfeld is desperate to stop such footage getting out, and cannot easily move against the […]

Halliburton accused of Gouging According to AFP, three Democratic leaders in Congress are charging Halliburton with gouging US taxpayers by charging $2.65 per gallon to transport gasoline from Kuwait to Iraq. Local Iraqi concerns do it for just under a dollar, and even the Pentagon folks (they of the $100 hammers) do it for for […]

al-Hakim: US Troops a Humiliation: Only a UN Resolution Can Authorize Them AFP reports that the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and member of the Interim Governing Council, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, has insisted that the presence of US troops in Iraq must be authorized by a United Nations resolution […]