Juan Cole

Guerrillas in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday subjected a US military base to a barrage of mortar fire, killing a US soldier. The guerrillas successfully targeted a mililtary counter-insurgency office intended to deal with the guerrillas. That move shows that they have infiltrated the base and have someone on the inside telling them […]

Shorter AFP: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will try to tell Binyamin Netanyahu, the far rightwing prospective prime minister of Israel, that he should allow the rebuilding of Gaza and start up a peace process that leads to a Palestinian State. Netanyahu ask her to let him bomb Iran and go on colonizing the West […]

Anand Gopal reports for CSM that many Afghans, especially in the Pushtun south, oppose President Obama’s plan to send more US troops to Afghanistan. Highlights: ‘ Parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai says she has an innovative amendment to Washington’s planned injection of up to 30,000 new troops here. “Send us 30,000 scholars instead. Or 30,000 engineers. But […]

My column is out in Salon.com, We’re really leaving Iraq: Some Iraq war critics are fretting about Obama’s speech on Friday, and his plan to stay a little longer. But here’s why there’s no reason for alarm. Excerpt: ‘In particular, Obama’s plan to leave 35,000 to 50,000 support troops in Iraq between August 31, 2010 […]

Someone is not a team player. Screenshot from google.news, 3/1/09 4 pm ET: cf: “Iran Nuclear Program Hyped Again” and “IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium.” End/ (Not Continued)

You wonder if the last front page article in the last newspaper will be about the demise of the newspaper? I especially regret the possibility that the San Francisco Chronicle might close, or become part of a single-owner print media monopoly in the Bay area. The Chronicle has been one of the papers I have […]

President Obama said on Friday that the US has no long-term goal of keeping US troops in Afghanistan. (See below). In contrast to Obama’s pronouncements on getting out of Iraq, he has not announced a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. (The full text of Obama’s remarks on the withdrawal from Iraq is here.) Meanwhile, the […]

The Defense Department has reversed the Bush administration’s ban on photographs of returning coffins of US military personnel killed in war abroad. Apparently a lot of the families of fallen warriors liked the ban. Future such families will be able to keep it in place for their loved ones if they so choose. But everyone […]

Even as President Obama sends 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan and intends to spend $140 bn on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in 2009, rumors of negotiations with Taliban elements keep surfacing. The Dari Persian Afghan newspaper Chiragh editorialized on February 23, 2009, on the possibility that cooperation against the Taliban might prove grounds […]