Iraq

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show makes fun of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Doug Feith and other figures from the Bush administration to take credit for the demise of Usama Bin Laden. In fact, of course, they ran off to illegally invade and ruin Iraq and invested hundreds of billions of dollars in […]

al-Qaeda

Obama and the End of Al-Qaeda

Juan Cole

An American president, himself the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, has taken down notorious terrorist Usama Bin Laden. Despite being a Christian, Obama, it seems to me, had a personal stake in destroying someone who had defamed the religion of his birth father and his relatives. His 2007-2008 presidential campaign was […]

Egypt

Top Ten Arab Spring Advances this Week

Juan Cole

With the horrid crackdowns on dissent in Syria and Bahrain and the vicious shelling by Qaddafi brigades of the port of Misrata in Libya on Tuesday, it would be easy to concentrate solely on the negative news. But the Arab Spring is still producing some positive reforms and questioning of past corrupt practices, and even […]

Energy

Bush’s Pre-War Iraq Oil Deals Alarmed BP

Juan Cole

George W. Bush was quietly approaching US petroleum corporations and trying to do deals with the French and Russian governments and their energy companies regarding Iraqi petroleum fields in fall of 2002, according to British government documents. BP learned of these secret negotiations, and arranged for Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Trade Minister, Lady Elizabeth Symons, […]

Bahrain

Arab Spring Protests Continue

Juan Cole

1. Syria: In the biggest day of protests in Syria so far, tens of thousands of Syrians demonstrated against the Baathist state of Bashar al-Asad on Friday. Large crowds came out in the Douma suburb of Damascus, but were prevented by the tear-gas and the batons of the Syrian police from reaching the center of […]

Iraq

Al-Sadr Threatens Mahdi Army Revival if US Troops Stay

Juan Cole

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that nationalist Shiite clergyman Muqtada al-Sadr threatened on Saturday to revive his Mahdi Army militia if US troops tried to stay in Iraq past December 31, 2011. He said his fighters would return to carrying arms. Tens of thousands of Iraqi protesters, mainly his supporters, gathered beginning early in the […]

Egypt

Hundreds of Thousands of Arabs Protest their Governments

Juan Cole

On Friday, the US Congress endeavored to decide whether American democracy has irretrievably broken down because the representatives of the Billionaires refused to compromise with the representatives of the People (“cutting spending” while “cutting taxes” means “shifting the cost of running society to the middle class from the filthy rich”). The answer was that it […]

Bahrain

Iran, Iraq Warn of Gulf Turmoil over Bahrain: Cole in Truthdig

Juan Cole

My column at Truthdig is out, entitled “The Sleeping Giants of Tiny Bahrain.” Excerpt: ‘ Risking the radicalization of Bahrain’s Shiite community may be a very bad idea. Worries on that score are what led Vice President Joe Biden to ask again in a phone call Sunday to the king of the island nation for […]

Iraq

Top Ten Ways that Libya 2011 is Not Iraq 2003

Juan Cole

Here are the differences between George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the current United Nations action in Libya: 1. The action in Libya was authorized by the United Nations Security Council. That in Iraq was not. By the UN Charter, military action after 1945 should either come as self-defense or with UNSC […]