Archives for October 2005

Mosul Leaders Threaten to Join Guerrilla Movement Protest Firing of Police Commissioner Al-Zaman: Cabinet member Adil Abdul Mahdi’s brother was assassinated on Sunday. A government oil company official in Kirkuk was assassinated. There were about a dozen announced deaths in guerrilla violence on Sunday. Guerrillas detonated a bomb in Fallujah, killing two Iraqi soldiers; a […]

Top Five Resignations the American People Should Demand In the Wake of Libby’s Indictment Apologize? Apologize? Is that all the US Democratic leadership can demand from George W. Bush after it was confirmed that his key aides and those of Vice President Cheney planned a petty campaign of retribution against a distinguished foreign service officer […]

26 Killed by Car Bomb North of Baquba 3 US GIs Killed Guerrillas in a Shiite village near Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, detonated a huge truck bomb on Saturday, killing at least 26 innocent bystanders. In separate violence, 3 US GIs were killed, and US air forces attacked suspected guerrilla strongholds in western Iraq. The […]

Sistani May Call for US Withdrawal Party Coalitions are Finalized The intrepid Hamza Hendawi of AP gets the scoop: Aides around Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief spiritual leader of Iraqi Shiites, are broadly hinting that after the December 15 elections, he may begin a Gandhi-like campaign to demand a timetable for the withdrawal of […]

New Word: “To libby” It seems to me that we may have the makings of a new lexical entry, what with the indictment and resignation of Irving Lewis “Scooter” Libby. It strikes me that “Libby” is close to “fib.” So “to libby” would have the connotations of “to tell a falsehood.” But it is also […]

Sunni-Shiite Warfare breaks out in Southeast Baghdad Sadr Joins United Shiite Coalition Al-Hayat: Exhibit A in the case for seeing what is going on in Iraq as a low-intensity civil war: On Thursday, Sunni Arab guerrillas from the Nahrawan district of southeast Baghdad kidnapped a member of the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr . When […]

All the Vice President’s Men My article on the Neoconservatives running Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney’s foreign policy shop is out today in Salon.com. An excerpt: All the vice president’s men The ideologues in Cheney’s inner circle drummed up a war. Now their zealotry is blowing up in their faces. By Juan Cole Oct. 28, […]

Larry Johnson on the Plame Scandal I think this interview by Wolf Blitzer with Larry Johnson on CNN’s Situation Room on Wednesday is extremely important and worry that it may be missed. I’m quoting some excerpts below. I was struck by the information that Plame Wilson has had death threats from al-Qaeda, and that the […]

Cockburn Misrepresents Cole Alexander Cockburn says in his piece in The Nation: ‘Cole says to The Nation Institute’s Tom Engelhardt that for the United States to “up and leave” Iraq would be to become an accomplice to genocide. He counsels the heightened use in Iraq of “special forces and air power.” In other words, assassinations […]