Juan Cole - 09/16/05

32 Dead in Guerrilla Violence

Al-Hayat: Some 30 policemen were killed in 3 suicide bombings Thursday, and 60 were wounded. Also killed was a Shiite religious leader. The body was discovered of a leader of the Dawa Party (the same fundamentalist Shiite party to which Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari belongs). The body of Shaikh Mahdi al-Attar was one of 8 that were discovered in Mosul. He had been kidnapped in Latifiyah about 3 weeks ago.

Hitchens, Galloway and Cole

I just haven't had time to watch the Hitchens/ Galloway debate, and won't have time to do it until this weekend. Kind readers are messaging me to say that they thought they heard my name come up. In response to Galloway's citation of my article critiquing Hitchens's defense of the ongoing Iraq war, I am told that Hitchens said words to the effect that I "claimed" to know Arabic and Persian but that I had never been in the region to his knowledge, and that I changed my mind every two seconds. I haven't been able to find a transcript so I can't check if this is what he said or even if it is the purport of what he said. If he spoke as reported, or anything near, his argument was a mere ad hominem, having nothing to do with the issues, and it was moreover incorrect on the facts.