OK, so you and others like you want us to win and have made what have turned out to be overly optimistic predictions.

Maybe I'm crazy to go talking empiricism on a space science board, but it seems to me that there should be consequences for having a record of making mostly wrong or mostly right predictions. Should we be coming to the conclusion that some of the theories war supporters expounded were wrong? More generally, if certain war supporters have shown a consistent pattern of faulty analysis always in an overly optimistic direction, how about getting rid of them and relying on analysts who've been _right_ a higher percentage of the time? Even if that means their analyses sound more "pessimistic" -- or defeatist America-hating claptrap, as Tom would no doubt say.

Forget the pre-invasion debate for a moment, if we had merely listened to the voices in mid to late 2003 warning of some ominous developments in Iraq rather than dismissing them for not being optimistic. Many of the people issuing such warnings were in country, qualified to comment, and hardly America-haters. Sure turned out well only paying attention to the optimists, huh?

What we see in Iraq today is one hell of a lot closer to what I predicted in early 2003 than it is to what was predicted by Wolfowitz, National Review, or Tom Broz. The same would be true for my predictions in 2004 or 2005.

When it comes to predicting world events, I'd much rather hear from people who are likely to be right than people who have a history of being wrong, however much they may be chanting "go team!" while being wrong.