Prescience
Link.
One quote from the article:
"There should be no illusions that the reconstruction of Iraq will be anything but difficult, confusing, and dangerous for everyone involved," says a recent working paper from the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the James A. Baker Institute at Rice University. "If Washington does not clearly define its goals for Iraq and build support for them domestically and with its allies and partners," the report predicts in its very first paragraph, "the United States may lose the peace, even if it wins the war."
Certainly true, and also prescient.
Now, let's go down some of the other predictions made in the article:
--Iran actively taking part in the war in the south of Iran (Oh, wait, that's actually true, but we're pretending it isn't.)
--Turkey preventing the Kurds from going into Kirkuk by military action.
--Major terrorists attacks on American targets around the world and in the United States.
--Israeli expulsion of the Palestinians from the occupied territories.
--Refugee flows into Turkey and especially Iran.
--Saddam's weapons people making "weapons of mass destruction more available, not less, to the likes of Osama bin Laden and groups he's helped inspire."
--Use of Saddam's chemical weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi civilians to slow U.S. forces.
--A rapid resumption of oil production in Iraq sending prices falling into the single-digit range and bankrupting countries like Russia.
--Torching of the oil fields creating $100 a barrel oil. Well, got that one half right.
But we can round it off with another accurately prescient quote:
...But there's no confidence that this American administration, or any other, has a genuine long-term commitment to helping them achieve those goals. They've heard the talk too many times before, then seen the Americans walk.
And boy, have some people been trying to get the Americans to walk.