The Cassandra gig

[libertango]

Just for fun, let's take a look at the predictions I made on March 9 re Iraq and Bush:

* Bush has made it clear we're going. So, we're going. Hard to tell what the justification will be, as that keeps changing every 15 minutes, but there you go.

Yup. Got that.

* We'll never find any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraqi hands. That's because there aren't any.

2 for 2.

* We may, however, a la the Rampart Division of the LAPD, plant some, so we can courageously "find" them.

Not yet, though you can hear between the lines that they're tempted. The hydrogen trucks represented as "mobile bio labs" look like that's as close as they're going to get. Note that I said "may", though. :)

* Bush's approval ratings will be stated to soar. You'll still know very few people who actually like the man or his policies.

They did at the time, officially, and have been subsiding since. That no one appears to like the man or his policies aside from the warbloggers, dittoheads, or people with a vested interest in Bush's success still appears to be anecdotally true.

* Iraq will be a pushover. Mostly because it doesn't have anything to really fight with.

Right again.

* North Korea, which does have WMD and an advance position close to one of our allies, will continue to be treated in the wimpiest way possible.

Bingo. As has Iran, which almost certainly also has nukes at this point.

* Despite high ratings -- and possibly even winning the 2004 election -- sooner or later there will be a huge scandal showing Bush to be the hypocite I'm pretty sure he is.

Not yet, though YellowCakeGate was looking so promising. On the other hand, one of the first acts this Administration did was to put previous Administrations' papers under lock and seal, and repeated reports keep coming out about how very paranoid they are about putting anything down on paper. I suspect the reason YellowCakeGate had the legs it did was because it was based on documents. I also suspect that many things got shredded and/or wiped to NSA standards as the kerfluffle unfolded.

* A contributing factor to the scandal -- speaking of "connecting the dots" -- will be that knowledge is in the hands of one or more journalists right now that could blow the thing open... But it's being held back.

Again, not yet.

So, lessee... 8 total predictions. 4 clearly right. 1 mostly right (poll numbers). 1 probably wrong, but conditional. 2, too early to tell.

So I was at least 50% spot on, 63% if we're generous, and am still in the running for being 88% right if the chips fall the right way.

Not too shabby. Worth remembering next time you hear, "No one thought there were no WMDs before the war!"

Comments

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Certainly you're doing better than Dick Cheney, who said recently (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030724-6.html): "Events leading to the fall of Saddam Hussein are fresh in memory, and do not need recounting at length. Every measure was taken to avoid a war. But it was Saddam Hussein himself who made war unavoidable. He had a lengthy history of reckless and sudden aggression. He bore a deep and bitter hatred for the United States. He cultivated ties to terrorist groups. He built, possessed, and used weapons of mass destruction. He refused all international demands to account for those weapons."

I found this via Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog Making Light (http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/), and as she says "these guys really do hold us in contempt. They really do think we’ll believe anything, and remember nothing."

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

What's YellowCakeGate? Thanks.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

"YellowCakeGate" was me being somewhat cutesy. I was referring to the alleged purchase of uranium oxide -- frequently referred to as yellow cake, in the trade -- by Iraq from Niger. Which allegation was false, and known to be false at least as early as fall 2002... despite which, the claim showed up in Bush's State of the Union address.

YellowCake, and the fallout

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

More imortant is that YellowCake is a precoursor to a Bomb.

About the same way Betty Crocker mixes are to brownies. It takes work to change the powder to something useful.

Which is why the next sentence in the State of the Union Address should be getting more play. When Bush followed the Niger story with the tubes, he was saying, to those who know, that Iraq was actively seeking a Bomb.

Never mind that the Administration was being told, left, right and center, that such tubes were completely unsuitable, that they were actually meant to replicate an Italian designed rocket (right down to the most finicky of specs), nope. They were for a gas cetrifuge.

Would have been nice if they were, because that would have shown the Iraqis were stupid twice (1: to try and build a Bomb, 2: to do it in a way that would add more than a handful of years to the process).

But they weren't. Oddly enough it turns out they were for making a copy of an Italian rocket, and a legal one at that.

Terry K.

Re: YellowCake, and the fallout

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

OK... That's so obvious to me it didn't occur to me to provide backstory. My goof.