Here and here are some predictions I made in January for the coming year (that is, for this year).
Let's see how well they have held up. (I also made a few longer-term predictions about Iraq back in 2004; I'll get to those later).
1) At least 1000 American troops will die in Iraq during 2004. Troop levels will not decrease unless by necessity.
So far, 546 American troops have died during 2005. If things keep going at this rate, somewhere around 820 troops will be killed by the end of the year. So it looks as if that prediction is (thankfully) not going to come true.
2) The January 30 elections will occur, and there will be many charges of irregularities by the Sunnis, and some charges of irregularities by a few Kurdish and Shiite groups, although the majority of those groups will support the results, or at least be indifferent to them.
I think that this is mainly what happened.
3) The insurgency will not be affected in any significant way by the elections.
Well, the insurgency (measured in terms of hostile coalition fatalities) went down for ~ 3 months after the elections, and then returned to about the same strength as it was in the second half of 2004. Wounded stats are a little lower than they were in the second hald of 2004. On the otehr hand, it looks as if attacks on Iraqi policemen and military/security men, as well as Iraqi civilians, may be increasing. So I think my point was mostly correct; the elections have not had a long-term effect on the insurgency as far as I can tell.
4) Ahmad Chalabi will get a position of political power.
He is now a deputy prime minister.
5) Neither Syria nor Iran will fall on its own, but we will not invade either or them either, as we lack the number of troops to do so. Basically, I don't see the situation in the greater Middle East (i.e. outside of Iraq) changing a whole lot, whatever occurs in the war on terror or in Iraq.
I have been right (so far) on Iran and Syria. As for changes in the greater Middle East, well, Lebanon is not under Syrian domination and Gaza no longer has Jewish settlers. How significant a change each of these is, only time will tell.
6) Nothing will happen on the Social Security front.
It's pretty stagnant.
7) Bush's amnesty proposal will begin to cause a break-up of the GOP; not that people will defect, but we will get increasing levels of criticism from the GOP against Bush that will make it difficult for the GOP to get any sort of agenda passed.
Well, Limbaugh and Hannity are starting to get critical of Bush on this issue. I'll have to find some more examples, but I think that we are starting to see even some die-hard Bush partisans begin to get upset about this issue. I'm not sure it has made it harder for the GOP to get its agenda passed yet, though.
8) Nothing new will happen on the gay "marriage" front.
I guess some stuff has happened in Canada, but I was thinking of the US, and I don't see any new localities or states successfully legalizing gay marriage, nor any challaneges to the Massachusetts law that have any hope of success. So yeah, I was right on that one - so far, at least.
9) There will be a major terrorist attack (>100 deaths) in Europe by Muslims that will cause an anti-Muslim backlash.
Well, there was the attack on the British subway that has led Blair to actually start talking about deporting people who refuse to assimilate. But this was somewhat smaller than I predicted. So I will leave it up to my readers to determine how accurate the prediction was.
I think that the Dow will go below 10,000 at least once.
Not yet, although it came close once.
We will still have at least 150,000 troops in Iraq by December.
Our strength may be 140,000, but there are reports that we may add troops before the next Iraqi election. In any case, the general thrust of the prediction seems to have been correct; we haven't seen any significant reductions in American forces in Iraq. And according to the army, it is possible that we may have 100,000 or more troops in the country for 4 more years. So my general sense that Iraq won't be secure enough any time soon for us to reduce our troop presence greatly appears to have been proven several times over.
I'll try to get some links and whatnot, and to discuss other predicitons of mine later, but for now...
That is all.
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