Sincerely,
The American Left

Absolutely. Only problem is - if you can believe it - the predictions were actually worse than the mess we have today.

If you read this blog at all, you know that I am not a cheerleader of this war. I have been brutal in my criticism of Rumsfeld and Bush in the prosecution of this war - especially in the lastyear.

That said, I documented no less than 7 times since the invasion that lefty blogs and the MSM said that civil war was right around the corner. It took the bombing of the Samarra shrine to set off the kind of violence that has “extra judicial” execution style deaths prevelant.

The point is that the massive refugees predicted never materialized. The starvation and disease predictions never materialized. The massive insurgency never materialized. The popularity of al Qaeda is at an all time low in the arab and muslim world. The stop-start-stop of political reform in Iraq is nevertheless moving slowly forward (read Jim Holstein’s piece on strategy page about the difficulty of the Iraqis in understanding the concept of sharing power and you’ll understand why it’s taking so long to form a government.

The fact is “nightmare” was a ridiculous description of Iraq.

And what about the nightmares predicted about other terrorist attacks in the US? Nada. Zip. Zero.

Try again, Cat…

Duh…yeah. Uh huh.

Patriots Day is a curious Massachusetts only holiday, which I think was invented to prevent government employees from having to cope with Boston Marathon traffic and crowds. Nonetheless, it is a fun day, and as some choice tickets for the

Mr Pace blamed an “endemic” breakdown of security for increasing violence.

“Anyone with a gun who is reasonably well organised can do whatever they want with impunity,” he said

>>>>>>According to a report by the International Crisis Group (PDF), power is concentrated in the hands of parties that have militias. “With no central apparatus that can rely on its own nonpartisan security forces to stand in the way of parties and militias holding ethnic, sectarian and even separatist agendas, the most likely outcome is the gradual erosion or perhaps disintegration of the state,” the report said.

And you also ask: 2) who did the warning?

>>>>>WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday.
The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director. The Bush administration disregarded intelligence reports two months before the invasion of Iraq which warned that a war could unleash a violent insurgency and rising anti-US sentiment in the Middle East, it emerged yesterday.
The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict that could decend into civil war.
>>>>>Tony Blair was warned a year before invading Iraq that a stable post-war government would be impossible without keeping large numbers of troops there for “many years”, secret government papers reveal.
The documents, seen by The Telegraph, show more clearly than ever the grave reservations expressed by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, over the consequences of a second Gulf war and how prescient his Foreign Office officials were in predicting the ensuing chaos.
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I hope this helps,
Best regards