Eerily Prescient

The A.P. is reporting on a just released F.O.I.A request showing that U.S. war games in 1999 substantially predicted the current outcome in Iraq - only it was predicted based on an occupying force of 400,000 troops. That's about 250,000 troops more than were committed.

The gist? An American occupation would fail to produce a stable and secure Iraq and would essentially look a lot like what we're now seeing. Of course, this pretty much what many of us were saying back in the Fall and Winter of 2002-2003. And it exposes the fallacy behind the excuse currently being peddled the neocon boosters of the war, Perle and Adelman, that the plan would only have worked if it had been better executed. (Sorry, Andrew.)

It turns out - even with massively more troops - their own models indicated chaos was the likely outcome. Of course, history, geography and a bit more curiousity and skepticism at the top might have led our misleaders to the same conclusion. But hey - what are cold hard facts when put alongside the intoxicating theories of the true believers?

Here's the story, from the Globe and Mail:

U.S. war games predicted chaos in Iraq