Welcome to 2007 CE.
This year, I have spent $3.41 on brewed coffee. I predict that I will spend at least that much again before the year is out.
William Safire likes to make predictions, too. Sometimes he forecasts the war in Iraq. Here he is (with Evan Thomas of Newsweek) on NBC's Meet the Press, January 2, 2005:
MR. RUSSERT: How do you see Iraq, Evan?
MR. THOMAS: I think there's a good chance we will declare victory and come home, that within a year, we'll hope for some kind of Iraqi stability and come home.
MR. RUSSERT: Bill Safire?
MR. SAFIRE: I think we're going to win in Iraq. I think by the end of next year, we'll have begun to withdraw our forces. We won't have them out but we will have begun to withdraw. And the Kurds will be firmly in charge of northern Iraq. And look, you've got two-to-one, three-to-one majority of Shia over Sunnis, and they're going to run Iraq. And the Sunnis, who live in the middle, not with the northern oil fields or the southern oil fields, are going to have to live with it and come to grips with it. I don't see a long civil war there.
Oops. A year later, on January 1, 2006:
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq and to the Office Pool column of William Safire, which runs at the end of the year in The New York Times. Here it is here: "U.S. troops in Iraq at 2006 year's end will number, (a) current `base-line' of 137,000; (b) closer to 100,000; (c) closer to 90,000; (d) 80,000 or below." ...
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Safire, your answer was?
MR. SAFIRE: D.
MS. GOODWIN: He's the hopeful one amongst us.
MR. SAFIRE: I'm an optimist about it. I think...
MR. RUSSERT: Below 80,000.
MR. SAFIRE: Eighty thousand or below, and I think that 80,000 figure is something that the administration is really shooting for, would love to see, depending on the situation. ...
As it turns out, we have about 140,000 troops in Iraq, and December was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in two years. Finally, this past Sunday, December 31st, 2006:
MR. RUSSERT: Let me talk about Iraq and we're going to talk about Mr. Safire's office pool, the various options you lay out. But first, because this is a program of accountability, let me--Bill--bring Bill Safire back, January 2nd, 2005. Two years ago, his prediction about Iraq. Let's read.
"I think we're going to win in Iraq. I think by the end of next year," that would be the end of '06, "we'll have begun to withdraw our forces. We won't have them out, but we'll have begun to withdraw. ... I don't see a long civil war there."
How do you plead?
MR. SAFIRE: Optimistic, and frankly, that was as well-sourced a prediction as I've ever had.
MR. ROBINSON: That was the problem.
MR. BESCHLOSS: They know things that we don't know, right, Bill?
MR. SAFIRE: But one of these days I'm going to be right.
MR. RUSSERT: Well, here are the questions that you posed...
MR. DIONNE: He's steadfast.
MR. RUSSERT: Yeah. Here's the Safire office pool, and we're all going to take it.
"The level of American troops in Iraq at year's end"--that's at 2007, end of this, next year, 2007, A: over 100,000, down from 160; under 100,000 from today's unsurged 140; under 80, with announced timetable for downsizing in '08 to 40 to secure Iraqi Kurdistan."
Mr. Safire, you picked A, over 100,000.
MR. SAFIRE: I think what we'll have is surging, the surge will be there. And the Democrats will go along with the surge, provided that it can be shown to have a mission in mind, and has some support from the Iraqis. Even Hillary Clinton, when she said, "I'm against the surge unless it has some other mission in mind."
This is good news! We can expect to have fewer than 100,000 troops in Iraq by the end of 2007!
I wish there were some sort of Prediction Clearing-house, a one-stop shop for past prognostications. It would demonstrate (I predict) that, as a rule, we humans are not very good at guessing the future.
Posted by cradle at January 2, 2007 6:15 PM