PREDICTIONS FOR 2004<\/b><\/p>\n
We will see how effective of a prophet I can be in a year’s time:<\/p>\n
Al Qaida will switch from attempting catastrophic acts of terrorism against the American homeland in the short term to the assassination of high profile, non-American, ” soft targets ” with symbolic resonance. My short list would include the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Musharraf of Pakistan, Muhammed VI of Morocco, the Pope, a member of the British Royal Family and any minister of the ” New Europe ” governments that supported the Iraq war. <\/p>\n
President Bush will be reelected, winning 52-54 % of the popular vote. Either Colin Powell or Donald Rumsfeld will resign from the cabinet but not both. If Rumsfeld resigns it will only be because he was forced out.<\/p>\n
There will be a boom to replace Dick Cheney with Condi Rice on the GOP ticket which will not happen unless the Vice-President suffers a serious health problem.<\/p>\n
American forces in Iraq will draw down for a potential intervention in Pakistan whether or not Musharraf survives the year. American special operatives will capture or kill a major Saudi financier of al Qaida terrorism, perhaps with Saudi complicity.<\/p>\n
A major al Qaida leader will be captured or killed by American forces.<\/p>\n
The bioethics of implanting computer chips and components into human beings will become a media hot-button issue.<\/p>\n
Hard core leftists will challenge Tony Blair’s leadership of the Labor Party at the first opportunity, most likely after a scandal of some kind, be resoundingly crushed and will subsequently bolt the party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PREDICTIONS FOR 2004 We will see how effective of a prophet I can be in a year’s time: Al Qaida will switch from attempting catastrophic acts of terrorism against the American homeland in the short term to the assassination of high profile, non-American, ” soft targets ” with symbolic resonance. My short list would include […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}