ZENPUNDIT’S BATTING AVERAGE AS A PROPHET<\/b><\/p>\n
Last January, I boldly made a number of predictions for 2004<\/a>. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and see how I did, shall we ?:<\/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. “<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Hmm. Al Qaida did not manage to assassinate anyone of any international prominence this year, though several attempts were made to wack Musharraf, none of them got off the ground. A number of officials from Iraq’s interim government were assassinated <\/a>this year but the gunmen could have easily been ex-Baathists, Sadrists or hired criminals as easily as Zaqawri-al Qaida terrorists.<\/p>\n Al Qaida did turn away from hitting the American homeland and toward Europe on 3\/11 with the massive train bombing in Madrid <\/a>that helped replace pro-American Prime Minister Aznar with anti-American Leftist Zapatero.<\/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.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Boy, I sure called that one !<\/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.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n There were some rumblings <\/a>prior to the Vice-Presidential debates about Cheney being a drag on the ticket. Rice, who was under fire herself at the time, was not mentioned but Rudy Giuliani and John McCain were <\/a>– neither of whom are favorites of the Bush II inner circle. This said more about the speculators in question than it did about Bush or Cheney.<\/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.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Dead wrong here.<\/p>\n “A major al Qaida leader will be captured or killed by American forces.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n In response to the beheading of Paul Johnson, Saudi security almost immediately killed the al Qaida chief in Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz al-Muqrin<\/a>. This was almost assuredly in response to heavy American pressure to ” do something”. The operational leader of the USS Cole bombing.<\/a> “The bioethics of implanting computer chips and components into human beings will become a media hot-button issue.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I was too far ahead of the curve on this one<\/a>. It’s still on the horizon in terms of being debated primarily in the internet media and blogosphere<\/a> it has yet to hit the MSM in a big way. I’ll recycle it for 2005.<\/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.”<\/em><\/strong> ZENPUNDIT’S BATTING AVERAGE AS A PROPHET Last January, I boldly made a number of predictions for 2004. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and see how I did, shall we ?: ” Al Qaida will switch from attempting catastrophic acts of terrorism against the American homeland in the short term to the assassination of […]<\/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-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","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=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was also captured.<\/a> Not an Osama bin Laden but not small fry either.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/em><\/strong>
\n
Dead wrong again but I think I might recycle this one too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"