Publius Pundit has a great post about yesterday's selection of an Iraqi prime minister and the early workings of the Iraqi democratic process. It's very encouraging...give it a read!
Friday, April 8, 2005
Terrorist scorecard
This scorecard is the best collection of information I've seen on the state of the war on al Qaeda. I learned quite a bit just scanning down the scorecard, and following some of the links provided. In particular, I was a little surprised to see just how much progress we've actually made — the strategy of "Iraq the al Qaeda meatgrinder" appears to be working quite well.
On the other hand, the scorecard makes it clear that we have a lot more work to do...
Predictions
This site is running a "futures market" (currently a game only, with no real money changing hands) for various political and military issues. For example, current futures include whether any of the Minutemen volunteers currently patrolling our border in Arizona will be injured or killed by Mexican troops, or whether the next Pope will be from the former Soviet Eastern Bloc. Because there isn't any real money on the table, I'm a little suspicious of this, but...their claimed accuracy rate to date (they've been running over a year) is very high, and the results are all openly posted. Interesting, at the least. At the best, the players may be predominantly well-informed and reasoning people, and their collective opinion (as expressed in the results of this game) may in fact be a good predictor...
