George W. Bush is a master diplomat on a par with Metternich and Bismark : "As usual, those who imagine Mr. Bush does not have his ducks in order have neglected to notice him lining them up." 8 October 2002

The Iraq war will pay for itself, and oil prices will fall: "The present oil-for-food programme of the United Nations can be expanded to cover many of the expenses of reconstruction. U.S. occupation of Iraq can also provide the security to attract new international investment into the Iraqi economy generally and into its oil patch particularly promising substantial increases of production and thus a continuing long-term decline in oil prices (something neither the oil-rich Saudi Arabians nor alas the getting-oil-rich Russians much appreciate). Given the war premium already built into world oil prices the reader would be advised to hedge his own oil positions." 12 October 2002

France will join the coalition: "My bet is that the French will be scurrying to get in on the action." 13 November 2002

Turkey wants the US to invade Iraq: "...contrary to media reports the various regional potentates including the Turks and the princes of the different Gulf sheikdoms are nagging the U.S. to get it over with." 8 January 2003

Colin Powell will deliver a slam-dunk at the UN Security Council in February 2003: "The U.S. will declassify and publish damning evidence of Saddam Hussein's defiance of U.N. resolutions next week -- even at the risk of telegraphing war targets and compromising intelligence sources. This will give erstwhile allies one last chance to dismount their high horses. The Russians appear eager to be given the opportunity; the French seem to be looking for a still taller steed as President Jacques Chirac sails towards the non-ambiguity of the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's position: to oppose U.S. action no matter what the evidence and no matter who supports them." 30 January 2003

OK, so it wasn't a slam-dunk - but it doesn't matter because France and Germany have been helping Saddam build WMDs: : "This is why the publication of actual proof is so anticlimactic. The people demanding proof were not going to change their positions after it was supplied. They predictably shifted the criteria for action another step higher so that now they demand even more U.N. inspectors. They want peace and are willing to pay any price for it. The French and Germans -- who have incidentally been exposed as Saddam Hussein's most copious suppliers of ingredients and technology for biological and chemical weaponry (with the Russians in third place) -- have openly stated that war is the worst thing that can happen. From this position any kind of sell-out or betrayal is preferable to the use of physical force." 6 February 2003

Don't get too optimistic: the war might last for weeks, because the terrorists will use Saddam's WMDs: "Despite what you've seen on TV the war in Iraq is not yet over. The mopping up should take quite a few weeks and paradoxically casualties may be higher during this phase as U.S. and allied troops root out the remaining cells of the Fedayeen Saddam Republican Guard "dead-enders" and some thousands of Palestinian Syrian and other foreign terrorists and death squads. They have no reason to give up: for they know as the world is beginning to know that the Iraqi people will kill them if the allied military doesn't get them first. Nor is the danger from chemical and biological weapons removed; and the possibility of their use by suicide terrorists on troops that have taken their gas masks off is ever-present." 10 April 2003

George W. Bush is a master occupation strategist on a par with Marshall and MacArthur: "Over the last nine months and with increasing urgency the Bush administration has been grappling with the problem of post-war Iraqi governance...It will take, according to the Pentagon's Paul Wolfowitz who has been overseeing much of this planning in Washington, about six months to create the constitutional instruments for native Iraqi rule. The complementary U.S. and allied military and civil presence will remain (in diminishing numbers) for about two years after that." 10 April 2003

Shock and awe worked exactly as planned, changing the Arab world overnight: "The anger previously concentrated by the Arab world's media and leaders upon the United States Britain and Israel was suddenly deflected upon the same media and leaders; or else meaninglessly against the euphoric crowds in Baghdad. Those who swore were suddenly swearing not at CNN but at Al-Jazeera not at George W. Bush but at Saddam and Saudi sheikhs and Hosni Mubarak. Suddenly all at once this terrible recognition that they had been lied to -- lied to by everyone; lied to on an extraordinary systematic scale; told the biggest Lie that had ever been told." (describing the immediate and full-blown revolution in Arab thinking engendered by the fall of Saddam) 12 April 2003

The US caught France arming Saddam in the lead-up to the war, and will respond with the dreaded "silent treatment": "...the U.S. intended to "punish" (their word) France for her recent behaviour over Iraq...[T]he likely reason for this was...U.S. discoveries in Iraq confirming direct French help in preparing Saddam Hussein's defences including arms shipments in the last year. There is unlikely to be, according to my sources, any formal disclosure of evidence behind the impending decision to punish France. The position will be instead the unspoken 'You know what you did, and by our actions you can guess that we found out.'" 26 April 2003

Everything is going very, very well in Iraq, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar: [The US is] on to the game that is being played on them in which this very violence is being used to support propaganda through Al-Jazeera and other Arab and Western media in which the U.S. is being "held to account" for Iraq's "slide into anarchy". 14 May 2003

Iran's Shia, you say? So what? It is now emerging from intelligence sources that the reason the U.S. was able to give Saudi Arabia the heads-up it ignored on the terror bombings in Riyadh is because the CIA had been intercepting communications between Al Qaeda operatives in Arabia and Iran. The hits themselves helped to clarify co-ordinates; and there is thus little doubt remaining in American minds that Iran is sheltering senior Al Qaeda leaders. The ayatollahs are most likely trying to integrate surviving Al Qaeda resources with those of Hizbullah their own main horse in terror international. 28 May 2003

Bush perseveres in his efforts at diplomacy, and is determined to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: ""Captain" Bush embarked yesterday on the most difficult diplomatic tour of his presidency and will spend a week trying to advance his campaign on several fronts. Two are critical at present: to get the rest of Europe on side with what has been done and must still be done in Iraq and at the various frontiers. And try to create the conditions in which the mythic Israel-Palestine conflict which feeds so many others can be permanently pacified." 31 May 2003

Iran is on the brink of an anti-clerical uprising: "Last year when I was writing about the pot coming to the boil in Iran I was one among a number of Western commentators I could count on one hand. This year praise the Lord I am no longer a bearer of incredible tidings. The rest of the media are catching on and the story is even making front pages. The phrase "second Iranian revolution" is in the airwaves...The mullahs may be running the world's largest terrorist operation (Hizbullah) and be well on their way to acquiring nuclear weapons with Russian Pakistani and North Korean help. But the Iranian people may be about to overwhelm them. My own guess -- and in making it I rejoin a minority to be counted on fingers -- is that they will crack very soon." 18 June 2003

Yes, the Iranian government is about to collapse...any day now...just wait...: "Iran, not Israel/Palestine, is now the real centre of action in the Middle East as the ayatollahs totter. This is much more than an Iranian domestic question with some regional implications -- for when the world's first most successful and longest-lived Islamist totalitarian regime finally dies the prestige of Islamic political fanaticism everywhere will be catastrophically undermined." 25 June 2003

...and when the Iranian government collapses, manna will fall from heaven: "Nor would it be merely an intangible alteration of perception or mood; there would be many immediate practical consequences. Though limited in scale, each of the changes would be decisively for the better; and in combination a more significant victory for the side of the angels than the defeat of Saddam Hussein.When the ayatollahs fall the international Hizbollah terrorist network will be orphaned; the Syrian Baathist dictatorship will lose its main foreign ally and prop; the North Koreans will lose their principal weapons market; the nuisance of Iranian subversion will be removed from Iraq and Afghanistan; the last serious Russian influence in the region will evaporate; France will lose its chief remaining means to sow mischief against U.S. interests; and the U.S. will lose its only credible rival as a military presence in the Gulf. It is moreover just possible that the world oil market will go into long-term glut from the collapse of political obstacles to free trade. This would have various economic implications, debatable environmental ones, but two indisputable strategic effects: the permanent elimination of Saudi Arabia's oil weapon and the gradual removal of the oil crutch upon which the region's economies lean. The very need for productive enterprise to feed swelling young populations will force free market reforms that will change the nature of Arab society. And this is before calculating the power of example if Iran -- flanked Allah willing by other successes in Iraq and Afghanistan -- can establish a secular democratic constitution." 25 June 2003

Iraqis are ungrateful children: "All the reliable indications I have are that the vast majority of Iraqis including those still terrified of the Fedayeen in such old Saddamite haunts as Fallujah and Tikrit remain glad of the presence of U.S. and British soldiers while grumbling more than helping. An independent poll conducted earlier this month on Western sampling principles showed that 73 per cent of Iraqis thought the coalition were doing a very poor job and 76 per cent wanted them to stay." 28 June 2003

The Iraqi/mainstream media plan to resist the American liberators is failing: "The first part of [Saddam's] plan did not go well... The Iraqi army collapsed but owing to U.S. foresight training and technology there was little scorched earth. Now the second part is going badly too -- though it is far from over and the Western liberal media are at least keeping their part of the "bargain" with endless misleading chaos in Iraq coverage." 28 June 2003