The Ten Worst Predictions Of The Decade

According to Newsweek:

10. The iPod Will Flop

9. A Particle Accelerator Could End the World

8. The Patriots Will Win Super Bowl XLII

7. Bill Gates Doubting the Potential of Google (back in 2003)

6. Harper's Thinking the Term "The Naughts" Would Catch On

5. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson Declaring the Worst of the Recession Over in February 2008

4. Gen. Tommy Franks on Presence of WMD in Iraq: "There is no doubt."

3. Barack Obama Will Not Beat Hillary Clinton

2. Jim Cramer: Bear Stearns Will Be Fine

1. "We will...be greeted as liberators (in Iraq)." - Dick Cheney

There are blurbs accompanying all of the items on the list, which you can read by following the link on the bottom of the page. I will post the blurb for the #1 item on the list here, though. Overall, pretty good list, as these things go. I mean, is predicting an undefeated team will win the Super Bowl more embarrassing after the fact than predicting that the iPod would fail? No, it is not. Is Dick Cheney's bizarre prediction based on a long life of self-deception and concentration on the manipulation of others that the Iraqi people would applaud and embrace us for devastating their country and murdering hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens the most egregious and downright offensive prediction of the last 10 years? Absolutely.

The most telling response to Dick Cheney’s assertion on NBC’s Meet the Press that we’d be greeted in Iraq as liberators came from the man himself, in 2006 on CBS’s Face the Nation. When Bob Schieffer asked the vice president if his statement had increased skepticism of the war, Cheney responded, “No, I think it has less to do with the statements we’ve made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does the fact that there is a constant sort of perception, if you will, that’s created because what is newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad, it’s not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress in rebuilding Iraq.” To recap: first Cheney says he was right (he wasn’t) and then he blames media distortion for the fact that people won’t believe him. It’s hard to fake being greeted as a liberator; to this day, though, Cheney continues to pretend as if it had been so.

http://2010.newsweek.com/top-10/worst-predictions/alan-sugar.html