Today I ran across an article about Senturion, which is a predictive political analysis software suite developed by the National Defense University. Apparently Senturion was used to make highly specific and highly accurate predictions about the Iraq War and the Iraq elections prior to those events. I was astounded at the kinds of things Senturion got right, accurately forecasting the loyalties of the various factions and even the behavior of individuals such as al Sadr and Ahmed Chalabi.
The Senturion results have special significance for the debate over the effects of the 2007 troop surge. When Senturion was applied to the Iraqi elections in January 2005, it predicted that "increased coalition military strength in Iraq would have improved the attitudes of Iraqi stake holders toward the election by making them feel more secure." The simulations indicated that a 50% increase in troop strength was optimal, though a 25% increase would have been sufficient to capture the support of "neutral Iraqis". It also determined that due to Iraqi perceptions, the use of United Nations peacekeepers in place of US or coalition forces could achieve the same results with a smaller troop increase. These analyses were "performed and briefed to senior government decisionmakers well in advance of events."
So far as I know, no one but me has linked Senturion's predictions to the troop surge of 2007. (It's now on Wikipedia, but only because I put it there.) Given the accuracy of Senturion's predictions in other respects, however, its findings vis-a-vis the prospects of a troop increase would seem to have implications for the debate over whether the surge was responsible for the rise in Iraqi popular support that followed. Senturion's predictions were mathematical and non-partisan, and unrelated to the debate that emerged after the Iraq Study Group's report in 2006 about the possibility of a troop surge.
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