You heard it here first

Today, July 13, 2006 at 10:10pm, let me be the first to predict a fairly unpleasant development in the Middle East. As the already explosive atmosphere turns even more violent and an all out war develops between Israel on the one hand and Palestine, Lebanon and Syria on the other, an interesting and gleefully ironic twist will occur when America joins the fight on Israel's side while Iraq's newly elected leadership votes to send their American-trained army into the fray on the side of Syri-Pal-Anon. Deliciously ironic that American soldiers will once again be fighting Iraqi soldiers, though not in Iraq, but in neighboring Syria. Of course, nuclear-capable North Korea will not pass on the opportunity to attempt to retake South Korea while the U.S. is forced to withdraw some of its forces guarding the North/South border for deployment in the mideast.

The unpredictable part of the picture is the role China and Russia will play. China, on the one hand, will be salivating at the opportunity to get behind North Korea and pressure them into moving some firepower eastward into Japan. North Korea will then capitulate to Chinese pressure, thinking (wrongly as it would turn out) that if North Korea rubbed China's back, China would return the favor. On the other hand, China has a lot to lose in a reversion by the capitalist Japan into communist rule. On the other hand, China may elect instead to remain neutral on the North Korean front, allowing them to tire themselves out in South Korea and then taking over a reunified Korea and then moving to subdue Taiwan and Tibet. China clearly will stay out of the Middle Eastern conflict, which at this point Egypt has decided to join on the Palestinian side, preferring instead to hedge their bets by letting the rest of the world expend their resources while investing in foreign manufacturing.

Russia will most likely not remain so detached from the Middle Eastern conflict, preferring to side with the more totalitarian side (Palestinian/Syria/Lebanon) to whom they will supply only weapons at first, but when the conflict appears to take a turn in their side's favor will openly support the Palestinians by sending troops into Turkey (which, despite massive public disapproval, will have allied with Israel and the U.S.). It is possible that Russia will actually use the distraction of the two wars to reunify the USSR, clearly Putin's ultimate goal from day one. In furtherance of this goal, Russia will deploy troops into the former soviet states, including the Baltic states (and maybe Finland). This will prove to be the most deadly conflict of the three wars.

Domestically, the U.S. will reinstitute the draft and I will pursue that PhD in Classics I've been meaning to get along with an LLM in Taxation. Unfortunately, the conflicts will continue for long enough that I will be drafted immediately following my dissertation on the effects of excise taxes on Demosthenes' use of meter in his Philipics. Shortly thereafter I will meet my demise in an embarrassing turtle-hunting accident aboard the USS Ronald Reagan off the western coast of Australia.

So certain am I that much of this will come to pass that I'm willing to take bets. 3 to 1 odds. Pony up.