Prescient Pre-Iraq War 'Doonesbury' Strips Reprinted

By: E&P Staff The newspapers that have been publishing "Doonesbury" reruns this week because of a Garry Trudeau vacation are giving readers a prescient look at what would go wrong with the Iraq War.

This week's reprints are from October 2002, during the buildup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that would occur five months later. The strips predicted major post-invasion violence between Shiites and Sunnis, and high death tolls in Iraq.

"The possible outcomes I was describing five years ago did not spring wholly from my imagination," said Trudeau, as quoted in today's Dallas Morning News. "I'm just not that smart. But a lot of other people are, and anyone open to countervailing arguments about the wisdom of invading Iraq could have found their warnings easily enough."

"Doonesbury" appears in about 1,400 newspapers via Universal Press Syndicate.