O'Hanlon predicted in early 2003 in the journal "Orbis" that an invasion of Iraq could lead to as many as several thousand American fatalities, a prediction also confirmed by later developments. He decided in 2003 to create Brookings' Iraq Index, a web-based resource tracking trends in the country that has been perhaps Brookings most widely viewed site this decade, and which led to later decisions to create Afghanistan and Pakistan indices at Brookings as well. Excerpts of these indices ran on a quarterly basis in the New York Times from 2004 through 2012.