It's all about the narrow dogma for them.

Chickenhawks. War profiteers. These terms are the worst thing one could be called. As bad as pedophile. IMHO. But that is what they are.

and we have too many of them in the govt. and military. And then, there's the Shadow Govt: Corporations.

The Republican Guard fought bravely during Desert Storm, if not especially well. Prior to 1991 the Iraqi army was considered to be pretty good by Middle Eastern standards and had just fought the larger Iranian army to a draw.

What most don't understand is how badly they were outclassed in tactics, training and equipment by the American army.

A conventional land war against Iran would result in very heavy casualties to the Iranian army.

Occupying Iran, presuming a hostile population, would be a different story, since an occupation is manpower intensive.

.... but....

I'm accountably leery about promises of easy victories and "home by Christmas" pronouncements. They often turn out to be .... premature.

All the Iranian navy needs is a lucky hit on a US carrier.... or some whackjob dirty bomb set off near a US position. All they need is to get lucky.

That would change our whole military posture.

The Iraqi military was sever ly outclassed both times.

What didn't go so well was the aftermath. We had very little human intelligence about Iraq and what human intelligence we did have was often wrong (intentionally in some cases). Combine that with the three major population groups in Iraq (Kurds, Shia & Sunni) failing to work together and you end up with today's Iraq.

It's unlikely that Iran would get so lucky as to hit a carrier, the defenses are extremely tough and a carrier is not that easy to sink even if you do hit it short of using a nuke.

What really worries me about going to war against Iran, is Iran owns several batteries of SS-N-22 "Sunburn" antiship cruise missiles. These things are no joke: very powerful and extremely fast. They fly Mach 3 - faster than the Standard missiles that would be used as counterbattery fire - and carry 600-pound warheads.

during a conflict and a single missile (with a range of about 70 miles) with a 600 pound warhead is NOT going to sink a carrier that weighs more then 100,000 tons.

Barrages of the things? Be better off going for the escorts.

Comparing the Republican Guard to the Iraqi Army would be like comparing the 75th Rangers or the 1st Marine Division to one of those teabagger militias we sometimes post pictures of here. The Republican Guard were all volunteers, well trained, well equipped, and very tough. And since they got paid, by Iraqi standards, a lot of money, people made careers in the Republican Guard. The Iraqi Army was a conscript army with bad training, worse equipment and no morale at all, and during Desert Storm those guys were surrendering to anything they could find. One unarmed CNN camera crew was credited with capturing an entire Iraqi infantry battalion.

The Iranian Army is decently trained, pretty well equipped, and has decent strength: 350,000 guys on active duty plus another 350,000 reservists. If the US decided to invade, they also have a few million guys who've served recently enough they still know how to fight. They have 1500 main battle tanks. Probably none of them would survive a gunnery duel with an Abrams, but they're more than a match for an armored personnel carrier. They also have 1500 APCs and some aircraft.

If the US was stupid enough to go into a war in Iran, it would be Super Bowl 48 all over again, with dead soldiers instead of disappointed Broncos fans...the Seahawks weren't supposed to win that game. And the REASON we would get fucked, the question none of the chickenhawks can answer, is "how will we know when we've won?" Never fight a war unless you can answer that. The Iranians can answer it easily: they will have won when the US packs its shit and leaves. The Iraqis answered it the same way.

The Iraqi Army in 1991 was composed of three levels: The Republican Guard, the regular Iraqi Army units and the draftees & whoever they grabbed off the streets to put in the front line trenches. It was the ones in the trenches who surrendered en masse. The Republican Guards were made to look like amateurs.

The Iranian military is a good 30 years behind in technology; license built Russian T-72's and "new" production tanks based on the old American M-60 tank is not "pretty well equipped"

What you don't grasp is that it is that the US military has developed so far that it is no longer about numbers, at least in when it comes to conventional combat.

a war would be INSANE.

That is my position. Unless and until Iran attacks another nation the United States should refrain from engaging in any kind of shooting war. No more preemptive wars.

for an excused absence on this one...

While I am not advocating a war with Iran, if one does occur, what makes people think we are going to invade the country?

A far more likely scenario would be air strikes and cruise missile strikes against military targets. MAYBE there would be small scale hit & run raids by SEALS and other special operations units.

but here's hoping!

That was 13 years ago and the war on terror is still going strong. We've outright invaded two nations supposedly in response to them and have conducted special forces military operations, and drone attacks etc. inside several others. We have hugely expanded our national security apparatus and expenditures as well - with no end in sight.

My point isn't to debate competing justifications and morality, just to state the obvious. When foreign nationals conduct air strikes against a nation, there is little reason to think that nation will simply absorb the blows and leave it at that, especially if relations have already been bitter for generations.

Guess they'll have to reinstate the draft for that kind of operation. Wonder if they'd raise taxes?

No wonder Dulles Brothers sold Ike on using CIA for AJAX and cost effective theft.