War with Iran: "You and what Army?"

[Bluebear]

Seriously, everything else aside, where are we supposed to magically come up with the troops to invade yet another country? Is there some National Guard unit or Cub Scout Pack in Delaware that isn't on its fourth rotation in Iraq?

And who is going to pay for this? Our great-great-GREAT grandchildren?

[iconoclastic cat]

1. It will be an air war, launched from the 3 carrier groups

and two submarine groups that will be in the Gulf mid-April. D'ya have a buck to put down on it?

[wakeme2008]

3. And when Iran troops attack back...

What troops will we then use...

[iconoclastic cat]

8. Shhh! If I hear *anyone* planning for post-war with Iran...they're fired! nt

[twilight_sailing]

10. Counter attack - exactly

Iran will not just lie there and take it. They are not sitting ducks.

[iconoclastic cat]

14. It's going to be hard driving a troop transport over all that irradiated land. nt

[twilight_sailing]

18. If I am reading you correctly,

that's a different issue - the use of nukes.

[Bluebear]

5. Ay yi yi

:scared:

[bryant69]

6. That seems pretty plausible

More reasonable than my suggestion that we use mutated Porcupotamuses.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[SammyWinstonJack]

12. Iran doesn't have an Air Force, a Navy? They're just going to lay down while we destroy them?

No other Countries will come to their aid?

[iconoclastic cat]

13. Flowers, candy, etc. Now shut up and wave your powdered milk. nt

[SammyWinstonJack]

15. !

:patriot: :evilgrin:

[Bluebear]

16. (Playing fife here)

:patriot:

[Pharaoh]

19. I'm waving my nascar bumpersticker

and humping a picture of GW.......:patriot: :patriot:

How's that?

[SammyWinstonJack]

21. !

:spray: :rofl:

[Bluebear]

23. I'm putting on a Toby Keith CD & rubbing a yellow ribbon decal all over my body

Yessir, it's why we fight!

[kenny blankenship]

20. they don't have much in the way of either

the one thing they have that we would be deterred by tactically is Chinese made anti-shipping missiles. Those sites/launchers would be in the first wave of targets. They also have some long range missiles, not real accurate but good enough to terrorize cities.

[salin]

2. this is where the talking heads show the same disconnect as bushco

they *can't* say the word draft. But even they have talked about (in the past, never in the current discussion) how the military is stretched to a breaking point. So they just omit this BIG point and continue plugging the latest admin propoganda.

[ellenfl]

4. yes, it will be an air war . . . we will bomb iran from afar and

iran will bomb our troops in iraq from afar.

ellen fl

[Bluebear]

7. And "there won't be any casualties", as Icehead promised us for Iraq. nt

[RaleighNCDUer]

25. Afraid not. Halfway there --

We will bomb them from afar, expecting instant capitulation as their citizens rise up against the Mullahs and insist on restoring their democracy.

They, instead, will send 200,000 troops into Iraq to pulverise the US troops that are scattered across the country. The only way we can stop an armored division from rolling over us is with battlefied nukes. We lose thousands in a matter of days (to their tens of thousands) and the public is so outraged by the Iranian perfidy they will make no objection to a "temporary draft until the crisis is over".

That army.

[ellenfl]

31. i think the american public will be outraged by *'s recalcitrance,

not iran's perfidy. do you really think we'll fall for this a second time?

ellen fl

[RaleighNCDUer]

32. Unfortunately, if the trigger is the sinking of a carrier with the loss

of 2000+ crewmen, yes, that's just what will happen. With two carrier groups already in the region (don't know exactly where, or if the 2nd is quite in theater yet) and supposedly a third on its way, * is providing them with plenty of targets and is racheting up the provocations on a daily basis. Today's headline "radical Iraqi cleric hiding in Iran" is just more of the same - we will push until they push back. And when they do, it's all their fault.

[shadowknows69]

9. There has been a reason for so many multiple deployments in Iraq

Fresh reserves. GW Bush has more tin soldiers to play with than we seem to think. Watch for it.

[Blackhatjack]

11. I got your answer right here -- LINK

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x199467

A vote for the surge is a vote for the Draft....

[kenny blankenship]

17. It would be an air and naval campaign

Not all wars are invasions. For the most part, our Air Force and Navy are sitting around with nothing to do while the Army and Marines (Navy fellers who got lost on land) bear the burden of fighting in Iraq. I'm guessing that if it comes the war on Iran will be an excuse to protect the war in Iraq from further criticism. If we get into a shooting war with Iran and the Administration has established its line that Iran is the bad guy behind the scenes that we're fighting in Iraq, they can paint any attempt to get us out of Iraq as a cowardly retreat in the face of our enemy, Iran. Pushing up the military stakes for domestic political reasons, polarizing policy conflicts so that any critics of the Bush policy become "adherents" to an enemy power during wartime--that's been the consistent Bush-Cheney strategy from the day they took office. It's also consistent with Fascism. These people are serious about staying in Iraq no matter what it takes. They're serious about their Fascism too; I don't think they have experience with any other mode of thought or politics. You don't see them pausing construction on that Vatican City embassy they're building. You don't see any decline in the special appropriations for the war that they're demanding of Congress. But "Everyone knows we're getting out of Iraq!" Everyone that is but the people who actually order the troops around and who ordered them into Iraq in the first place. Clearly they mean to stay. They'll even stay in Iraq if the "worst case" scenario, that oft-promised nightmare in which Shi'ites and Sunnis begin a war to exterminate each other, or to ethnically cleanse each other from whole provinces of the country. A resolve to stay even while standing idly by in the face of genocide--that's the Bushler bottom line about Iraq. That was the implication of Sec. Gates remarks about pulling our troops back to empty regions of Iraq, if the splurge doesn't work, and just letting the Iraqis slaughter each other.

Would they attack Iran by air and sea in order to stay in Iraq on the ground? Hell yes they would. I don't know if they will-- but I am positive that they would do it if they thought the political moment was ripe for it (to put the Dems on the spot), or if they were down to their last ditch defense of the Iraq occupation.

[iconoclastic cat]

22. Do people really think that Iranian columns would march on in?

Yeah, like that would be a threat to US forces.

[RaleighNCDUer]

26. Yes, it would be a threat.

This is not a demoralized country that has suffered 10 years of extreme sanctions after two devastating wars. They can put a couple hundred thousand fresh troops into the field, using new and nearly new equipment, led by officers and NCOs who served in the 10 year Iran/Iraq war and are not afraid of combat. The country has twice the population of Iraq to draw on, for further recruitment. And they have, no doubt, gamed the invasion of Iraq every day since we invaded, knowing that they were probably going to be next. They know where our bases are. They have troops on the ground in Iraq already, in the Shi'ite militias, ready to wreak havoc on our response to their crossing the border with IEDs, ambushes, and sabatoge. We have 160,000 personnel in Iraq, plus another 50,000+ mercenaries and allied forces, and they are scattered across the country - we don't have the concentraton of forces that we did during our invasion - there is no place where an Iranian armored division could not devastate whoever lay in front of them. The only way we could stop multiple divisions from entering Iraq would be with battlefield nukes.

Yeah, that would be a threat to US forces.

[iconoclastic cat]

27. I understand the size and technological assets of the Iranians,

but I don't see how having a force of 200K marching over the border would ever make contact with US forces. Why use nukes, when conventional weapons (MOABs, daisy cutters, etc.) could wipe them out from afar?

Now, I think where you're absolutely correct is the assymetric warfare angle. What would most likely happen is not a counter assault over the Iranian border with Iraq, but a exponential rise in the level of violence by "insurgencts." I'd hate to be in the Green Zone about then.

[RaleighNCDUer]

28. Unlike Iraq, however, they have modern anti-air defenses, and

though their AF could not stand up to ours, or the Israelis, they know that, too, and also unlike Iraq, they would use it before they lose it. We don't know for certain how good their anti-missile defense is, but then missiles can't carry daisy-cutters. They have the capability of seeking out and destroying our AWACs aircraft, and while it wouldn't blind us it would degrade our capability significantly. And, of course, much of our airpower is based on the carriers, and we know they have the anti-ship missiles to take them out.

High tech can only go so far. I remember people saying the North Vietnamese would never be able to stand up to our air campaign because the B52s could hit them from beyond their reach. Didn't work out that way, and tho we maintained air superiority through the war they kept knocking a few of our planes out, and we never did stop the movement of men and arms into the south.

At casualty rates of 10 to 1, they lose 1.6 million to our 160,000 - but when the smoke clears, we're all gone and they have millions more on hand. If they really want to take us out, we won't be able to stop them short of using nukes.

[Leopolds Ghost]

29. How do you know they haven't built tunnels -- like Hezbollah did? The Vietcong tunnels

Stretched all the way to Saigon.

And Iran, inlike Lebanon, controls the border crossings on both sides. Shi'ite border guards employed by SCIRI are going to stop Iran from undermining border fortifications by building tunnels for night-time human-wave tactics? Who needs tanks in urban Iraq?

And it isn't even a suicide mission like it was in the Iran-Iraq Gulf War of the 1980s. They already have safe houses set up throughout the country.

The Mahdi army militia and police has pledged to support them, and the Badr brigades (which control the Iraqi south on our behalf) are going to sit by and watch while the Mahdi Army, Iranian irregulars and US forces wipe each other out in small-arms battles.

[iconoclastic cat]

30. Do you think that Bush will order the attack anyway?

I can't see him being daunted by these facts.

[twilight_sailing]

24. Well done, kenny