Iran...?

[dead0man]

Here's a dose of reality.

1. The US Military does not currently have the man power to maintain a war on 3 fronts and will not invade Iran any time soon.

In order to move against Iran the US would either (A) have to win broad global support, (B) vastly increase the size of its standing military, or (C) abandon one of its other fronts.  After the Iraq debacle there's no way we can win global support.  We're currently struggling to maintain the size of military so the only way to grow it would be through a draft and that won't happen.  Bush won't abandon either of the other fronts.

The only thing that is "stretched" is our ground forces.  We don't need ground forces to keep a virtual knee in Iran's back semi-permanently.  Our (and our friends) Air Forces and Navies are enough to keep Iran from doing anything in either Iraq or Afghanastan.  What exactly could Iran do?  Say we bomb all their important nuclear sites and all their rocket emplacements around the Straits of Hormuz , what are they going to do?  Mobilize their militaries and start invading Iraq?  We haven't seen the USAF blow up standing Armies in what...4 years?  Have we forgotten?  Daisy Cutters are AMAZING things and B52's can carry lots of 'em and we got lots of B52s that ARE NOT tied down in Baghdad.

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Agreed.  Iran's best case (well, their best case would be to overthrow the current regime and in all honesty, that's OUR best case too, but nobody on either side seems to actually desire that outcome) is to secretly aquire several nukes at once and then let the world know that they have them.  As you point out, once N.Korea got them, the West went all pussy in regaurds to the midget with a pot belly.

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I doubt Iran will be able to make them locally without their assorted neighbors going crazy on them.  Saudi Arabia and the assorted surrounding Kingdoms and Emirates don't want that.  The rest of the Arabs (for the most part) also don't want to see the Persians getting nukes.  Israel obviously doesn't and has the ability to by itself to put a hurt on Iran (they don't now because of the repercussions politically in the Middle East, but if they thought Iran was close...).

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I'm proud to say I voted 3rd party (Libertarian) both times he's run.  I'm proud to say I've never voted for a winning President in the 4 elections I've voted in.  But I'm not going to blame the people that voted for him in 2000.

2004 on the other hand....the jackasses should have known.

[dead0man]

An invasion of Iran would cause an army coup and outlawing of the GOP at home.

speaking of which, dubya and cheney can order an attack on iran if they want, but what's the chance the military will actually do it?

If it's just bombing their military and nuclear targets? 100%  If it's wanting 100k men in Tehran? not so much.

But we can rest assured that NO likely "Attack on Iran" plan calls for 100k men in Tehran.  We don't have to occupy a country to defeat it.

[dead0man]

The only thing that is "stretched" is our ground forces.  We don't need ground forces to keep a virtual knee in Iran's back semi-permanently.  Our (and our friends) Air Forces and Navies are enough to keep Iran from doing anything in either Iraq or Afghanistan.  What exactly could Iran do?  Say we bomb all their important nuclear sites and all their rocket emplacements around the Straits of Hormuz , what are they going to do?  Mobilize their militaries and start invading Iraq?  We haven't seen the USAF blow up standing Armies in what...4 years?  Have we forgotten?  Daisy Cutters are AMAZING things and B52's can carry lots of 'em and we got lots of B52s that ARE NOT tied down in Baghdad.

Oh we can definitely bomb someone back to the Stone Age without batting an eye.  But that ability didn't prevent the North Koreans from acquiring a nuke and I doubt it will stop the Iranians.  I fully expect them to perform a little underground nuclear test sometime over the next 5-10 years.  The real fear isn't that Iran will invade somewhere but that they will acquire nuclear technology and sell it to every lunatic who wants it.

Iran doesn't have the geographic and geopolitical ties to China that N.Korea does.  I'm not saying the same situation won't happen in Iran, I'm just saying it would be easier for us to stop them (militarily) from making their own nukes than it would have been for us to stop N.Korea.  Plus, nuke's in the UNstable Middle East are a much bigger concern than nukes in the the fairly stable Far East.  Again, not saying that Iran will/wont get a bomb, just that it will be easier and more necessary to stop them than it was for us to stop N.Korea.

[dead0man]

The only thing that is "stretched" is our ground forces.  We don't need ground forces to keep a virtual knee in Iran's back semi-permanently.

Bulls***. You need ground forces and a navy to accomplish anything beyond one explosion.

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Air Forces are near worthless in an overall conflict. The only thing an Air Force can do is blow up a building and make it look good on the evening news.

Air Forces are near worthless in an overall conflict?  Are you serious?

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Bah?

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The Navy is our strongest asset, but it can't clear mines without Brit help?

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If the Iranians instigate the attack this is possible, if we start it this is much less likely (though still possible).

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Right.  They won't mobilize and if they do, they will get bombed to dust.  We have nothing to fear from Iranian ground forces.  Well, we have nothign to fear against large groups of Iranian ground forces.

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The idea is that we attack them before they get nuclear weapons.

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We wouldn't need to.  We'd just need to hit the one (or several at most) rockets that have the war heads on them.  Iran can NOT secretly place warheads on a Shahab-3 without us seeing.

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That's just not true.

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The simplest way to fight an Air Force is to not give them anything to shoot at. You could have used the Daisy Cutters and B52s against the Hezbollah in the past July War and they wouldn't have been able to do anything due to the general scattering of the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.[/quote]I wasn't aware the US was fighting in Lebanon last year.

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So can France. Doesn't mean it's an option.

I'm not saying the same situation won't happen in Iran, I'm just saying it would be easier for us to stop them (militarily) from making their own nukes than it would have been for us to stop N.Korea.

The best way to ensure an enemy will run into the arms of another enemy is to threaten him. That's why Iran ran to Russia and Russia ran to China. The Russians are right now making money selling nuclear material to Iran, but do you seriously think the Russians will give enough nuclear know-how to Iran to put Moscow within striking range of an Iranian missile?[/quote]Nuclear power know-how has nothing to do with Iran's ability or inability to get a nuclear weapon to Moscow.  They currently do not have that ability.

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Agreed.  Imadinnerjacket is an idiot the same way Bush is an idiot.  Smart enough to pool power, not anywhere near smart enough to govern effectively with the betterment of ones country as their goal.

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Nah.  We teach geography in High School and only the ones that care learn any of it.  As an elective option though, now that I could get on board with.

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Depends on what kind of war you're fighting and what your goals are.  If you want to nation build like Bush does (and I don't agree with by the way), yes, you need an Army.  But really, a police force would be more appropriate.  That's all the Army in Iraq is.  If you just want to punish a nation though, you wouldn't need more than the Air Force.  I acknowledge that in most wars an Air Force isn't enough to "win", but the DoD couldn't do anything without air superiority.

By the way I'm not advocating that we attack Iran.  I'm just explaining that it doesn't have to be a total fark up if we do.  It doubtlessly WOULD be, but it doesn't HAVE to be.

[dead0man]

StateBoiler, you understand it's 2007 not 1907 right?

Now I might have some biases as I'm a USAF Vet and still work for them as a contractor, but I'm pretty sure I'm right when I say air superiority is a HUGE factor in modern warfare.

Also, your link agrees with me.

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If some computer chair General can figure that out, I'm sure the planners at the Pentagon can too.

[dead0man]

Raytheon?

I did when I first got out, but they got under bid on the contract by ITT (not the school) in 2002.  Most of the equipment I work on is Raytheon though.

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I think that a modern military needs superiority in all three areas, if it's missing one it would take a huge hit in it's capabilities.

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That's something we can agree on.

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But the military kicked ass in Iraq when it was allowed to act like a military.  Forcing the Army to play Police while Bush tries to force Democracy down the throats of the locals isn't something the Army and Marines should be doing.

[dead0man]

Should Israel have just sat on their hands?  What if France crossed into Luxembourg and kidnapped a couple of kids and allowed rockets to be launch from French soil without the French govt. doing anything to stop it, would Luxembourg have no right to defend themselves?  It's not the Isaeli's fault that the Lebanese people can't control themselves.  (actually, I'm sure some on this board actually think it is the Israeli's fault.)

(and Turkey has traditionally been a much more stable Muslim secular democracy than Lebanon has.  It was less than 2 decades ago that Lebanon finished their last civil war.)

[dead0man]

Hezbollah is not the "Lebanese people", it's a fringe group operating from within the southern regions of the country (where they are, admittedly, popular, but not in the rest of the country). If you wanna take out Hezbollah, aim for the regions from within they operate, but don't bomb the whole country to sh*t in the vain hope that you might hit something (which is clearly what happened here, since Hezbollah were hardly affected by the massive bombing campaigns). That is simply counterproductive.

Except that it isn't a fringe group.  link

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<snip>

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Except Turkey's "democracy" is far more flawed and basically a quasi-military dictatorship. Remember, this is a country where referring to the Armenian genocide can land you in prison.

More flawed than Lebanon?  Turkey has some issues as you mention, but it's still more stable by a long shot than Lebanon is.  And that goes for today and most of the past half a century.

[dead0man]

Well Bush wouldn't attack Iran because he woke up in a bad mood one morning, he would need an excuse.*  And if he had an excuse, he could sell it to the military.  Especially if the military is the one that gave him the excuse in the first place



*-assuming of course that Bush is chomping at the bit to attack Iran, something I personally don't buy into 

[dead0man]

If he wanted to use that excuse...errr, I should say, If he thought he could get away with using that excuse, he would have already....one would assume.