Your prediction about the outcome of this war

[Chris Blount]

Personally, I don't think there will be a war. I think Sadam is already dead or badly hurt. Our tanks will roll into Bagdad with little or no resistance and they will be cheered all the way in by the Iraqi people.

Optimistic? Yes. But I guess we will see.

[cooper]

I think 99% of the country will be taken in a couple of days, but Baghdad might be a tougher nut to crack, taking about a week to secure, unfortunately with some US casualties I fear. IMO

[James_F]

I don't know its going slow... Could be weeks before they take the cities depending on how things go. I'm assuming they'll avoid Bagdad, Basra and other cities and surround them rather than fight door to door. After taking the whole contry, then the'll work on the cities and then we'll see how much Iraqi's will fight. Hopefully by then they won't want any part of us.

[AkShark]

Iraqi 0
World 1

Game Over!

[blingbling]

I'm not optimistic at all :( .

Hopefully the war is going to go much better than anyone had hoped. Maybe 'Shock & Awe' won't be implemented.

Its the occupation that worries me. I truly think its going to be a freakin' nightmare. We're furious with Turkey and have virtually no presence in N. Iraq and won't for a while. The Turks and Kurds despise each other and the Turks would love to have those northern oil wells. If they try to move into Iraq I don't think there's much we could do about it. I don't think they'd be so overt as to march down to Kirkuk but maybe they would skirmish with the Kurds and have to be "drawn into" Iraq to "protect" their own border.

Iran could be a major problem. They have a huge border with Iraq that we can't possibly patrol. There's already talk of possible sleeper cells coming in from Iran to cause distrubances or possible terrroist attacks.

Shiites and Sunnis.

Baathists still loyal to Saddam.

Its too depressing to consider all the things that might go wrong. I just wonder how much loss of American life we are going to tolerate as an occupying force before we pull up stakes and leave?

This is going to be much more complicated than Afghanastan and we have no idea when we'll be able to leave there.

Hell we're still in Kosovo!

[jrjcd]

we will win and then we can get on to taking over the rest of the world...

[gcutler]

Originally posted by blingbling
I'm not optimistic at all :( .

"Winning the War, but Losing the Peace" seems to be a common occurance, we have to make sure that dosen't happen again

[blingbling]

Originally posted by gcutler


"Winning the War, but Losing the Peace" seems to be a common occurance, we have to make sure that dosen't happen again

That could be epitaph for this invasion. I certainly hope it isn't.

One thing I neglected to mention in my gloom & doom post is that according to the U.S. and British governments...and I believe them...there are thousands of liters of chemical weapons in Iraq. What are the chances we'll recover all of them? Slim and none and slim just left town. Not an easy weapon to use without killing yourself but an occupying army would make a very easy target.

I hope the Iraqis surrender soon and I pray that we get out of there ASAP.

[RichW]

Originally posted by gcutler


"Winning the War, but Losing the Peace" seems to be a common occurance, we have to make sure that dosen't happen again

I told myself that once the war started, I wasn't going to comment anymore on it, since it is now out of the political realm. But the situation couldn't be described any better than the above quote. There was very little doubt that we could, and now will, crush the Iraqi regime. Hopefully, ALL the Iraqi people will be grateful, but I fear that the backlash of our going it alone will make a large part of the world, at best, apathetic to our interests. And then ther is that part of the world's population who are really, really angry at the US and will promulgate all sorts of mischief against us.

We have to find a way to make everyone's interests and well-being tied to a peaceful world.

[Bogy]

Originally posted by gcutler
"Winning the War, but Losing the Peace" seems to be a common occurance, we have to make sure that dosen't happen again
Originally posted by RichW
I told myself that once the war started, I wasn't going to comment anymore on it, since it is now out of the political realm. But the situation couldn't be described any better than the above quote. There was very little doubt that we could, and now will, crush the Iraqi regime. Hopefully, ALL the Iraqi people will be grateful, but I fear that the backlash of our going it alone will make a large part of the world, at best, apathetic to our interests. And then ther is that part of the world's population who are really, really angry at the US and will promulgate all sorts of mischief against us.

We have to find a way to make everyone's interests and well-being tied to a peaceful world.
Amen. That's the part we aren't necessarily very good at. And unfortunately, our current administration has not shown a great proficiency at that kind of diplomatic action.