Iran is a much larger and FAR more populous country than Iraq. And worse and more defensible terrain.
You're living in a drug-addled fantasy world if anyone thinks we're invading Syria or Iran anytime in the remotely foreseable future.
As long as North Korea exists, we basically don't have the force to do so as well as occupy Iraq, except in the exceptionally dubious possibilty that the Iranian regular army ACTIVELY allied itself with invading US forces against the Pasdaran.
Wasn't that said about Afghanistan, that the terrain and the winter weather would decimate our forces?
Invading Iran just isn't going to happen, for the reasons you mentioned. But a war fought exclusively from the air - taking out their nuke facilities, ground forces, and the ayatollahs themselves) is a disinct possibility, and quite doable. The Iranian revolutionaries would then take care of the rest.
Syria is another story -- much smaller, easy terrain, and a pathetic armed forces. In addition, they very well could be in possession of Saddam's WMD (that every sane and informed person knows he had). I wouldn't discount our taking them out in a manner not too dissimilar to what we did in Iraq. If we find those WMD the Dems will be deprived of their #1 (and longstanding) beef against the administration, and their chances in '04 will be all but eliminated.
You're living in a drug-addled fantasy world if anyone thinks we're invading Syria or Iran anytime in the remotely foreseable future.
I don't think any sensible person is talking about marching to Teheran, but an invasion to destroy the paramilitary "Jerusalem Force" camps along the Iraq/Iran border where senior al-Qaeda officials are reportedly being harbored, may well be doable. Much depends on info I'm not privy to, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of a temporary and limited invasion.
The numbers "on paper" say we can, but when you figure in troop rotation, funding, and most of all the media management of yet "another" war (and I know, it's the SAME WAR, the ORIGINAL WAR, but it won't be played that way), well, I think we have to make sure Afghanistan and Iraq are completely set before we go after the next target. But I'm all for eventually taking out all these creeps.