It is unthinkable, unless they are proposing a nuclear war. I can't see us invading a country like Iran with conventional forces. Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers would die, and would cost trillions of dollars. The price of oil would shoot up to $200 a barrel.
Where did you come-up with this number? My unhappy estimate is less than 2,500.
Bullhockey.
I feel a DRAFT!
We just need to 'invade' a few places for a short period of time to knock out the deep bunkers then, back-out.
The words of Winston Churchill:
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
It is only "unthinkable" to dismiss an invasion with conventional forces if we are prepared to dismiss the notion of a nuclear-armed terrorist state as "unthinkable", as well.
No sanctions will stop Iran from its progress toward The Bomb now. They're too close.
No world opprobrium will have effect against them. They are too close.
Even a blockade of their oil ports will not stop them. They are too close.
There is only one thing that will quench the mullah's thirst for the power associated with possession of nuclear arms: The Bomb itself. And they are getting pretty damned close to having it at this point.
Having said that, there is only one solution that can STOP THEM from obtaining nuclear weapons at this late date, and we all know what that is:
Force.
Whether air power alone can inflict enough damage upon them to effectively block them from achieving their goals, I can't say. Perhaps nuclear air strikes would accomplish this, but I don't believe the United States, nor even Iran's sworn enemy of Israel, would risk the use of nuclear weapons in a first strike.
I daresay the ONLY way that may effectively end Iranian nuclear ambitions - not merely postpone them, but END them - must be an armed invasion that not only locates and destroys all their nuclear development strikes, but overthrows the Iranian leaders and nueters their military.
That means boots on the ground - hundreds of thousands of them. I don't believe the United States military is sufficiently strong enough at this time to accomplish this. Simply not enough feet to fill those boots. I could be wrong. Can one say, "draft"? (And by the way, I was drafted myself once, in 1970).
I'm just a dumb old guy. But I can see as much as I've said here. I'm able to see it because it's, well, obvious. Our leaders cannot see as much?
The Clinton administration disgracefully - traitorously - permitted the government of North Korea to go nuclear. But we would expect such malfeasance from them.
If the Bush administration diddles around much longer, I fear Iran may go nuclear, with eventual results much more devastating for the civilized world (as the author of the original article points out). What are they waiting for?
Remember Sir Churchill's warning!
- John
LOL! Yeah, our brass is so stupid that our soldiers will die en masse. Happens all of the time!
We would massacre Iranian fighters.
Did you lift that from Pravda or the NYT? LOL!
"I can't see us invading a country like Iran with conventional forces. Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers would die, and would cost trillions of dollars. The price of oil would shoot up to $200 a barrel."
Huh??? - maybe you need a new screen name. Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers would die??? Balderdash! This was not a 'brilliant' statement on your part. The # would be about the same as Iraq, maybe less.
Troop deaths would NOT be that high. Yes there will be fatalities as in every war. But it is better than the alternative. Economies will heal over time. However, nuclear weapons must not be allowed to get in the hands of suicidal mullahs.