[robowombat]

John Keegan prognosticates for a land force campaign against Iraq.

[CatoRenasci]

Politically, Keegan is a muttonhead (read his awful book on the nature of war), but in terms of pure military analysis he is one of the best around. I think he is correct here that a heavy invasion would be the best option. It's a pity we don't have airborne armored units, even a a couple of battalions of Korean vintage M-41 26ton light tanks with upgraded guns, firecontrol and some missles, would probably do the job.

[Illbay]

...aircraft carrier Ark Royal...

BUMP for the coolest ship's name in existence!

[Delbert]

Heavy Invasion: You mean theyre sending in Rosie ODonnel and Hillary Clinton? Victory is ours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[Ancesthntr]

. It would be a repetition of Desert Storm in 1991, with the difference that America would not plan to include allied contingents in large numbers.

Desert Storm was, itself, largely an American operation. We had about 500,000 troops, the Brits 50,000 or so and the French maybe 25,000. All of the others (mainly Arabs) were there for only for show - they did virtually nothing, and not very well, at that.

[CIB-173RDABN]

His premise is wrong.

He assumes we will need the permission of the host country and without it, we can not do anything.

I would think we could set up a military base of operation pretty much anywhere we wanted to.

Now it is true there are a few in the area we would not want to treat with such heavy handiness, but there are some that it wouldn't matter.

If we started a major build up along the Saudi Arabia - Iraq border, who is going to stop us?