http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/18/iran.attack.reut/index.html

Sure it's some boasting and bluffing, but Iran is undoubtedly much stronger than Iraq was militarily. Since we seem unable to win against Iraq is it really the best idea to invade yet another Islamic stronghold with limited or no help from the rest of the world? It's a scary thought to me anyway.

We can't. We don't have the military to do it... But we can bomb and launch missiles at 2 or 3 dozen nuclear facilities in Iran. Almost a Clinton-esque response, actually.

Then we watch the torpedoes and the Avocets and whatever other anti-ship missles there are fly at the Navy ships in the Gulf... And watch Afghanistan slip from being a mere narco-state back into being an outright failed state suitable for terrorists as Iran undermines our whopping 10,000 troops there. Or, more likely, we just await an Iran-sponsored dirty bomb to go off in NYC or Washington - using debris from our precision-targeted bombing of their facilities.

But we'll do it resolutely.

What do you mean by winning a war?

With a little planning we could easily destroy their military and march into Tehran.

Then what?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/18/iran.attack.reut/index.html

Sure it's some boasting and bluffing, but Iran is undoubtedly much stronger than Iraq was militarily. Since we seem unable to win against Iraq is it really the best idea to invade yet another Islamic stronghold with limited or no help from the rest of the world? It's a scary thought to me anyway.

the US could defeat the Iranian military

the US would not be able to occupy Iran

a US military victory would not result in an effective prohibition on nuke proliferation in Iran

piecemeal hits against Iran would not result in an effective prohibition on nuke proliferation in Iran and may exacerbate the concern

Dubya will have to look at diplomacy to get a result here

look at last month's article in the Atlantic

Iran would be a pushover, like nearly everyone but China, but the problem would be the after effects. For that very reason, I hope that all us liberals will mount a better resistance strategy if a plan is under way to invade Iran.

A guy I knew in the Army retired last year as a full colonel and coincidentally wound up living a few miles from me. He spent his last three years in the Pentagon, and his (sanitized, pro-military-biased, non-secret-disclosing) assessment is that we can defeat the military without much trouble. A few thousand more dead American soldiers, of course, but they won't be related to Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld, so it's not seen as a major obstacle (I may be editorializing here).
But then what? Iran's population is more than twice that of Iraq's or Afghanistan's, so presumably it would take more troops to occupy and control. Do we have another quarter-million soldiers to send to the Middle East? Another $200 billion or so a year?
As he said, though, "You can't always assume a reasonable approach from this president."