http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2369001.ece "THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iraniansâ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert."
Will they ever learn that air power alone is not going to work against a real enemy with a real army. You need to follow it up with guys on the ground, and if Iraq has shown us anything its that we lack the commitment to actually win when we have guys at risk on the ground. Iran needs to be taken care of, but Iran needs to be taken care of with a commitment to taking care of it, not to waging a humanatarian war.
Depends on your objectives....If your goal is simply to eliminate their capacity to wage war, no doubt, this plan would accomplish that task. Capturing, or conquering the territory, would require much greater resolve, a much larger committment, and a completely different plan. I wonder what it's like to wake up today.....the leader of Iran, knowing all the shit I've talked in the last 3 years was just a bunch of hot air, and my reality check is that my military capacity is just 3 days from being non existent.
This play may or may not happen. Getting long Oil before the hurrican season may pay off, even though the two hurricans that are gulf bound, well one that past already, are no threat. Oil 100 a barrel for a few days. The US gov. will have to speak to the people during the attack, to tell them to sacrafice the higher gas prices for a short time while IRAN is bombed.
So we should become like the Nazis? Go all in and kill indiscriminately? Yea that sounds like a acton a civilized and democratic country should undertake. BTW, we have already tried that in Vietnam. after killing 3 million Asians the plan was folded and we left. To this day no apology or restitution. What a debacle that was and now you are advocating the same course of action? That is insane!
Yeah, when we are at war, we should. Why don't you read a little history and see how we won world war 2. Do you know how many civilians we killed on purpose, specifically to get them burned out on the war in order that we could finally win? Look at what we did to Dresden, or the fire bombings of Tokyo (which killed more people than the two atomic bombs) and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The list goes on and on, we killed MILLIONS of civilians for strategic purposes!. Had we not, there wouldnt be a Jew left on the face of the earth and we'd all be speaking either Japanese or German. Same thing when the North won the Civil War, they made it unbearable for the civilian population of the south, had they not, we'd still be fighting the damn thing. War is brutal, its not a touchy, feely friggin humanatarian mission of good will.
Also note that the last bombing campaign in the North had them on the brink, and ready to give in. We just blinked first. You can read Gen Gaip's (sp?) biography and he admits it. Had we continued the pressure, they would have given in...but our politicans again lacked the balls to understand the difference between a boxxing match in the ring and a street fight.