I don't think it's going to be that high. If it's really hard to take down Baghdad, back of and drop several MOABs.

There's only so much the armed forces can to do to minimize civilian deaths, but if it's the choice of minimizing civilian deaths and total victory, they'll take victory.

Because, if there's defeat, the Iraqi civilians are going to be killed by Saddam's forces anyway.

Read the article in the post above....which concurs about the strength. Of course Barry McCaffrey is a good friend of Joe Galloway from Desert Storm..

These stories, partly because of their sources, are extremely disturbing. I can not say strongly enough how much I hope McCaffrey is wrong.

It has a stench of the 'retired athlete' reflexively saying the 'new guys' aren't anywhere as good as 'we were'... It's BS from a personality who wants to get in the action any way he can.

Like I think I've said, I think the only reason the invading army is as big as it is is because of Powell. I think if it were up to Rumsfeld, it would be more like Afghanistan.

That said, it's still not nearly as big as the forces in the first Gulf War. And yet they're expected to do more fighting (without the benefit of all that bombing back then).

Seems like the armchair generals like to take every opportunity they can to make a swipe at Rumsfeld. Their apparent disdain for Rumsfeld seems to color their objectivity.

I'm no military expert, but if the Republican Guard is "dug in", doesn't that make them targets for our bombers? Wave afer wave of softening them up, then MOAB times 3 or 4, and then who is going to be left to fight? Why f*ck around at this point? Kill as many of these bastards as possible, in 15 minutes, and see how brave the rest of them are. Our goal has to be to save American lives.

The way we fought in Afganistan made sense. It was very hard to get to, primative, and our enemy the Taliban was little more than a disorganize rabble with guns. Special Forces + air power + locals could do the job.

Iraq is another matter entirely. It is full of large, built-up cities. It can field plausible military formations. Yes, their equipment is out of date and all but it isn't a mob of unorganized yahoos.

And yet we're trying to take over this entire nation with 3 divisions plus a little more? Why don't we have 5 or 6 or more? That could have been done in the long build-up.

Keep in mind that "casualties" does NOT equal "deaths." It includes wounded. I've heard estimates of 1 death for every 4 to 5 wounded. And keep in mind that his 3,000 casualties is his outside number. And he has no real understanding of what's really going on.

Jeff, the problem is that the Iraquis got smart after the last war. If you haven't caught the news articles yet, one of the more frequent complaints by US spokesmen lately is that the Iraquis are deliberately placing army units in the middle of civilians to use them as human shields. Something that is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

That won't help the civilians very much, will it? Nor will it help the allied men and women killed by these rules of engagement.

The sad part is that it won't really affect the course of the war; it will just increase the casualty list.

Casey, thanks for the info.

So, this means what? Refrain from bombing? That is too great a shackle and prevents us from effectively protecting our forces in pursuit of winning the war.

So we should send our ground troops in there, risking death and misery via chemical weapons, because we are more worried about their civilians dying? I don't get the logic there.

Rules that effectively hamper one side due to the other side ignoring those rules aren't very useful. We might as well turn our weapons in.

We have to protect our forces, first and foremost, and the best way to do that is to absolutely destroy the opponent. There is no other way to fight wars.