How long tell the war is over?

[ElectricFetus]

How bad you think its going to be for the oil crusaders/ I mean USofA? How much death and destruction for the Iraqi military? what about the civilians? whats going to happen after the war?

[Thor]

It'll all be over by Christmas

[Vortexx]

Honestly, I have no clue.

The US has superior airforce that can damage anything out in the open field without too much retaliation (if you don't count all those friendly fire accidents), But if things turn into urban guerilla that would complicate matters.

Paramount is wheather the average iraqi in a Baghdad street wants to be "liberated" by the usa government.

Killing Saddam would probably help a lot to speed up the process.

if some divisions of the republican guard mix with the civilians in Baghdad, It would be very hard to maintain the promise of keeping the deathtoll amongst civilians acceptable.

Now people may differ about what is acceptable , but I think non-specific carpetbombing of baghdad (instead of attempted precise strikes) would cost probably some precious votes for the next election. Maybe the possible use of the nuclear bunker buster (to get to saddam and his inner circle) can be justified by that the only other option was to destroy whole baghdad. IOW: taking the lives of a few thousand to save millions.

[SuperFudd]

There are other posibilities.
First, there will be no carpet bombing of civilian areas, even if the only alternative is block by block fighting.
I suspect the solution could involve special forces of our own infiltrating the city and making contact with anti Saddam groups, which may be a majority of the population. And then...
Or we could just nuke Saddam.

[hypewaders]

This war will be over when Americans can live in Iraq and in US cities without fear of "terrorist" attack. It will take complete disengagement, reparations, and at least a generation.

Yes, longer.