Pentagon Chief: War With Iran 'Disastrous On Number Of Levels'

From Haaretz:

A war with Iran would be "disastrous on a number of levels," according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

In an article appearing in the latest issue of Parameters, the U.S. Army War College quarterly, Gates wrote that with the army already bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, "another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need" - despite the fact that Iran "supports terrorism," is "a destabilizing force throughout the Middle East and Southwest Asia and, in my judgment, is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons."

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My Comment: All wars bring up scenarios that are never rosy. The general consensus on the Iraq war was that the battle for Baghdad would cost 15,000 American lives, a battle that would resemble Stalingrad. 30,000 body bags were in Kuwait ready for overall U.S. combat deaths for the first 6 weeks.

But having said that .... any war with Iran will involve hundreds of thousands of American combat troops, a minimum of 1,000 combat aircraft, and a minimum of 3 ... maybe 4 ... certainly 5 carrier groups.

Casualties will be heavy. The air campaign alone will take at least two months. The shock to the world economy would be the start of a recession .... maybe a depression for 1 to 2 years. Overall costs for such an operation will bust the U.S. budget, and we are not even talking about occupying the country.

Yes .... war will be disastrous. But if Iran should provide the worst terrorist groups in the world access to crude nuclear weapons .... the result would be far worse than having an actual war with Iran.