That can actually turn into a comparison of military specs as well
One of the most important factors in considering a war against Iraq is its practicality. There seems to be a great divide between the right and the left regarding this. The right claims that this will be a short, cheap operation which will cost few lives on either side, while the left claims that this will be an enormously expensive war of attrition that will kill thousands.
The irony here is that the people in the American government who most stridently support the war are also those that have never fought in wars such as Vietnam, including Cheney and Rumsfeld. In fact, Bush himself was AWOL for 18 months while supposed to in the National Guard.
Conversely, the people who oppose the war are the generals and administrators that actually have fought in wars, including Powell. Cheney think that the war can be won with less than 10k troops, while the generals in the Pentagon want 200k or more troops. This is the "chickenhawk" effect (Google for "chickenhawk" ).
This is the problem when the people in charge have a poor grasp of the technotactical realities of combat. I know you do not like discussing the technotactical aspects of conflicts between nations, asdfg2, but they are important nonetheless. We aren't just comparing weapons, asdfg2. We are thinking about the future.
My personal assessment is that it is impossible to know what will happen on the ground. There are far too many variables. If the Iraqi army rebels or there is an internal coup, this will be easy. If they dig in and fight house to house in the cities, the rivers will run with blood. I feel that the right is relying on too many "ifs" in their planning. They see the nearly ideal Afghanistan campaign and think that that is the way things will always be, rather than simply a stroke of good luck.
Given this, the worst case must be planned for. This is the only responsible thing that a commander can do. Sending too few troops results in more casualties on BOTH sides. in addition, there is nothing from the right about what to do once the war is won, which is even more important than actually winning the war. I think Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are leading the world into an ill-considered action due to their sheer ignorance of how wars work.
And that's the problem when people do not spend enough time "comparing weapons".
