Who wants to make a wager?

[chemwarrior]

Im just a bit curious. How long do you guys think the war is going to take? Days? Weeks? Months? Perhaps years?

Also, what about casualties? What do you think the effect of this war will be on the opposing militaries?

And finnaly, what do you think will happen to people like Bush and Blair's carrers? Also, what about the 'freedoms' we still have? Will they be removed, or will we gain more?

<small>[ March 19, 2003, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: chemwarrior ]</small>

[10fingers]

OK, heres my predictions;
The war will take two weeks, the US and British will move rapidly through Iraq, most of the fighting will be around Baghdad and Tikrit.
Saddam will sneak out of the country at the last minute, either to Bahrain, Syria or Libya.
For the Americans, there will be around 500 dead and 2x that wounded.
For the British 100 dead, 25 of them from "friendly fire".
Bush and Blair will get a resurgence of popularity because the war went so fast and with so few casualties.

[Anthony]

I'm giving 3:1 on Saddam being captured alive! :cool:

[chemwarrior]

Lol Anthony! I myself have a feeling that he is going to pull one of those "You'll never take me alive!" stunts where he will set off chem and bio weapons, hoping to take as many of us damn Americans with him.

Also, did anyone see on CNN where the military luanched several bombs for the news crew who were there? My god, I thought my head was going to explode from all the cheering. :)

[Ezekiel Kane]

The aerial war will last four days. The ground war, perhaps 50 to 80 days.

<small>[ March 19, 2003, 08:26 PM: Message edited by: Ezekiel Kane ]</small>

[Arkangel]

Oooooh, I can't resist a bit of Pedantry and badinage here.

The air war will go on as long as the ground war (check Afghanistan), although the most intense phase will be the first 2 weeks.

If the Iraqis have learnt anything from the Serbs, you might even see a Stealth bomber shot down.

The "allies" (PAH!) will take 2 weeks to get to Baghdad, if that. Tikrit - well that depends if Turkey let them go in from the North, but in both cases you will see urban warfare of a limited scale. Saddam won't be found alive.

Allies maybe 500 dead all in, but from the attacks in Afghanistan and terrorists around the world, I reckon we'll see another 100 Yanks/Brits/Aussies/(a)Pole killed inplaces like Yemen, Libya, Pakistan Africa and maybe even back home.

It will take 2 months to quell the major conflagrations in Iraq (attacks on Remf's on the 400 mile supply line to Baghdad etc) and another 8 years for every Iraqi town to have it's own McDonalds and Disney store.

In 15 years, you'll see all the kids that were starving a year ago waddling around in baseball caps, eating gum with their mouths open and saying "y'all" like little fat American Fucks.

In 20 years time, America will decide that it doesn't like the new leader, and will invoke it's pet UN to put sanctions on them again. 5 years after which it will find a spurious excuse to bomb them back to 2003 :p

<small>[ March 19, 2003, 08:41 PM: Message edited by: Arkangel ]</small>

[chemwarrior]

Ands so the cycle continues, eh Arkangel? :D

[knowledgehungry]

I was actually trying to start some wagers at my school about casualties... but people thought it was a little tasteless.

[kingspaz]

i'll go for a year just to be different :)
it all depends how many iraqi troops surrender. if none do then theres 130 000 murders for the US and UK to do.

[Ghostcustom 24]

I think it will be about 1 month although I agree it could be much longer if there is extensive street fighting.

[Nihilist]

I say a week tops considering about 1/8 of their army has already surrendered. A whole big group of them surrendered before the war even started, the british were practicing and firing blanks at targets(don't ask me why) and the iraqi soldiers thought they were being attacked, and promptly surrendered without the slightest bit of fight.

[darkdontay]

My wager is that Bush will drag this out for atleast three months but will not declare it a war for at lest three more weeks. It is just left to be seen what will happen.

[Flake2m]

I say the war will last six weeks but CNN will go back home after a week because the press will start to get bored.

As for me, I really need to make preparations for "The war on Protestors" which is going to begin if the anti-war nuts dont shut up. The war has started, so Blair, Bush and Howard aren't going to back down now. If the protestors do anything like what they did to Vietnam soldiers there will be serious consequences.

[knowledgehungry]

Flake i couldnt agree more... Smoke bombs methinks?

[Bitter]

Yeah, I reckon Saddam (assuming he isn't already dead, and the speech was not doen by a double) will escape and end up like bin Laden, spending the rest of his life hiding in a cave somewhere.

[chemwarrior]

Anyone think that there is a chance that Saddam is already out of the country? All I know is that if I were him, I would be somewhere like America, and run the show from there, while keeping a 'puppet' in Iraq to make the world think that I was there. That way, I can stay nice and safe and still get to be ruthless:)

[Spudkilla]

Flake, CNN was kicked out of Baghdad when the war started, because "the Iraqis thought they were reporting war secrets" or some shit :rolleyes: I think the war will last at least another week, with light resistance by the Iraqis. The total Allied casualties will be about 50 - 75 (14 killed already, including one US Marine).

[chemwarrior]

Spud, I thought it was like 8 US marines and 6 British troops? Also, did anyone see today before they booted all the reporters out of the country where they were all wearing gas masks? Does anyone know if there was an actual reason??

[10fingers]

So far there have been 14 casualties, 2 marines by enemy fire and 4 on the heli crash. The British lost 8 on the crash. I offer my condolences to the Brits, it was a sad way to go. Just like the first war we may have more casualties from accidents than enemy fire.
The coalition forces have been rolling through Iraq with very little opposition, this was probably to be expected. The Iraqis know they have no chance out in open country so they are going to concentrate their defenses in the urban areas. This way they can negate our air superiority to a degree and in house to house fighting they can slow us down and cause the most casualties. If enough Iraqi units see the futility of their situation they may throw in the towel and it will never get to urban fighting.

[zaibatsu]

I've heard this morning that some more brits have died - two choppers crashing into each other. Nothing like making it easy for them...
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2875009.stm" target="_blank">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2875009.stm</a>

[Arkangel]

I hope so 10fingers, I really do. There's no way that dubya or tony will back out of this, whatever happens. They will pour as much effort (obviously not their personal effort - the poor bloody infantry as the saying goes) as required. But subduing Iraq is unlikely to be as easy as the politicians will have been kidding themselves "we're OMNIPOTENT"!!!

The Iraqi military cause is already lost, so it would be far better for them to throw in the towel now and get back home to their families as soon as they can. It all depends now on how much loyalty and patriotism exist within their army and the population as a whole.

[J]

<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2877349.stm" target="_blank">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2877349.stm</a>

'For the British 100 dead, 25 of them from "friendly fire".' - 10fingers is winning this so far. Although I think that it will be more like 100 dead, 90 from 'friendly fire'. The Americans have also killed 3 British newsmen so far too. I'm sorry, but how can anyone be so fucking inept that they repeatedly kill their own allies? This really pisses me off.

[Arkangel]

My great Aunt Nora, (the one who's ashes we fired off in rockets after she died) was a veteran from the RAF in WW2.

She carried a lot of generalisations with her in life, and a couple of these were......

If you're fighting a war, you don't want the french on your flanks, as you know they're going to run.

You also don't want Americans anywhere fucking near you (her words - impressive from an 80 year old) as they are guaranteed to shoot you as well as the enemy.

And the war she was in was 60 years ago!!!!

[Anthony]

I didn't realise the ITN news crew were attacked by "friendly fire", I thought they had come under enemy fire. Incompetance of the highest order! :mad:

[Arkangel]

Well, I have to say I think I did pretty well here <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

US troops WERE on the outskirts of Bghdad in 2 weeks (pretty much), although there were far fewer allied casualties (that we know of) than I'd said.

Let's hope it does die down as quickly as it started eh :)

[chemwarrior]

I dont count on that happening Arkangel. Bush is likely going to use this as a reason to go after North Korea now. As many members have said, he is going to drag this out as long as possible.

<small>[ April 09, 2003, 08:03 PM: Message edited by: chemwarrior ]</small>

[Arkangel]

Well, Korea's probably on the list, but it's not next.

Syria is next door to a country with a shitload of US troops in it already, and it's also quite a thorn in the side to the Israelis and therefore Bush's roadmap for peace in the middle east. Apparently they TOO have WMD's..........or so the pentagon has recently announced.

Syria's next, but really I was talking about things inside Iraq.

[darkdontay]

It is almost becoming as sad as the Marachty trials... Just drug on and on..

And now we get to jump from one scare that is just the ultimate threat to
America if they are alould to continue your childrens very life is at stake..
oh shit wait I mean this guy over here..

Yes He ... Yes he is the very threat of which..
no wait or was it him...no maybe this guy over here.......................Oh yeah
give us more money :p

[Arkangel]

Just thought it was worth dragging this old thread back up for a quick look at everyone's predictions about Iraq. Old news I know, but interesting to read the thread almost a year on......the 500 US dead was a pretty good guess!

[Jacks Complete]

It is pretty clear the answer was that the war would go on for as long as Bush&Blair said it would, regardless of the actual truth (as with so many other things).

They cannot "win" this "peace" since about half Iraq now see the US forces as being an occupying army. You can't impose 25 years of welfare state in a year, and that is the only way to subdue a proud and indepedant people.