I design Axis and Allies based computer games to simulate global conflicts from World War One to a global conflict between China and the West 20 years from today. Since some of the software is "frozen" I fully agree that board games have important advantages in being easier to redesign without having to write or wait for new software. But a game is a model of reality and as such may be a very poor one. You say Iran has no chance of stopping an Israeli attack. How do we know that's really true? Also, you didn't mention how effective your attack was at destroying the nuclear facilities. That too would have been interesting.

Finally, given the nature of the mullah regime, why should we hope an airstrike on Iran "remains a game?" It MAY be the only responsible thing to do.

Seems the most important flaw in this "game" is that even if you win at this moment as you claim, what happens going forward for the decades to come? No doubt Israel would become more at risk with a larger pool of emboldened, as Bolton/McCain/Lieberman/Lindsay/Kristol/AIPAC+ would scream, enemies more enabled to cause significant damage to tiny Israel from every border via ground, sea and air.

Why do hits on the reactors or on Israeli civilian targets *lower* the morale of that side? Wasn't the lesson of strategic bombing that it actually strengthens the resolve of the people hit? I'm thinking of the Blitz, here.

Wouldn't each "successful" hit only make that side more eager to fight to the end?

Have "successful" terrorist attacks against the US made it less eager to fight wars abroad?

Seems like this game has that particular aspect of psychology backwards.

But between Peck's article and your comments it seems like there should be a massive game of Diplomacy (TM) being played in real-time along side the kinetic actions in Persian Incursion.

somethings just can't be inputed into a game or simulator. so it appears that you have forgotten the iran-iraq war in which iran did not think twice about letting 250 thousand of its boys die at the hands of the U.S backed sadaam hussein and his iraqi military. u are also forgetting that one of iran's main religious pillars is the concept of martydom so therefore they would not have a problem in recruitting thousands or maybe even a million or two men to rally around the flag and seek revenge on everyone involved whether its limited to U.S & baby israel or extends out to saudi arabia, turkey, iraq (and u stupidly leave out afghanistan) what makes u think iran won't change its current view of the kurds and arm, finance, and train them to carry out attacks in turkey. saudi arabia has always had a chicken shit military and is a laughing stock when it comes to military manuvers heck they can't even damage the rebels across the border in yemen, which by the way is another aspect u idiots and your gaming systems failed to address. and of course who can forget about the taliban that is currently giving an ass kicking to u white boys in afgahnistan. the loss of civilian life to 70 million iranians would not be as significant as it would be to 7.5 million israelis. u are also forgetting the fact that places like dubai n qatar where the iranians have assets would become hunting grounds for kidnappings and killing of white boys walking around. combine all these factors with weak and fragile economies of britian and U.S with the doubling of gas prices and u are asking for a hot mess. now ask urselves if satisfying baby israel, and making sure it doesn't crap in its diapers is worth all this. in reality, this isn't a game, think u idiots.

What about the possibility of pro-democracy Iranians taking advantage of an Israeli attack to revolt against the government? Was this programmed into the game? The review didn't mention it. Or was it just assumed by the game designers that all Iranian citizens would support the government in the event of an attack? These massive protests against the regime started in mid-2009 and so predated the game's creation.

my best friend's mom makes $77 an hour on the computer. She has been out of job for 9 months but last month her check was $7487 just working on the computer for a few hours.
Read about it here C A S H S H A R P . C O M

It might have been a mistake to leave groups like Hamas and Hezbollah out, but we should not automatically presume that they would launch attacks on Israel. The two might dislike Israel and have a better opinion of Iran, but they also have their own domestic interests. After the U.S is overwhelmingly on the side of Israel compared to Iran but I doubt that the U.S would give Israel anything more than some political cover and logistical support (and even that might not last long).

So what if Israel started destroying nuclear facilities of Iran and Iran started raining Israel (small area) with all what it have may be they have finished even one nuclear bomb? I think this will be a disaster in the whole area.

In my opinion Israel will never do something like that, trust me. These people don't start a war except if they are adult movies 100 percent sure that they will win with the least number of soldiers killed from their side and I don't think that this will be the case if they started a war with Iran. porno day This time America will not be able to support Israel as usual as they already have enough problems inside and outside the US.

Cheers,

Tell you what folks...

Illusionaz, SidRock, Adantigus, Injun, and rest - it's pretty darn easy to sit back and sling rocks at someone who has actually created something, with a lot of thought, development, research, and testing.
It's a lot harder for you to bother to either (a) do your own research and analysis and development, or (b) try to understand the designers.
You're certainly welcome to take the lazy way out and call someone an idiot for something you disagree with. But don't expect anyone to take you seriously when you clearly have never played the game, are drawing conclusions from one review and a few pictures, have no idea of the actual content of the game, and the best you can come up with are "the designers are clearly stupid because they don't know what typeface they should've used."
Graphic designers create images for marketing purposes; game designers create games for entertainment/education. I'm pretty sure the game designers weren't dictating font choices for the packaging.

So while you sit in the comfort of your easy chair, maligning someone else's hard work, keep in mind the tiny world you live in - that of a critic. Try expanding your horizons by creating something that's been through the level of research, testing, and development of this game and then get back to us.

Can a game replicate reality? Nope. As the adage goes: "all models are wrong, but some models are useful." Keep it within the scope of the model - exploring possibilities within the conflict without actually spilling any blood - and it's a remarkable game. Some things are explicitly *in* the model; some were explicitly left *out*, often for reasons of game balance or elegance of design. That's part of creating a professional product. You should try it some time.

Greece was not alone in the ancient world. Egypt was flourishing. Other civilizations were developing around the Mediterranean. One of the largest and most powerful was the Persian Empire.

The Greek world was tiny. It covered a small area at the southern tip of the Greek peninsula. The Persian Empire was huge. It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to the Indus River Valley.

Remember all those towns the ancient Greeks built in early times? Some were still flourishing. The Greek towns located along the Turkish coast had fallen under Persian rule. The Greek colonists were unhappy about it.

Athens sent supplies to help them out. Those supplies included weapons. Persia would have noticed the Greeks sooner or later, but this activity most definitely caught their eye.

The Persian army had no doubt that the Greeks would be easy to conquer. The Greeks were outnumbered - what chance would they have? The Persians laughed at the thought of the battle ahead.

What the Persians forgot, or perhaps they just did not know, was that the Greeks were incredible warriors. Athens had a highly capable navy, with ships that were tiny and easy to maneuver. The Spartan army was terrifying.

The Persians came three times, and fought three huge battles - Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis. Each time the Persians were convinced they could easily conquer the Greeks. Each time, the Greeks drove them away.

Xerxes, the Persian King, was furious at the result of the first two battles with the now hated Greeks. For the third major battle, the Battle of Salamis, he sent an incredible number of Persian ships to wage war on Greece. He didn't want just to win. He wanted Greece to be totally destroyed.

Xerxes (nicknamed "Xerx the Jerk" by some of our students) was so confident of success that he had his slaves carry a golden throne from Persia, and set it up on a hillside overlooking the Greek harbor, so he could be comfortable while he watched the Greeks die.

But the Greeks did not die. Their small ships could maneuver better. The Greeks were able to toss burning wood aboard the Persian ships and get safely away. The Persians had to abandon their burning ships. Those Persian sailors who made it to land were greeted by the Spartan army. The Spartans killed them all.

When Xerxes saw how the battle was going, he ran away and left his army behind. While Athens burned the Persian ships, Sparta left some men on the beach to handle any Persians who made it to shore Cruise agency. The rest of the Sparta army marched north and defeated the Persian army coming in from that direction.

This is what the greek did and what the ameericans are doing ??

Think

Please think.

Thanks

Russia has rejected as "unacceptable" EU calls for further sanctions against Iran in the wake of a UN report that Tehran had experimented with nuclear weapon designs, in effect guaranteeing that the international response would be muted.

Moscow's reaction to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report was delivered by the deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov, who spoke on Wednesdayduring a visit to Moscow by a senior Iranian official, Ali Baqeri.

"Any additional sanctions against Iran will be seen in the international community as an instrument for regime change in Tehran," the Interfax news agency quoted Gatilov as saying. "That approach is unacceptable to us, and the Russian side does not intend to consider such proposals."

Earlier in the day, France had called for a security council meeting on Iran and its foreign minister Alain Juppé said sanctions against Tehran should be raised to an "unprecedented scale" if Iran fails to cooperate with the investigations into past work on developing a nuclear warhead. In a report issued on Tuesday, the UN agency said it had found credible evidence that Iran had been carrying out experiments aimed at designing a bomb on a substantial scale until late 2003, and may have continued work on a lower level after that time.

Responding to the report for the first time on Wednesday, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attacked the credibility of the IAEA. "Why are you ruining the prestige of the agency for absurd US claims?" he asked, in a speech to a crowd of several thousand people in the city of Shahr-e-Kord in central Iran.

Iran has always rejected allegations it had a nuclear weapons programme, insisting that its aims behind its uranium enrichment efforts and extensive atomic research work have been entirely peaceful, and within Iran's rights.

"This nation won't retreat one iota from the path it is going," Ahmadinejad said.

In a statement to the House of Commons, William Hague said: "The assertions of recent years by Iran that their nuclear programme is wholly for peaceful purposes are completely discredited by this report."

The foreign secretary said that if Iran failed to enter serious negotiations on its programme: "We must continue to increase the pressure and we are considering with our partners a range of additional measures to that effect."

Hague, however, did not go as far as his French counterpart in calling for a security council session, but noted that the IAEA member states would meet in a board session next week. The board could opt, by majority vote, to refer Iran once more to the security council, but UK diplomats believe such a referral would be pointless in the face of the continued threat of Russian and Chinese vetoes.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, criticised Iran and the IAEA, calling on Tehran to be "serious and flexible" and to cooperate with inspections and adding pointedly that the UN agency should be "objective".

In Israel it was reported that prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu had ordered his cabinet ministers not to speak publicly about the report, letting other world capitals take the lead. In the run up to its publication, however, Israeli officials had described it as the world's last chance for a peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis, while the Israeli military carried out high-profile missile tests and long-range aerial bombing drills.

Germany said it firmly rejected any military action, calling instead for "new, stronger sanctions". Its foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, said talks were underway between EU member states and international partners on new sanctions, which he called "unavoidable".

Diplomats and observers said that in view of Russian and Chinese opposition, any new punitive measures are likely to be incremental, possibly including a tightening of EU financial and travel sanctions to match US sanctions, and addition of more targets to the UN financial sanctions list.

Reports from Washington on Wednesday night said that new unilateral US sanctions were expected next week, enlarging the list of Iranian individuals and organisations subject to restrictive financial and travel measures. Anything stronger is likely to be vetoed by Russia and China, they said. The response of the Obama administration appears to have been muted for similar reasons, and Washington is close to exhausting its options for applying unilateral pressure.

The deep international divide over how to deal with Iran's nuclear programme is increasingly threatening to undermine the IAEA's standing as an independent arbiter, and politicise its work. Both Russia and China had taken the unusual step of asking the agency's director general, Yukiya Amano, not to publish the annex in Tuesday's report on the possible military dimensions to the nuclear programme. Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said that IAEA Non-Aligned Movement states had also considered asking Amano not to include information received from western intelligence agencies, but the report was issued before they made a formal demand.

Fitzpatrick wrote that despite Ahmadinejad's defiant response: "At least some powerful figures in Iran realise that the Islamic Republic needs to do something to relieve the increasing pressure it is under over the nuclear file." He argued that it was still possible for international negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme to resume, possibly over a proposal raised by Ahmadinejad in September to stop making 20% enriched uranium in return for foreign-made fuel for a research reactor in Tehran. He said: "Those who want to stem the talk of war should encourage Tehran to pursue such confidence-building measures."

An you know the outcome.

The game simulates a military conflict (and perhaps its immediate aftermath). But the important question is "What happens after the game is over?" Has Israel managed to destroy every spinning centrifuge? Evey nuclear scientist or the knowledge to build the necessary equipment?

It would be smarter (and a lot cheaper) for Iranians to set up centrifuges hidden away in unknown locations, that to try and improve their air defense systems to protect known locations such as natanz or qum. Once the conflict is over, Iran would have a great excuse to throw out the IAEA inspectors and resume its work on building a bomb.

Will military superiority or even a victory in a conflict, gurantee that Iran will never again attempt to build a bomb? Or will it do the opposite? And now with no inspectors and iran no longer bound by any obligation and moving ahead at full speed, what is the west to do? Another simulation perhaps?

Games like this one fulfill a purpose, but it's not a predictive purpose.

This is what you learn from war gaming simulations:

- What variables the game designers think are significant and how they should be weighted. This is good to know, since game designers have usually spent a lot more time than you or me thinking about these variables and pinning them down based on real world information.

- How even minor changes in variables can produce major deviations in outcomes. This is pretty much a truism in complex systems. War games generally qualify.

- How bad judgment or poor timing on a player's part can damage outcomes. (Harpoon, which I've played off and on for about twenty-five years, is a particularly good game for demonstrating this principle.)

And if it's a really good simulation, you'll learn:

- In war, everyone loses. Winners are just losers who lost less, and that's only certain in the short run.

The game described by the author demonstrates this principle: the primary goodie you can win is less damage to public opinion than the other guy sustains. (Public opinion is definitely a short-term, fickle thing to win. The game designers are clever to make this a feature of their game.)

So there are lots of reasons to play. But none of those reasons is that the game will predict the outcome of a real war.

It might. But confidence is low. Reality has much more complexity than the best war game, and the people playing for real stakes are not always rational actors and do not always limit themselves as rational people might.

Logical outcomes are assured in a rules-bound war game. In real life, things can get a whole lot messier, and not every effect can be traced to a cause.

We already have a real life instance of Israeli airstrikes failing to achieve a goal - the 2006 war with Hezbollah. Arab government support for Israeli's strikes lasted 3 days, and when it was clear that Israeli airstrikes were not putting a dent in Hezbollah's ability to fire missiles into Israel, that Arab support evaporated. Once Israel began a ground campaign (under American pressure), the poor performance of Israeli troops, used to dealing Palestinians throwing stones, shocked the Israeli public. All Israeli airstrikes achieved was dead civilians and a bunch of shattered buildings.

So in 2007, when Israel approached the Bush White House to assist them in preparing a strike on Iran, Israel's failure was still fresh, and Bush turned them down. Why should Americans believe that Israel is any more capable of striking dozens of targets hundreds of miles away, when they could not deal with Hezbollah, which had no air defenses or outside assistance?

There is no way that Israel can attack Iran with conventional weapons and win. Iran is a powerful country, conventionally speaking. Only a nuclear attack with a few dozen Jericho ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads can do the job. The Israelis themselves know well enough that a conventional attack will fail, and Israel will lose. It's either nuclear, or nothing.

Maybe the US can do it, but even for the US a conventional war with Iran would be very hard to win.

If we are convinced that Iran is illegally developing nuclear weapons, we should give them an ultimatum, and if they fail to surrender, hit them with a devastating nuclear attack. Otherwise, anything else will be simply be not be winnable and very dangerous.

I think the next wae with Iran will start the WW3, also heard that Israel will attack Iran by Christmas. I think also that only a nuclear attack will do that USA and Israel wants. I hope Eastern Europe will not enter the war. All the soldiers here are on steroids.

It assumes that the Iranian army can't actually come to grips with the ground forces of the IDF i.e. this will be entirely a modern-day version Battle of Britain, albeit F-16s and missiles instead of Spitfires and Me109s.

That thinking will soon become outmoded, because the country that separates those two armies (i.e. Iraq) will soon be rendered defenceless when the US army withdraws.

Think about it..... think about it......

Israel will be irresistably tempted to violate Iraqi "neutrality" by using it as an air corridor (Iraqi Cessnas are unlikely to pose much of a threat), and while that may be superficially appealing it also gives the Iranians the excuse they need to march A Whoppin' Big Army across northern Iraq to link up with Syria.

Heck, it's not impossible that they would get the PERMISSION of the Iraqi govt for such a move.

And once you've got a Whoppin' Big Iranian Army inside Syria, well, Wheel South Gentlemen, because yonder lies Tel Aviv.....

Why should Iran retaliate in the way Israel expects it to? Israel is a small, easily defensible country from conventional attack. But the U.S. has assets all over the world, and not all of them can be defended. For Tehran, it would be just as easy to attack U.S. assets, whether it is ships in the Persian Gulf, or a couple of suicide bombers on the NY subway, with the message that for every Israeli attack, Americans will pay the price.

For most countries, that would be enough to bring pressure on Israel to calm down. But, in the U.S., we already know that American lives can be sacrificed in the interests of a hard-right Israeli policy. Ask the men of the USS Liberty, Rachel Corrie, and Furkan Dogan.

Jeff has been doing yeoman's work explaining some of the design ideas we dealt with when building Persian Incursion, so I thought I would jump in and help. In one area, the issue of Hezbollah, Mr. Peck noted in his review.

"But there's also the glaring omission of Iran's proxy force, Hezbollah. Bond, the game's creator, told me that the Lebanese organization
would not have time to react to an Israeli air campaign. This seems a bizarre oversight: Clearly, Hezbollah would have military as well as
political roles in the conflict. Ten minutes after the first bombs fell on Iran and well before Israel launched any follow-up strikes, southern
Lebanese skies would be milky with Katyusha rocket trails, and the swarm of Israeli Air Force drones on the border would fill the air with
the buzz of propellers."

While we don't mention either Hezbollah or Hamas explicitly in the rules themselves, both are discussed in the Briefing Package Booklet, we do
state on page 17 in the Rules Booklet that "...Iran will strike through its network of client terror groups." (3.5 Special Warfare/Terror Attacks).
Furthermore, the presumed primary method of attack by either Hamas or Hezbollah would be with rockets. That is why we included the Iron Dome
defense system as an Israeli upgrade. Iron Dome has only recently been deployed, it made its first battlefield intercept in April of this year, and its
specific purpose is to intercept Katyusha-like rockets in flight.

We don't deal a lot with Hamas or Hezbollah because there is little they can do militarily to stop Israel from carrying out their air campaign. A point
we make explicitly on page 16 of the Briefing Package Booklet. Both airbases that support the striking squadrons are no where near the Lebanon boarder and are unreachable by any known or rumored ballistic missile Hezbollah's inventory. They can affect Israeli morale, i.e. the Opinion Track, and this is discussed in section
3.5.1 Civil/Economic Targets (Rules Booklet). There was some debate on whether or not we should include military targets for the terrorist groups, but
for the most part there is little that they could do. Neither group would likely risk a ground campaign where they had to be on the offensive. Hezbollah
faired well against Israel in 2006 because they were on the defensive, in prepared position, against Israeli units in the open. The tables would be turned
if either Hamas or Hezbollah tried to take the fight to Israel. And as we've seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan, when insurgent/terror groups tried to fight a
more traditional force-on-force battle, they usually lost, and badly. Now, could we have included a MANPAD attack against one of the Israeli airbases as a
strike group leaves? Or more importantly against one of the aerial tankers? Certainly, and these can be added without a lot of effort.

My point is that while we do not deal with the terrorist threat to Israel in detail in Persian Incursion, neither do we ignore it. I will lay the cause of the confusion,
however, at our doorstep. We could have referenced both Hamas and Hezbollah directly in the rules, and provided a more explicit description of the nature of the
terror attacks and the Israeli counter in the Iron Dome system.

Richard, you noted in your comment:

"The game is defective because it assumes that Isreal will attack Iranian nuclear sites, whereas the real Isreali intent is to de-capitate the government and military of Iran and therefore bring about regime change. It is further expected by the Isrealis that the US will be drawn in to finish the job, thereby eliminating the need for a second Isreali strike. All Isreali attacks on Iran will be missiles, launched from Isreal or its submarines."

We do provide the necessary information to wage a military strategy. That is for Israel to attack Iranian military installations, and in particular, air defense assets. The reason we don't focus on it is that it would take Israel more time, cost more to execute, and leave them open to additional losses by taking out the air defense system first. With the significant technological disparity between the Israeli and Iranian forces, we didn't see a compelling advantage to go that route - but we did leave it open for others to investigate if they wish. The bottom line is that eventually the Israeli player would have to choose between attacking the nuclear or oil infrastructure. We didn't include de-capitating the government as it doesn't solve the problem. Even the "moderates" in Iran support the nuclear program.

As for Israeli missile strikes, we looked hard at this and came to the following conclusions. First, Israel doesn't have enough ballistic missiles to wage a conventional campaign. Second, many of Israel's ballistic missiles don't have sufficient range to hit Iranian nuclear targets. And third, nothing in the Israeli missile inventory is going to penetrate the buried halls at Natanz. Now, if you argue the Israelis will use nuclear warheads, that pretty much ends the game and I'm fairly sure this would be the case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. It would be hard to claim an Israeli victory at this point.

As for submarines, the modified Harpoons with a land-attack capability can't reach any of the Iranian targets and it has a very small warhead. And its unlikely a heavily modified submarine-launched Turbo-Popeye, there is still debate as to whether or not it exists, would have a large enough warhead to cause any significant damage, and once again the halls at Natanz are untargetable. Yes, there is still the nuke option - but we've already gone down that road.

You own the air, you own ur enemy. ANY armored column would be totally destroyed. It happened in Iraq, it will happen again. Cluster bombs dropped from 30,000 ft. stopped an Iraqi armored column in its tracks. The first third was destroyed, the rest ran from their tanks. Airpower is key.

JOHNBOY4546, you made the following point:

"Which would leave the Israelis with quite a dilemma, because however good those flyboys might be, one thing they CAN'T do is to be in two places at once."

They don'y have to be. Only five Israeli squadrons have the necessary range to get to Iran and back - and these aircraft still require inflight refueling. This leaves another nine squadrons (seven F-16 and two F-15) to handle the issue you have raised. Also, please realize that Israeli squadrons are extraordinarily large - basically double the size of an equivalent US squadron - with 24 aircraft each. And this doesn't include any of the UAV/UCAV assets.

I agree that Iranian army units could traverse northern Iraq, it is feasible. But to do so quickly and enable them to get across on one tank of fuel they would have to use the road network. Where they would be quite vulnerable to attack. Particularly as they can expect limited to no air cover. The majority of Iranian tanks have an un-refueled range of 250 - 300 miles. Some can go a bit further, those of Russian design (T-62s/T-72s) with extra external fuel tanks, but even then its only about 380 - 400 miles. But this is road range, cross country range is approximately 25% to 30% lower. Regardless of the route, it would require a significant logistics train to get such a force to Syria. And logistics is a major Iranian weakness. The Artesh and Pasdaran armies are defensively oriented and lack the logistics to support a long-range offensive operation. This came to haunt them during the Iran-Iraq War when they were only going into southern Iraq.

JOHNBOY4546 - According to the F-16C/D official characteristics summary sheet, the combat radius with an air-to-ground load out, two AMRAAMs and two 370 gal drop tanks is 649 nm. The F-15C radius is greater, but that is just air superiority. If necessary, a tanker can be on standby to provide additional fuel as required. So range isn't a big problem here. They can easily reach northern Iraq with a decent fuel reserve.

As for the Syrian Air Force, their past performance against the IAF doesn't say much about their abilities. Recall that the IAF decisively defeated Syria's air force during the Bekaa Valley incident in the summer of 1982. Israeli aircraft destroyed 87 Syrian planes, while suffering less than a handful of losses - including helicopters. And this was with early model F-16s and F-15s carrying AIM-7F Sparrows and AIM-9L Sidewinders. While the Syrians have recently formed three squadrons of MiG-29M (approx 68 a/c), the bulk of the fighter inventory is MiG-21/23/25 (approx 219/146/40 respectively). And even with the MiG-29Ms carrying AA-10 and AA-11 missiles, they will still be outranged and out classed by Israel's fighters carrying AIM-120 C-5 active radar homing missiles and Python 5s.

Also recall that Israel completely shut down the Syrian air defense system in September 2007 when they attacked the nuclear reactor facility in the Deir ez-Zor region in northern Syria during Operation Orchard. The Syrians were unable to detect and localize the Israeli fighter-bombers and they didn't get a single fighter into position to intercept, nor did any SAM system fire at the Israelis. Command and control is a particular weakness of the Syrian air force and they have not shown any real improvement. Syria may send fighters to help a traversing Iranian armor column, but the odds are very much against them being sent to the right locations, or even surviving an encounter with the IAF.

"As U.S. history has demonstrated for the last 65 years, before you blunder into a war, it's best to figure out exactly how you're going to win. "

One of the stupidest comments of all time. I guess being an editor at FP is a lot like being a junior high school history buff.

Every "war" we've been in for the past 65 years we have lost (at least politically) because we have demonstrated to the enemy and the myriad despots, dictators, terrorists, and fanatics who were watching in the wings, that we didn't have the guts to finish what we started. And that, of course, is also why we had to fight the majority of them.

Israel has the best trained air force in the world as for today. If they will decide to destroy the nuclear in Iran they will accomplish the mission. It has been proven also that the Israeli air force has taken on incredible odds when it comes to air force battle or any other for that matter.