Why we invaded Iraq, and not Iran

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy, retired, keeps taking his sword-like pen to deconstruct all the lies the neocons have used to frighten the American press corpse into a not altogether unsuccessful effort to frighten the American public into believing the boogey man is Iran; well, that it WAS Iran, until the Ruskies went all invasion on our bestest buddy Georgia (well, maybe 2nd bestest with its former contribution of 2,000 "coalition" troops in Iraq, 2nd bestest after our bestest buddy England's 20,000 or so, well, maybe 3rd bestest since to overlook the 190,000 mercenaries -- er, make that contractors -- is to fail to appreciate the size of the military undertaking that was so enhanced by the "surge").

It's likely true that, as the Bush administration insists, no nation poses a greater challenge to us than Iran. That, however, only goes to illustrate how few challenges—at least military ones—we actually face. Iran's military budget is less than one percent the size of ours. The Bush administration's assertions that Iran seeks nuclear weapons and is arming militants in Iraq have been disproven time and again. Iran's conventional forces hardly pose the kind of threat to its Gulf region neighbors the administration would like you to think they do. Its army has never operated more than a few miles from its border, and that was during an eight-year stalemate against the Iraqi army we twice cut through like hot butter. Iran's navy would sink of natural causes before it could engage anyone beyond the Persian Gulf or its coastal waters in the Caspian Sea and Gulf of Oman, and its air force's wings were clipped when we stopped selling them spare parts for their top-of-the-line fighter jets. Moreover, Iran's exterior geographic position and mountainous terrain make it next to useless as a base of operations from which to dominate the Middle East militarily (that's one of the main reasons we invaded Iraq and not Iran).