Experts in and out of government said five U.S. aircraft carriers with 350 warplanes could be off Iraq before year's end if ordered and tens of thousands of troops could be sent much more quickly than the six-months build-up to the 1991 Gulf War.
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"You could start a reasonably good war in December by getting at least a couple of heavy divisions (about 40,000 troops) into the region," said former Assistant Defense Secretary Larry Korb, now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

"You could start bombing them and initially send troops in from the south and see what happened. That could be accelerated, but if the Iraqi military quickly collapses from air strikes, it's going to take about 100,000 troops to hold down the country," Korb added.

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