War Timing Prediction

Here's my war prediction, made as of 4:27PM
March 18th, 2003:

Bombing starts by March 20th 11:59PM.
Large ground force attack by March 29th.

Here's why:

We have a full moon in the gulf region on
March 18th. Full moons are good for the
air force because they can see the ground
well. I suspect that the military wanted
to launch by now, but that diplomacy held
them up. President Bush only gave 48 hours
of lead time... less than the expected 72.
This tells me he's aggressive and wants to
make a point. The 48 hours end on March
19th at 8:00PM. I suspect that bombing
will start quickly.

Initially I thought that we'd wait, but
surprise isn't much of a tactical
advantage. We'll pretty much obliterate
Iraq's air force no matter what.

For the last two weeks we've upped the
number of flights into the no-fly zone.
This makes it difficult for Iraq to
distinguish a real attack from a patrol
flight... until it's too late.

The air campaign will roll on for nine
days... significantly less than the six
weeks of Desert Storm, although with more
intensity.

With the coming new moon U.S. troops have a
distinct advantage with night vision
capabilities. The new moon is on April 1st
in the gulf region. I suspect that with
troops involved we do want to leverage the
element of surprise so we'll go a little
before then.

We also want to put the roughest tactical
objectives as close as possible to April
1st. Battle will take a few days to
escalate as we penetrate into Iraq. I'm
giving us two days to get to the toughest
objectives under the darkest conditions.

Take this with a grain of salt. I'm a
computer nerd, not a military strategist.