The world attention now has shifted to how long the war will last: will it be swift or prolonged?

Both the Bush administration and majority observers here believe that the eventual military victory is almost certain for the United States because of the absolute superiority the US military forces enjoy over their Iraqi rivals.

The Bush administration has publicly acknowledged that how to wage a swift and decisive war is the top consideration of the administration in policy-making and war planning.

Investors remained hopeful that the war with Iraq would be quick and successful as US stocks closed higher Friday.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up 117.51, or 1.4 percent, to 885.80, after advancing 75 points in the past seven days, its best performance since August 2000. The last time the index posted eight days of gains was during June 1997. The Nasdaq composite index gained 9.88, or 0.7 percent, to 1,412.65, having risen in five of the past seven sessions.

But market analysts warned that this might not indicate a quick victory as markets sometimes reacted irrationally.

As to how long this war will go, there are different speculations. But still, the dominating view here is that the war is likely to be swift and decisive.

For President George W. Bush, who has made public his desire for re-election in 2004, a prolonged war could be politically dangerous, analysts believe. Any setback on the battlefield could quickly wear down the fluid public support for the war, therefore jeopardizing Bush's bid for a second term.

A senior Bush official recently confessed to US media that military victory in Iraq was anticipated inside the Bush administration as a tonic that would help revive the stagnant US economy, a dagger aimed at the heart of Bush's second term.

The fact that the United States will be sitting on a new major oil supply will stimulate the flagging domestic economy, which puts a high premium on quick military actions to gain control of Iraq's oil wells before they might be torched.

To many analysts, the war with Iraq has never been a mere political bet for President Bush but an important step to serve the United States' strategic attempts both in the Middle East and the world as a whole.

The immense political and military impact that follows a possible swift and decisive war with Iraq could make it all the easier for the United States to tighten control over a region of extreme strategic importance, and strengthen US dominance over global affairs in the decades to come.

From the military point of view, the US has more odds on its side than the Iraqis. The Iraqi desert, military experts believe, serves as an ideal terrain for the United States to unleash the power of its state-of-the-art high-tech weapons, including the latest 21,000-pound (9,450-kg) Massive Ordnance Air Blast, the biggest and most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal.

More importantly, the disparity between the US-British forces and the Iraq troops is so big that the United States and Britain only massed 250,000 troops to seek a regime change in Iraq, half of the 500,000 troops used in the 1991 Gulf War for a less ambitious mission of driving Iraqis out from Kuwait.

According to Pentagon sources, the 1991 Gulf War and more than a decade of crippling economic sanctions have effectively reduced the Iraqi forces to one third of its strength before the 1991 Gulfwar.

Compared to a weakened Iraqi military, the US military strength has been elevated to a new level in both quality and quantity over the past decade, US military leaders said.

Also, President Bush ordered war planning against Iraq shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. All the follow-ups, including aggressive intelligence-gathering, psychological war, subversion efforts, training of Iraqi opposition and almost daily strikes against Iraqi targets in the so-called no-fly zones, have further weakened Baghdad and already amounted to a war long before the final showdown.

From a historical perspective, the lessons for the United States in Vietnam, and for the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan, also played an important role in US military planning and risk assessment and helped reduce the chance of miscalculations in military commitment overseas.

Some dissident voices or experts warned that with tens of thousands of troops and a possible small amount of biological and chemical weapons, the Iraqi military, especially its elite Republican Guards, remains a serious challenge to the United States.

If the Iraqi forces manage to withstand massive US air bombardment at the preliminary stage of war and then engage US troops in a ground or city battle, the US forces can still suffer substantial losses.

However, the US military leaders argued that they had already developed various contingency plans for all kinds of the worst scenarios. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently told a press conference that if war breaks out, it may take six days, six weeks or six months, but could not be longer.

Despite all these, some analysts note that big hurdles still lie ahead for the US and British forces: moving the massive military machine across the desert and potential danger and unpredictability in Baghdad.

The United States is fully aware of these difficulties. In a televised radio address to the nation, US President George W. Bush reminded American people on Saturday in his regular weekly radio address that the war on Iraq" could be longer and more difficult than some have predicted," an apparent attempt to lower the expectation of the American people that the war could be over quickly.

Bush said US forces "face enemies who have no regard for the conventions of war or rules of morality."

Compared to the military challenge, the political and diplomatic challenges which Iraq poses to the United States are much bigger, analysts say.

The United States can win a relatively swift war with Iraq, but it may be well bogged down in the quagmire of daunting nation-building, and terrorism-fighting in a post-war Iraq.

As US media has pointed out, the United States' preemptive launching of the war without Iraq's immediate threat to its security and without the authorization of the United Nations could fuel widespread anti-American sentiments throughout the Muslim and Arab world and trigger more terrorist activities both at home and abroad.

Banking on its military superiority, the United States could easily secure a military victory, but maybe eventually at the cost of long-term security and world peace.

(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2003)