Take the recommendation of TAPPED and read this Washington Post article by Vernon Loeb and Thomas Ricks on likely problems in an occupation of postwar Iraq. For starters, Loeb and Ricks write,

An occupation force of 45,000 to 60,000 Army troops -- the range under consideration by the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- could force an end to peace-time training and rotation cycles in a service already deployed in Germany, Korea, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and the Sinai.

And that range might drastically underestimate the real need:

Retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash[, who] commanded the first Army peacekeeping operation in the Balkans in 1995...said he believes 200,000 U.S. and allied forces will be necessary to stabilize Iraq....

Nash says that

up to two divisions alone -- 25,000 to 50,000 troops -- could be required just to guard any chemical or biological weapons sites that are discovered until the weapons are disposed of properly.

The Joint Chiefs want to use barely more troops than that for the entire occupation.

Loeb and Ricks don't speculate on what might happen if the occupation force is too small, but what do you think's going to happen if we short-staff the job of guarding chem/bio sites? Think it's possible that some anthrax might go missing here and there?

"There's going to be a power vacuum," said one senior defense official sympathetic to the Army. "How will that be filled? I'm not an expert in the region, but if you use the Balkans as a model, we may be getting into the middle of a civil war."

If that happens, will we care? Or, with Iraq probably gone from the front pages, will essentially we blow it off?