How long more? Who knows?

EIGHT days, the Pentagon said. Eight days until the Iraqi war is won, Saddam Hussein is overthrown and peace is restored to a battered country.

The deadline has passed and there appears to be no let-up to the ferocious fighting.

US President George W Bush reportedly planned to tell cheering crowds at a Florida air base on Wednesday that the allied campaign was ahead of schedule, then withdrew the phrase.

In the meantime, both sides claim battle victories, war reports conflict and contradict and the casualty toll is rising. How long will it last?

Dan Plesch, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute of Defence, believes the war will be fought for months to come: "My feeling is that this war will last a very long time. It's hard to say precisely when an end could come about now that the Iraqi army is fighting back because, even if coalition forces get into the centre of Baghdad, there is a comparison with Napoleon when he got to Moscow only to find nobody there.

"It could be several weeks if not months for the allied troops to resize the forces they have, so that takes us well into summer unless there is some secret ingredient. But there's no doubt that things aren't going to plan. When we advanced into Afghanistan we captured Kabul relatively easily, but it's rather more difficult in Iraq. They have more weapons and a bigger army. And many people don't seem to realise the whole area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is a huge swamp interspersed with canals and irrigation ditches. It's the least desirable terrain to fight across."

Plesch has cross-referenced American, UK and Iraqi reports to piece together his analysis of the war. He believes journalists cannot provide impartial reports, because they have a duty to stick to government guidelines and he suggests the public shouldn't believe everything the media reports.

"There are a number of myths being put about, which doesn't help the public," Plesch says. "First of all, we are not fighting pockets of resistance. We are fighting well-organised counter-attack from the Iraqi army. Armed forces are counter-attacking at every point of the 200-mile stretch from the north of Najaf to Basra in the south. So it's very misleading to refer to Iraqi resistance as guerrilla, militia or pockets of resistance.

"Secondly, they say we are making rapid progress, but in the First Gulf War I we destroyed over 10 divisions of the Iraqi army in the first 100 days of the war. On this occasion we haven't even claimed to have destroyed a single Iraqi division.

"And thirdly, there are reports of three more Iraqi army divisions north of Basra."

Plesch concludes with an ominous prediction: "We know that coalition forces need more troops. They have to bring in reinforcements, re-size and reorganise, and that takes time quite a long time."

However, not all the experts believe the war will be long-fought. Francis Tusa, editor of Defence Analysis magazine, predicts the conflict will continue to rage for days or weeks rather than months: "The Pentagon repeatedly predicted an eight-day duration, but they didn't say if they meant the war would last eight days from start to finish, or if it would take eight days just to get into Baghdad.

"I am accused of being too pessimistic, but do we know the plan hasn't gone as it was supposed to? Absolutely. An American General has been quoted as saying: 'We are on our time line, but we don't have a schedule.' Confused? I am. But we know from various interviews that things are taking longer than planned. If you look at where allied troops are and the distance covered, it's impressive. So there's a paradox things look a bit concerning, yet on the other side things look rather good.

"Bush has budget funds of $75 billion for a 30-day operation. That suggests early plans were for a 30-day war and no more, but Bush could go to Congress with a supplementary bill for six months, but people would have gone, 'You what?'

"Personally I think we're talking about weeks, not months," he concludes. "That's just my gut feeling. We know that the weather has been atrocious for the last three days and that has screwed things up.

"We expect a massive delivery of air power on to Iraqi targets and we are seeing refugees getting out of Basra. So the first cracks are showing and there's a little bit of ground swell in our favour.

"But I wonder to what extent the Americans are concentrating on winning the war rather than winning peace. They seem to think the peace aspect is a bit wussy, but that's what wins wars."

The unpredictability of war makes its duration impossible to guage. Since President George Bush insists he will accept no other outcome but victory, the one thing we do know is that we will have to fight to the very end.