The war is ending, and troops and reporters are coming home. But some didn't think Saddam Hussein's regime would have fallen so quickly.

"Basically at this point, the main fighting is over," D. Scott Bennett, associate professor of political science, said. "[The war] went remarkably fast given the size of the opposing army and their initial resistance."

Bennett and Allen C. Stam, an associate professor in the department of government at Dartmouth College, worked on a research report called "Predicting the duration of the 2003 Gulf War."

"It was an extremely quick victory in historical terms," Bennett said. "I was a little surprised because we guessed about three months at the most, but one month was our best-case scenario."

Bennett and Stam analyzed how long wars have lasted in the past and compared wars and their durations since 1816.

"The average war lasted about 17 months, and this one lasted less than a month," Bennett said.

The rebuilding process, however, is expected to last longer.

During the rebuilding process of Germany and Japan after World War II, the United States was there for more than five years, he said.

"We might need to be there a little longer than that this time," he said, adding that when the U.S. is in Iraq, it is being pulled in two different directions.

"The U.S. is stuck in a dilemma to do the job right," Bennett said. "We need to be there a long time, and the people in Iraq and in the general region want us gone. ... We are juggling diplomacy and rebuilding."

Unlike Bennett, Daniel Miltenberger, the battalion executive officer of the ROTC program at Penn State, said he expected the war to end quickly.

"Having been in the Army for 23 years and fought in the first [war with Iraq], I know the type of training that they had and the capabilities of the American armed forces," he said.

The United States had the capabilities to stop Hussein's regime and "it became apparent to the Iraqi army that we are an unstoppable force," Miltenberger said. "We had a mission to accomplish and we accomplished it."

Erika Spohrer (graduate-English), an active protestor, doesn't think the war is coming to an end.

"Truthfully, I don't think the United States war has ended. The aggression that we showed is a continued aggression," she said.

"That is why I still come [to the Allen Street gates] because I care and I am very afraid for the world.," Spohrer added.

Despite varying views on the current state of the war, Bennett said the United States is beginning to rebuild Iraq. The new role of the military is causing some to think the current troops should come home and new soldiers should be sent to replace them, he added.

"The kind of troops that will be needed in the future are different from the ones who won the war," Bennett said. "The military police, engineers and peace keepers are tasks that are different from the front-line military units."

Another student said U.S. forces currently in Iraq should be replaced with new ones.

"I think troops need to stay in Iraq until it is stable and regulate, but most should come home, and we should send others over there that haven't been there during the war," Jamie Korenman (sophomore-hotel and restaurant management) said.

Whether or not new troops are sent to rebuild the nation, Miltenberger feels the goal was accomplished.

"The fact that we've taken out a despotic regime -- we've made the world and Iraq safer," Miltenberger said.