Mike:

I have a little different perspective.

Having assessed the infrastructure and essential public services systems in the North in 2008, two things were immediately evident:

1. A feather could have knocked the whole thing over. Targeted attacks on bridges, infrastructure systems, etc... a few dirty tricks accidents like happen with greater frequency in Iran, etc...

2. It "takes a village" to create nuclear power, and that village---the supporting infrastructure---simply did not exist after the late 1990s.

But there was still an essential problem.

Once a regime turns to mass murders within its own country, and does so by engaging its own people as the instrument, a toxic brew is created that just cannot be addressed by a standoff approach.

There were plenty enough Iraqi generals and colonels that knew the things they had done, and that, with Bosnia in the news, would turn to war crimes investigations sooner or later. Their risks, in that regard, were within Iraq and the people upon which they were perpetrated.

Someone or something has to go in and change the status quo, or its is just a Jonestown or After Me the Deluge system that assured (through guilt, shame, greed, fear of exposure.... whatever) a rigid last defense of those in power against those who were not.

While it is helpful to see our enemies in certain lights, it is also true that the Shias, Kurds, and others had an understandably lethal view of the other side.

Under those now-famous scowling images of Sadr, and the as-yet-unresolved sectarian divides, looms a very real history of potentially genocidal policies and acts which, in context, play heavily into deeper rythms at the core of religious schisms within Islam.

Our past history, of encouraging but not defending Shias and Kurds rising up against Saddam, and previously going only so far, were real factors for the opponents who had been scourged before. (Maybe the root of the problem lies in that past?)

As much as I would like to be completely against any foreign military adventures, absent US actions of any kind in and around 2003, there was still a toxic brew in Iraq which, under the best circumstances, foretold a future genocide of potential biblical dimensions for which the only defense/protector would have been Iran.

Following the lines, a new Iran/Iraq War, with broad implications in the Gulf and beyond, was inevitable at some point without some outside intervention.

Thus, the question: Could an effective civilian ground game, more troops, etc.., have proven a better way for all parties concerned?

I do not believe that there was not an essential mission and necessary mission to be performed in Iraq (by some entity). Just that much was mishandled, and that an appropriate autopsy, hopefully, can improve our understanding for the future.

Again, looking solely to military analysis for an essentially civilian problem is not going to produce a useful answer.