Maybe we should go in with about 200K troops, kick ass and then install a dictatorship and put the whole thing to rest once and for all.
Why install anything? Pull FORCEPRO on walled-off oil areas, work with the officially-recognized Kurdistan in the North, drain all the oil we can in 12 months and roll out of there. The only route we care about is out of Basra’s port. Done and done. Let the animals off each other all day long. They can have Ramadi and Fallujah and Baghdad and Najaf and Karbalah and all those other wonderful hellholes.
Put in a dictator? We HAD a dictator. His name was Saddam. But like all dictators we install they eventually want to start calling the shots and they have to be taken out. But I don’t see us ever putting another one in anywhere.
And then what? What makes you think the Iraqi troops will fight better for a dictator than for the boob they have as president now?