You suggest you can control a country the size of California, full of armed religious freaks with a mear 100,000 or so troops? Wont happen.
What we NEED are Iraqi security forces that can help patrol the streets that are reliable.
LOL, good luck.
The British Empire in the 1800s controlled India, far far larger, with far more people, and did it as a colonial possession with far less people - running it at a profit.
What kind of people were the Indians? Same kind of 'religious freaks' with a completely different culture from their British overlords.
The secret is this: You dont control the people. You control the people who control the people.
Quite frankly, if we had a reliable Iraqi security forces, the US presence could rapidly fall to under 50,000.
That btw is what we are trying in fallujah. Repeat fallujah 100 times and you have the British colonial solution. Whether it works in this situation remains to be seen, but our goals are far more modest: We dont need a long-term possession, we only need enough security and stability to guarantee the emergence of democratic institutions strong enough to fend for themselves. This is an 18-months or so process.
And if Iraqi forces dont work, yeah, bring on the Ghurkas!