How has the invasion of Iraq been mismanaged?
First, there is the obvious. It was intended to prove that the U.S. military could invade and occupy a nation "on the cheap". We invaded with 130,000 troops in February, and by summer we were supposed to have no more than 30,000 troops there. A year later 135,000 troops are not enough with another 15,000 or so in Kuwait. Now our Army is tied down in Iraq, training, resupply and reorganization are being ignored for the last year. Reenlistments already are dropping even with stop-loss orders in place. The Guard and Reserves will be useless for a decade after this year and next, much as they were through the 70's.
The fact that Rumsfeld does not want to increase the number of troops in Iraq means that there are not enough to provide security for the Iraqi civilians. One result is an utterly lawless nation. This is Iraq, which was previously one of the most stable and law-abiding nations in the world. Another result is that there are not enough troops to protect our supply lines. Without enough people on the ground to watch for mines and snipers, our casualty rate is much higher than it should have been.
The invasion of the country sitting on top of a quarter of the worlds' supply of oil was supposed to pay for itself. Instead, the Bush administration was forced to ask for a supplemental budget request of $85 billion in 2003. In 2004 the budget has been requested with no - that is NO - plan for how to pay for the next years' occupation. The Bush administration refuses to submit such a request prior to the election in November 2004.
As pointed out by Richard Clarke (p. 271-272) prior to the invasion we told the Iraqis that all we wanted to do was replace Saddam and a few people around him. During the war we convinced many of the Generals "Don't fight." We would just remove Saddam and let them get on with running their country. Many commanders sent their troops home based on those assurances. Then Jerry Bremer came in and told them "You're fired." Not only the entire military was fired, but all individuals who had been members of the Baath Party were removed. Yet to get a management job, people had to join the Baath Party. The result is that Bremer fired all the capable experienced managers in Iraq and informed them that in addition to not being able to work, they were not going to get pensions they had earned. Now the key infrastructure of Iraq doesn't work and there are hundreds of thousands of experienced managers who will do what it takes to get rid of the Americans and get their jobs back from Halliburton. Some will be guerrillas, the rest will support them. None will support the Americans. Why shoud they? The American are the problem!
In short, over and above the issue of whether invading Iraq was a good idea or not, it has been so badly bungled that even if it had the potential to do every grandiose thing the Bushies promised, none of that could have been achieved.
Anyone really wonder why the Iraqis are killing Americans at the highest rate since the invasion, or why the members of the so-called Coalition of the Willing are bailing out one after another since the Spanish broke the log-jam?