I have no business having an opinion about Iraq policy; nevertheless, I do.
Goals:
1. Return Iraq as much as possible to the status quo ante Bush Jr., Richard Perle, and the rest of those geniuses.
2. Protect U.S. interests as much as possible in the region and at home.
3. Drastically reduce U.S. casualties.
The first step is to kidnap Saddam Hussein and put him someplace safe, like Diego Garcia. When he was in charge of Iraq, but constantly menaced by U.S., British, and (imagine that) French naval and air power, he was no threat to his neighbors. He may be the only one who can govern the place, so why would we hang him? As a bonus, we would deprive George Bush, grinning death penalty monkey, of one last chance to grease somebody.
The second step is to move U.S. forces out of the killing zone around Baghdad and into the British sector near Basra. Nobody in the regular military should plan on going home right away, but the national guard and reservists should be flown home just as fast as the Pentagon can do it.
The third step is to keep Iraq weak, just as it was under Saddam. It is in not in our interests to have Iraq become part of Syria or Iran. For this reason, U.S. and allied forces should pacify the region around the Basra oil fields and either get the wells pumping again or at least keep them out of the hands of anyone else.
The whole world wants that oil and would contribute forces to start getting it out of the ground again. This would be good news for the locals because it would mean (comparative) peace and prosperity.
At this point, U.S. causalities would be far lower. Enough forces from NATO and elsewhere would be available to insure the health and safety of the civilian population and begin the restoration of normal life. The rest of Iraq would no doubt be in a protracted state of civil war, but at least our troops would not be in the middle of it.
Eventually, the Iraqis would tire of their civil war and hold some kind of plebiscite. Saddam would likely win--if he hadn't died of old age waiting for the Iraqis to stop fighting--so we could airlift him back to Baghdad to form a government.
Then we could start bombing him again whenever he violated the no-fly zone as we did for 14 years before Bush and the neocons thought they had a better idea.