one would probably say that disbanding the Iraqi army and sending them
home WITH their weapons has to be one of the dumbest military mistakes of the last 100years.

ALthough it is questionable that the remnants of the Iraqi army would have reported to work if requested by the CPA. In any case it was a totally unnecessary decision to publicly disband them. THey could have been put to work fixing sewers etc. as well as maintaining order.

(at the same time the US left weapons depots unsecured and much of them were looted - including the high explosives at Tuwaitha - which would have required at least 40 truckloads) The US was warned about this facility by the IAEA, as well as a chemical facility in Baghdad where
the looters DUMPED barrels of uranium yellowcake (the stuff BUsh warned about in one of his speeches). Ostensibly the looters took the drums to use as rain barrels - but much of the material is still missing. YOUDthink you want to guard that, when your rationale is to stop WMDs.

The DeBaathification order was also another stupid decision. What choice do people have when they are fired from their jobs - they have to feed their families - many of them no doubt joined the insurgency as they had weapons and knew where the dumps were.

THe people who worked for the CPA were hired on an ideology basis, not experience of the MidEast or linguistic ability.

One example is when 8 college graduates were offered jobs by email,
to work for the CPA handling the dispersal of millions of $ to get the IRaqi economy going. (they eventually figured out their only thing in common was they all posted resumes on the HERITAGE FOUNDATION (a young republican) website. They had no experience in dealing with such huge spending and as a result disbursed money very slowly.
(IN a reconstruction effort this should be done as fast as possible)

Michael Fleischer who got a job as a banking industry consultant with the CPA through his brother (ARI Fleischer the former presidential spokesman) in a WASHINGTON POST interview said (WITHOUT apparent Irony) that 'we will show them how to do business the American way, apparantly all they know is cronyism'

it would be funny if it was not so stupid.