"Minimum timeline"?

"I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won't last any longer than that." Donald Rumsfeld, Sect. of Defense, Nov. 14, 2002.

Seems pretty unambiguous to me. There is absolutely no qualification about this merely meaning "the end of hostilities in relation to the Iraqi armed forces under the command of the Ba'athist regime."

The point is, they went in in a tearing hurry, on a timetable based on internal political considerations, and with no worked out strategy for what to do, and how to extricate themselves. For example the decision to disband the entire Iraqi armed forces in the way that it was done has been pretty well universally seen as a disastrous blunder, and one which did an enormous amount to foster the insurgency.