You couldn't design a worse clusterf*ck.
Which is why I sometimes wonder, in a conspiratorial sense, if this isn't basically working out the way they wanted after all. In the broadest sense anyway.
Why would Bush want a strong, independent, sovereign Iraqi government anyway? They would just tell us to leave, to piss off, and would keep their oil resources nationalized. Obviously, Bush's Plan A was to install a pro-american strongman dictator - an Ahmed Chalabi. That obviously didn't work out. What was Bush's plan B? I don't think they really had one, but I think they most certainly didn't want to turn the iraq government over to a bathist strongman, an ayatollah Sistani, to some nationalist shia, or to some powerful military General. I think it's totally possible that when Plan A didn't work, the next best option was to design and support an inept and weak iraqi government. Which was then ensconced in the Green Zone, and had relatively power to tell Bush to get the fuck out. A weak central government that was, to some extent, dependent on Bush for money, arms, and protection. Bush's worst case scenario at this point is a strong, independent iraqi government - which would almost certainly be dominated by Shia strongmen, nationalist groups, and Shia clerics - who would not be receptive to an american occupation, let alone outsourcing iraq's oil to american and british multinationals.
I think a weak, and helpless Iraqi government, at this point, is exactly what Bush wants. This war, at this point, is about oil and american hegemony. I really don't think Bush wants a strong, nationalistic, independent iraqi government. I think bush will kill, maim, and destroy to keep a strong, nationalistic, sovereign iraq government from coalescing.