I've read that a lot of problems happened in Iraq because the Iraqi Army was demobilzed but the soldiers were allowed to keep their guns. So the result of this was that a large number of the unemployed,armed and not unreasonably bitter ex soldiers started waging gurilia war against the US soldiers. What if some general instead had told the Iraqi soldiers that their weapons were to be standardized and replaced with the type of gun that the US soldiers carry?
In that way it should be possible to trick the majority of them into putting their weapons down, and then telling the now disarmed soldiers that they are now unemployed. Unarmed, they would not be able to strengthen the resistance movement. Would it then be easier to stabilize Iraq and pull out US and British soldiers earlier?