"So if doing it right would have cost far more in lives and dollars, and doing it the way it was done is ineffective, why didn't they just do a precision strike, take out Saddam and his crew, and leave? I doubt if the situation in Iraq now would have been any worse, and it would have been much easier on the US."

First of all. US miltary is in the desert of Kuwait. This relatively small force, caused Saddam to regard America resolve as somewhat significant, thereby allowed UN inspectors back in the country. Clinton may or may not have attempted to kill Saddam in his air attack in 1998. I *imagine* this one of million of classified information that CIA and other intelligence know about. Now we know that Clinton's bombing didn't get UN inspectors back into Iraq, and even if Clinton had targetted Saddam and/or done more bombing, it's unlikely that this would have cause the UN inspector back in. "The plan" probably more of slap on the wrist- punitive move more than anything else. I can imagine being the fly on the wall:
"What are we going to do? We can't just allow Saddam to violate international law?
Well, let's bomb him.
Can we do this, should we do this?
What else could we do? Remember Reagan did something like this.
Ok. Well we need a target list that sends a strong message to Saddam."

So we knew bombing alone doesn't work, in fact probably the only really significant message recieved from it was the Saudis told us they didn't like it. The Saudis did not want any more US miltary action unless it was action that would resolve the issue- instead merely giving them more political headaches. Saudis were willing to endure the pain, as long as US took serious action that would resolve the issue- not merely inflame the issue.

Now, back to US soldiers in Kuwait desert. We are not at war at this point. We are threatening war by what we are saying and the fact of having US soldiers in the Kuwait desert near Iraq. [We are in Twin Towers [Lord of the Rings] with men on walls of the keep of Helm's Deep and the orcs have marched up and making a bunch of noise. The arrow hasn't yet been shot that kills an orc.]

Now, it's known fact that the Coalition did have people in Iraq who were attempting to find Saddam in order to call in a bomb onto his head. I believe we had planes in the air which were capable of delivering this bomb within about 15 min- a missile fired 500 miles away travelling at 500 miles per hour of course takes longer. So you had to have steath bomber roughly within around 100 miles of Baghdag. Perhaps if we had people willing to use suicide belts we could use this method, but since probably some people have tried this in the past, it wouldn't have worked- no security force can stop an incoming bomb dropped from a plane, the same is not true about suicide bombers- but you need to know where to put the bomb. This is also complicated by the fact of requiring the US president to ok, the use of miltary assets which "begins" a war.

So, US miltary in Kuwait desert, on verge of war [for days, weeks] looking for Saddam, needs President's ok before you pull the stealth bomber lever, need the stealth planes in position, need to find Saddam. And this is actually what happenned. And obviously they missed Saddam and instead hunted for him for months and finally found him in a little hole in some unremarkable farmhouse in the countryside.
Meanwhile, despite our rapid advance into the country, some number of our spies were caught killed and tortured or simply assassinated.