TOP TEN IRAQ MISTAKES….General Anthony Zinni lists the ten biggest mistakes we made in Iraq:

  1. The first mistake [was] the belief that containment as a policy doesn’t work….

  2. The second mistake I think history will record is that the strategy was flawed….

  3. The third mistake, I think was one we repeated from Vietnam, we had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support….

  4. We failed in number four, to internationalize the effort….

  5. I think the fifth mistake was that we underestimated the task….

  6. The sixth mistake, and maybe the biggest one, was propping up and trusting the exiles….

  7. The seventh problem has been the lack of planning….

  8. The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground….

  9. The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw in there….

  10. The tenth mistake [has been] a series of bad decisions on the ground….

He talks about each one of these in greater detail in the text of his speech and also presents some ideas for how to move forward from here. Click the link for more.