The Center for Defense Information

"On Wednesday, May 12, Gen. Anothony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command and a senior military advisor to the Center for Defense Information, outlined a 10-point critique of the vital mistakes the United States made leading up to and during the war in Iraq. Gen. Zinni argued that the following series of decisions contributed to the current situation:

* Abandoning the existing policy of containment
* Promoting a flawed regional strategy
* Creating a false rationale for war in order to get public support
* Failing to internationalize the effort
* Underestimating the task
* Propping up and trusting the Iraqi exiles
* Overall lack of planning
* Allocating insufficient military forces
* Installing an inadequate and ad hoc government
* Enacting a series of bad decisions on the ground