By the way I am a very limited man with limited array of solutions, the thread is presently visited by great guys of phenomenal intellect and they are never wrong and most these guys know it all
Come, come - you are being way too self-effacing!
As one of those who is presently posting on your thread - though I have visited it many times - let me say that I don't feel that I have a phenomenal intellect nor am I infallible. However, I do read the opinions of informed individuals with varying opinions from all sides of the political spectrum - even if I don't agree with them.
Here is a speech that General Zinni gave that offers an excellent analysis of what went wrong in Iraq:
cdi.org
He identifies and I have excerpted "the ten crucial mistakes to this point that we've made" - but I encourage everyone to read the entire article for his reasoning:
The first mistake that will be recorded in history, the belief that containment as a policy doesn't work
The second mistake I think history will record is that the strategy was flawed
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
We failed in number four, to internationalize the effort
I think the fifth mistake was that we underestimated the task
The sixth mistake, and maybe the biggest one, was propping up and trusting the exiles, the infamous "Gucci Guerillas" from London
The seventh problem has been the lack of planning
The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground
The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw in there
The tenth mistake, and that's a series of bad decisions on the ground |
