There’s a transcript here of a speech by Gen. Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.), former commander of CENTCOM at the CDI Board of Directors Dinner on May 12, 2004. The whole thing is worth reading, including the Q&A that followed the talk. Here I’ll simply summarize the ten mistakes that he identified.
The first mistake that will be recorded in history [was] the belief that containment as a policy doesn’t work.
The second mistake … is that the strategy was flawed. […] the road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve the Middle East peace process, you’d be surprised what kinds of others things will work out.
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 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.
And that ad hoc organization has failed, leading to the tenth mistake, and that’s a series of bad decisions on the ground.