RRD, to expand the words I quoted in my previous message:

with no disrespect for the late General Odom, I would like to know why anyone should consider his opinion superior to that of the active general officer in charge of our actions in Iraq? Odom was an expert on the Soviet Union whose participation in the military/intelligence services of this country ended two decades ago.

Since 1988, he has (apparently) been primarily professionally affiliated with Yale (where I am confident an overwhelming majority of his colleagues agree with him) and with the Hudson Institute (which would largely consist of people who disagree with him) – neither of which would provide him with any information or insight into Iraq that any private citizen could not access on their own, given the time and resources to do so. Not only has he been out of the loop for twenty years, a careful review of his credentials shows that he has no particular expertise on the Middle East, terrorism, or insurgency...

If you won't listen to anyone except "a general with expertise about the Middle East", How about Gen. Anthony Zinni?

"...Anthony Charles Zinni (born September 17, 1943) is a retired four-star general in the United States Marine Corps and a former Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). In 2002, he was selected to be a special envoy for the United States to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He has been a public critic of the Bush administration and did not support the decision to go to war in Iraq...."

"...From September 1996 until August 1997, Zinni served as the Deputy Commander in Chief, United States Central Command. His final tour was from August 1997 to September 2000 as the Commander in Chief, United States Central Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. He organized Operation Desert Fox, a series of airstrikes against Iraq during December 1998, with the stated purpose of degrading Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program..."

"...Opinions on 2003 invasion of Iraq

In the late 1990s, Zinni said that the U.S. risked entering a "Bay of Goats" if it relied on exiles such as the Iraqi National Congress to liberate Iraq, a reference to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

In May 2004, his memoir, Battle Ready, co-authored with Tom Clancy, was published. It features stinging criticism of the planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and more specifically, the post-battle planning. In a widely reported speech at a dinner in May 2004, Zinni detailed ten serious criticisms of the rationale and execution of the war, summarised below:

1. The war planners "misjudged the success of containment" - the existing policy of trade sanctions and maintaining troops in the area.

2. The "strategy was flawed" - the strategy being that invading, occupying, and setting up a new government in Iraq would help solve the broader conflicts in the Middle East. Zinni said "couldn't believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move."

3. The Bush administration "had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support." Zinni said that "the books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence (that supported the claims made to support the need for war) was not there."

4. The war planners failed "to internationalize the effort," by gaining the support of allies or unambiguously gaining UN endorsement of an invasion.

5. The "fifth mistake was that we underestimated the task." Zinni clarified this in his speech to mean the broader task of creating a free, democratic, and functional Iraq.

6. The sixth mistake was "propping up and trusting the exiles." The exiles Zinni refers to are groups like the Iraqi National Congress and its controversial leader Ahmed Chalabi.

7. Zinni criticized the "lack of planning" for the post-war stablization and reconstruction of Iraq.

8. "The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground." Zinni, in his former position, had devised a battle plan for conquering and occupying Iraq in the 1990s, which featured far more troops, as did alternative plans presented to Donald Rumsfeld before the war. The extra troops were needed to "freeze the security situation because we knew the chaos that would result once we uprooted an authoritarian regime like Saddam's."

9. "The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw in there." Zinni criticises what he views as the lack of staff, skills, experience, and clear structure in the Coalition Provisional Authority.

10. According to Zinni, "that ad hoc organization has failed", "leading to the tenth mistake, and that's a series of bad decisions on the ground". These bad decisions include the excessive zeal in "de-Baathification," removing people only peripherally involved in the Baath Party who were Baathists purely to be permitted to conduct their profession or business, the decision to disband the Iraqi army.

[edit] Plans for U.S. Senate race

An effort to get him to run for the U.S. Senate has stalled indefinitely.[3] Zinni has said he will never run for office. He says his decision to endorse President George W. Bush in 2000 was a mistake. In 2003, he indicated that he plans to avoid politics in the future.[4] However, on March 3, 2006, Zinni joined fellow former U.S. Marines General Joseph P. Hoar, Lt. General Greg Newbold, Lt. General Frank Petersen, and Congressman Jack Murtha in endorsing fellow former U.S. Marine and Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb for U.S. Senate in Virginia..."

Zinni's endorsement of Webb was given notwithstanding the fact that Zinni was a long-time registered Republican.