The first mistake made by Rumsfeld and Co has been to ignored the reports by secret sevices that the shiite south would not rise up against Saddam.

The second mistake has been to take Iraquis for fools. It looks like everybody thought that the Iraqui army would fight again using the old soviet doctrine, a war of positions with classical and massive confrontations, a doctrine that had lead them to a quick crash in 1991. They rather opt for a dispersion of their forces, harassment operations and urban querilla.