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Security Challenges Are Expected to Endure

• Iraq faces enduring challenges that will test its ability to maintain the level of security necessary for sustained political and democratic development.
• The security challenges include internal struggles for power, insufficient institutional capacity, continuing activities of violent extremist groups, and malevolent activities supported by external state and nonstate actors.

Strategic and Policy Uncertainties Hindered Planning and Execution of the Transition

• While it was clear in 2009 that USF-I would not be able to achieve campaign plan goals and objectives by the end of mission in 2011, no national level strategic reassessment was conducted to define success.
• Uncertainties about possible posttransition troop presence negatively affected all aspects of the transition planning and execution.
• The transition plan did not include planning for the political transitions that would occur within Iraq and between the United States and Iraq.

The "Expeditionary Embassy" Concept Proved Unworkable and Unsustainable

• Not since Vietnam has the United States left an embassy in a zone of conflict after a large-scale military operation.
• Efforts to provide paramilitary security capabilities to the "expeditionary embassy" created a footprint that was larger than either the United States or the government of Iraq was willing to sustain and exceeded the authorities Iraq was willing to grant.
• Because an embassy operates under the Vienna Conventions, it is more important to establish new authorities with the host government than it is to create robust paramilitary capabilities that are neither usable nor sustainable.