Dayuhan:

Like Ken says, Tank Thinkers like Mr. Cordesman should very much no better than to be pushing/blaming Obama for all the SOFA deficiencies (in his opinion) and past Iraq issues which were not otherwise accomplished in eight years. Now that we are gone, we must make things perfect?

Tom Odom and I were chatting about the 16,000 US Embassy Mission, now couped up in the no-longer-secure Green Zone. A police training and NATO mission that the Iraqis apparently don't want.

A few years ago, as a DoS civilian, I could go to a ministry building in the Red Zone in a low-key movement. Now, they can't even leave the New Embassy Compound without the kind of security we used to drive from Tikrit to Baghdad in early 2008.

UNAMI has a large hoteling operation operated out of Amman, Jordan. Critical staff are rotated into Baghdad as and when needed (like they do for Afghanistan) for two week cycles. The administrative stuff like payroll and paperwork is done by staff in Amman.

If the US followed this hoteling practice, the majority of admin and support staff would be gone, and the huge security and logistic apparatus to support it. 16,000 down to, perhaps, 5,000 and, for Mike Few's benefit, a $6 billion cost dropped to maybe $4. (What's a billion or two here and there?).

This would do a lot to allay Iraqi concerns (and street rumors) that there is more going on in the Embassy than is appropriate. Despite that, in truth, like when the troops were moved out of the cities, little is actually going on but a lot of people standing by.