'You don't say?!'

"...The U.S. pullout is “an unprecedented strategic gift to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Milani....
“The reality is that this is not success,” Cordesman said in a telephone interview. “It certainly isn’t a drastic failure, but we are now facing a major power vacuum in Iraq and dealing with a power vacuum of this magnitude is a very serious matter.”...
The administration proposed leaving a residual force of 3,000 troops in Iraq, if the Iraqi government were willing to extend them immunity from prosecution.
Kenneth Pollack, a director of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said that number would have been too small to accomplish anything.
‘Ferocious’ Opposition
Iraqi hostility to the U.S. presence and “ferocious Iranian opposition” to it were all factors in the decision to pull all troops out, Pollack wrote in an analysis of the president’s announcement....
The U.S. withdrawal offers Iran an opportunity to form “a link to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon,” Cordesman said, increasing the possibility of a regional clash “at a time when we lack the budget to deal with a serious regional crisis.”
Ahmadinejad Offers Training
In an interview on CNN, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was asked if his government will help train the Iraqi army.
“I think we should -- we should have done it sooner, maybe seven or eight years ago, and they would avoid killing so many Iraqi people or Americans, as well,” ...
In all, about 16,000 personnel will be assigned to the embassy in Iraq (NOT SO, Look here), about 1,700 of them diplomats, experts in fields such as business and agriculture and law enforcement officers, while around 5,000 will be security contractors to guard personnel and facilities including consulates, according to State Department figures....
“What’s unusual is the scale and the militarization of the foreign service” as it oversees the thousands of security personnel, Newton said. The agency will even run its own airline to shuttle staff around the country. “This is not the kind of thing that diplomats do,” he said. ..."