The arbitrary and poorly studied decisions by the Iraqi government in recent years have shown that there is a deficiency in assessing the state's situation empirically as well as a weakness in strategic planning. Dozens of Iraqi government projects — in the various fields of security, politics and service — have failed.

Regarding the security aspect, Iraq still faces a major challenge. There have been continuous bombings in Iraq, with the situation not showing any noteworthy improvement. This is despite various plans regarding setting up checkpoints and blast walls, using sonar devices and last but not least the recent Anbar operations, which have not resulted in controlling the security situation thus far.

Some of those plans have utterly failed. The most notorious examples were those of the sonar devices, the so-called ADE 651 bomb detection devices. The Iraqi government had spent $85 million on these devices, paying $40,000 each. However, it was later shown that those devices were a hoax, a child’s toy at best. The British government suspended the work of ATSC, the company that produces these devices, and started a criminal investigation of the company’s owner, Jim McCormick, in 2010. He was convicted of fraud in 2013.

Surprisingly, the Iraqi government still uses these devices without making any alternatives. The Iraqi government (likely) had not studied the devices before buying them, given that similar sonar devices had been shown to be ineffective by reputable institutions worldwide, such as the FBI in 1995 and in 1999, and by the Sandia National Laboratories’ publication in 2002.