There must be some logic to building the United States' - and the world's - largest embassy in the world's 44th largest nation, coming somewhere after Nepal and Uganda.

But the logic seems apparent only to the Bush administration, so work plods forward on our Vatican-sized fortress embassy in Baghdad. The massive $600 million project is behind schedule and nearly $150 million over budget. It was conceived in the heady days when the Bush administration believed we would be welcomed as liberators, the war would pay for itself and an efficient government of pro-U.S. Iraqi exiles would have taken over.

This monument to hubris was supposed to have been completed last month and the embassy staffers presumably moving in by now. The current embassy is one of Saddam's old palaces and the staff housed in trailers vulnerable to the mortar rounds the insurgents periodically fire into the Green Zone.

A US Palace In Baghdad