The U.S. Embassy in Iraq is the State Department‘s largest and most expensive overseas facility. Size, however, is not proportional to effectiveness. The embassy campus is sprawling and fortified, but it is more a prison than an effective representation. For an American diplomat to leave the embassy can require providing the regional security officer 48 hours advance notice, with the response more often than not negative.

Case in point: During a previous visit to Iraq, I had four hours of discussions with the president and prime minister, as well as a number of figures with whom the U.S. diplomats do not have regular contact. A U.S. official at the embassy wanted to hear about the meetings, but the security office rejected his request not because he would need to travel to an unsafe area (I was at a hotel less than a half mile from the embassy in a very safe area of Baghdad) but because he had only given 47 hours notice. Bureaucracy trumped mission.