Maybe someone at the State Department is practicing for the role of Capt. Renault in a remake of Casablanca.
What else, after all, could explain the department’s claim that it was “shocked to learn . . . that the cost overrun” for the renovation of UN headquarters in Manhattan “had grown so significantly” — as The Post’s Josh Margolin reported last week?
Surely by now, State (and every other living, breathing observer) knows what a money sump the UN has become.
According to a US Government Accountability Office report last month, the makeover — to be finished by 2014 — has so grossly burned through its funding that much of the work had to be scaled back.
And still, the project may cost as much as $400 million more than its original $1.88 billion price tag.
Even a critical deal to buy land from the city for an expansion is in jeopardy.
Where has all the money — 22 percent of which comes from US taxpayers — gone?
That’s unclear.
But if the organization’s Oil-for-Food arrangement with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — when billions simply vanished between 1996 and 2003 — is any guide, you can kiss the dough goodbye.
Meanwhile, you’d think the State Department would surely know Turtle Bay’s true mission: plum jobs and perks for the Striped Pants brigade, dictator-coddling and, of course, a daily Israel bash.
This, remember, is the place where irony reaches absurd heights — as when brutal, human-rights-violating regimes get seats on the “Human Rights” Council.
And where even the mere passing of sanctions against would-be nuclear tyrants (Iran) and terror sponsors (Syria and Iran) is virtually impossible.
No, the only “shock” about the GAO report — which the UN construction chief called “accurate” — is that Foggy Bottom hacks themselves are “shocked” by it.
Then again, given President Obama’s high regard for the United Nations, maybe State’s “shock” isn’t so shocking, after all.