Given the latest terrorist bombings and shattered nerves in Iraq in the run-up to January elections, it's not hard to find depressing symbolic symmetry in Iraq's tarnished security and the United State's massive -- and massively flawed -- new embassy in Baghdad. The advertised substance and quality of both are more illusion than reality, never mind what either government would want their constituents to believe.

Iraq's newly confirmed security issues, to be sure, are far more important than the reportedly dismal condition of the new $700 million American embassy in Iraq. Even so, the latter is as embarrassing as the former is hurtful.

Sitting on 104 acres along the banks of the Tigris River, the sprawling edifice is the most expensive embassy in the world. In the words of a York Times report, however, it also has just been tagged by the State Department's inspector general as a "monument to shoddy work and incompetent oversight."

The inspector general's report has nothing good to say about the embassy complex of 27 structures built to house 1,100 people. Its walls and sidewalks are already cracking, sewage gas is backing up throughout its buildings and residential units, electrical wiring is substandard, and fire protection systems and other safety standards fail to pass muster. Plus, it's ugly and a target for mortars.

Iraq's security now rates a similarly bleak assessment. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who hopes to keep his grip on power in the January 16 elections, had been taking credit in his re-election campaign for the new level of presumed security across Iraq. But his rhetoric, like his chances for re-election, are being eroded by the rising number of massive terrorist bombings and the tense battle lines between Sunni Arabs and Kurds in the divided and violent northern city of Mosul. Their animosity and unchecked violence have aggravated pre-election tensions and surely helped extremists undermine confidence in the government.

The latest bomb blasts to shake the government wracked the capital Sunday. In a feat that suggested insider help, terrorists delivered two massive bombs in vans that were driven casually through multiple checkpoints to the doors of three government ministries.

The first explosion gutted the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works. A minute later, the second destroyed the Baghdad Provincial Counsel building. By Monday, the still incomplete toll counted more than 155 people dead, more than 500 wounded, and many more missing. The death toll included at least 24 children. They were in an outdoor playground used by two child-care centers across the street from the two ministries.

The bombings and the staggering death toll followed several previous massive bombings. Fairly or not, they have aggravated old sectarian friction between Sunnis and Shiites in the capital and in Anbar Province, which was once the center of al-Qaida in Iraq. Three years ago, that area was producing many of the former insurgents who sowed terror before joining the Sunni Awakening councils.

With those councils wrongly disbanded under Mr. Maliki, Iraqis can expect more such bombings. Extremists want to weaken confidence in the government and revive the sectarian hatred that spurred grisly murders and brought the country to the brink of full-blown civil war. They don't want a civil transfer of power; they want an Islamic state, and they want Sunnis to regain their long -standing control of Iraq if they can't have a fair share of governing power.

The American garrison, which now numbers roughly 120,000 in Iraq, cannot quell their aims nor the sectarian tension that was bound to erupt whenever the American mission came to end. It would be wrong to renew its urban combat status for that purpose.

The Iraqi parliament may be beginning to realize their dilemma. The bombings spurred passage Monday of election reform laws that had been stalled for months. That could be a sign the Iraqi government realizes it will fragment in violence if it can't find a way to pull together. The sad state of the new American embassy, by contrast, may stand as testament to the obstacles that always existed to Washington's vision of what it could create by force in a divided Iraq.