Iraqis see red as US opens world's biggest embassy

The sand-and-ochre-colored compound peering out across the city from a reedy stretch of riverfront within the fortified Green Zone is an unsettling symbol both of what they have become in the five years since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and of what they have yet to achieve.

"It is a symbol of occupation for the Iraqi people, that is all," says Anouar, a Baghdad graduate student who thought it was risk enough to give her first name. "We see the size of this embassy and we think we will be part of the American plan for our country and our region for many, many years."

The 104-acre, 21-building enclave—the largest US Embassy in the world, similar in size to Vatican City in Rome—is often described as a "castle" by Iraqis, but more in the sense of the forbidden and dominating than of the alluring and liberating.