Turtle Bay Pickpockets

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 OilforFood 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, dictatorcoddling and, of course, a daily Israel bash.

This, remember, is the place where irony reaches absurd heights — as when brutal, humanrightsviolating regimes get seats on the “Human Rights” Council.

And where even the mere passing of sanctions against wouldbe 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.