The Taj Mahal on the Euphrates, better known as the Green Zone Xanadu, has a personnel problem.

Two Iraqi employees with the US embassy in Baghdad have disappeared the State Department announced on Thursday, raising suspicions that they have been kidnapped.

"There are two local national employees of the embassy in Baghdad who are missing. Their whereabouts, at this point, are unknown," U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters in Washington.

There was a time when the disappearance of local staffer set off alarm bells in the Embassy and in Washington. People set to, “counting the silverware” i.e. checking every piece of paper in every file cabinet the missing local might have had access to, and carefully checking the logbooks of all the photocopiers. When two went missing it was time for the Ambassador to start making phone calls to whoever his rabbi was in the political party that got him into the job. The Chief of Mission would often tell his wife to stop shopping.

"Embassy officials as well as folks in the Iraqi security forces and MNF-I are trying to determine exactly what's happened to them," Casey added.

Reuters reports that US officials, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the case, said that after the husband went missing late last week his wife went to look for him and then she, too, appeared to have been abducted.

I’m kind of certain having a local husband-and-wife team employed in the same embassy breaks about 42 different rules of tradecraft and common sense. That’s two targets vulnerable to coercion and extortion, suborning, and turning. And since the two are married, you get the bonus chance of using the emotional blackmail of death or worse in order to access two different departments within the embassy.

One official described the two as "missing and apparently kidnapped."

There being no immediate announcement that the missing couple worked in the laundry, and therefore there was no chance of any compromised material, just might be significant.

Reuters is reporting that al-Qaeda is claiming their heads.

U.S. officials, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the case, said that after the husband went missing late last week his wife went to look for him and then she too appeared to have been abducted.

"God's ruling has been implemented against two of the most prominent agents and spies of the worshippers of the cross ... a man and woman who occupy an important position at the U.S. embassy..." the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq said in a statement published on the Internet.

"The swords of the security personnel of the Islamic State in Iraq ... are with God's grace slitting the throats of crusaders and their aides and lackeys," it said.

The killings took place on Monday, it said.

Iraqis who work for “the worshippers of the cross,” or for the “bringers-of-democracy,” (depending on your point of view) know what can happen when your employment is discovered. The truth is that your life is in jeopardy from approximately 1,000 or so members of a-Q, as well as from the 20-odd% of Iraqis associated with the Sunni resistance, or from the uncounted members of the Mahdi Army and other Shiite death squads that have infiltrated the Iraqi Army and National Police. Many carry fake ID with different names depending on who’s manning the next checkpoint as you wend your way to work each day. If you come upon a Shiite checkpoint and your ID carries a Sunni name (apparently there is a difference) you may not get to work that day.

Since we have no idea whether this husband and wife worked in the laundry or in the translation department, I’d bet the Embassy is hoping they got killed, rather than ending up with the evil Iranians.