We picked up this little tidbit via Laura Rozen’s blog, War and Piece. It seems that folks in a diplomat-heavy neighborhood in Upper Northwest are less than pleased that one of the chief architects — one Paul Wolfowitz — of the Iraq war is staging a very different sort of “invasion and occupation” in their neck o’ the woods, as the Post mentioned this past week. The reason? A not-so-secret romance with Arab feminist and World Bank communications advisor Shaha Riza. It seems Wolfowitz’s comings and goings have set tongues wagging on Riza’s block. After all, his guards sit outside in a car until he leaves.

“They kind of picked the wrong place, if they want to be private about it. I don’t know if it could be more public if it were on 16th and K streets,” said one neighbor, who declined to be identified, citing a desire to maintain cordial relations with Riza. “It’s an international neighborhood and he’s the icon for a fabulously expensive, tragic war. It’s the one thing we talk about now.”

The Post reports that all of this is happening in a tony neighborhood south of American University, so we assume the venue is Spring Valley, home to luminaries like the South Korean ambassador and NBC’s Tim Russert … and a former World War I-era munitions testing and burial site that has caused strife between the Army and residents for years. We wonder if anything related to the Army Corps of Engineers’ cleanup of the now-infamous Lot No. 18 came up in late-night conversations.