THE BIG YELLOW CASTLE

photo courtesy AP

AKA as the American Embassy in Baghdad. The site is composed of 21 buildings and a huge swimming pool on 104 acres of land. It cost $750 million to build. Breaking that down to numbers Manhattanites can directly relate to it comes out to $721,153 a an acre in the desert, or only $16.56 per square foot. What a bargain! To further illuminate this purchase we ask approximately how much did each US taxpayer contribute? In 2005 the IRS reported 99,880,223 taxpayers, so that will make it around 75 cents per taxpayer. Looks like a very sound investment, but do we own this land? Is it a land lease? Eminent Domain? Do we have an investment or is this a contribution to the city of Baghdad? If we vacate who gets the lease? Say we took the 75 cents and spent it on US elementary public school education how would that change our culture? Anyway, for a good article on the largest embassy in the world jump over to the article from the Christian Science Monitor.