From Baghdad to Dublin

The White House has announced George Bush's nominee to be the new ambassador to Ireland. It's not even news that the nominee, Tom Foley, is a major Bush campaign donor (a "Ranger" in the 2004 cycle). But Ireland does do better than New Zealand, for example, which only got a steakhouse magnate, because Foley's connections run tighter than that. In particular, he was in charge of privatization operations in Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority -- a job that is itself revealing of the then White House view that Iraq was a giant economics experiment, and not a country in dire need of security. Of course the obsession with flat taxes and privatization didn't last long, and Foley was soon back at his day job, venture capital. Unfortunately, Dublin will probably stick to the diplomatic route and not object to an ambassador with the taint of having been involved in the disastrous post-invasion period in Iraq.

UPDATE: One odd thing -- we can't find any formal announcement that the incumbent ambassador, James Kenny, has resigned. Kenny took over from Richard Egan, who has pesky tax problems to deal with. And [16 June] of the nomination of Foley has been sent to the Senate with still no public indication of Kenny's resignation.