Embassies For Sale: Want To Become Bush's Next Ambassador?

[Kellanved]

Want to become a US ambassador? It's not as hard as you may think. Just donate a couple of hundred thousand to President George W. Bush's campaign coffers and pick your city. The president's new cadre of diplomats tend to be generous campaign donors, including the wealthy Ohio ball-bearing manufacture who is expected to run the US Embassy in Berlin.


It's possible that David Wilkins, 58, is just a tad too honest for his new job as Ambassador of the United States in Canada. How else to explain his admission that he's only visited America's big neighbor to the north once in his life -- 34 years ago -- on a visit to see Niagara Falls? Wilkins, a deeply religious South Carolina Republican, sees his appointment to the diplomatic corps as a "sign of God."

In truth, one could probably look to more worldly reasons to explain the appointment. Wilkins is one of the Republican Party's most talented fundraisers; in return for his efforts, which helped secure the re-election of US President George W. Bush, the party rewarded Wilkins with the honorary title of "Ranger," a distinction that's bestowed on anyone who contributes or raises more than $200,000 for the party.

In the coming months, Rangers, Pioneers (starting at $100,000) and Super Rangers ($300,000 and up) will be beginning their new jobs as diplomats all over the world. According to the most recent count, 30 of the Republican Party's biggest donors have been rewarded with posts in sun-drenched island nations like Mauritius and the Bahamas, or in prestigious European capitals.

Among those prestigious capitals is Berlin. Last week, the US State Department informed the German Foreign Ministry that William Robert Timken, 66, an Ohio industrialist, will assume the post of US Ambassador to Germany this fall -- a post that has been vacant for the past four months since Daniel Coates's term ended. It is a position that Timkin, a Super Ranger with ancestors from Germany, requested himself.
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http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,362387,00.html


:puke: