Clinton, Genocide and a Campaign Gaffe

[julialnyc]

The Barack Obama campaign is about to pay a very high price for the inopportune words of one of its most distinguished foreign policy advisors. The dazzlingly brilliant journalist, Pulitzer-prize winning author, and Harvard professor, Samantha Power, has been forced to resign from the campaign after she recklessly told a reporter that Hillary Clinton is a "monster."


In the pungently hypocritical game of American politics, this is just something outside the rules. Whether it's true, or not, matters little. Nor does it matter that the object of Power's derision has just finished spending millions on TV ads implying that Obama would be responsible for the countless deaths of millions of American children sleeping at 3 a.m. Tut, tut. Nothing monstrous about that.


snipped....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-cooper/clinton-genocide-and-a-c_b_90436.html

[julialnyc]

1. more snipped...

Power was rightfully awarded the Pulitzer for her finely written and downright horrifying book "A Problem From Hell" which, in macabre detail, describes the calculated indifference of the Clinton administration when 800,000 Rwandans were being systematically butchered. The red phone rang and rang and rang again. I don't know where Hillary was then. But her husband and his entire experienced foreign policy team - from the brass in the Pentagon to the congenitally feckless Secretary of State Warren Christopher - just let it ring.

[thereismore]

2. Well well, clusterbombs, now inaction in the face of Genocide. Where was she then?

Did she not care?

[Cant trust em]

3. Power isn't really going away

She'll just stop speaking in public for a while. I'm sure that she'll be on all of the important conference calls, etc. Not like she'll be in exile or anything.

Am I right on this? If not, feel free to burst that balloon.

[julialnyc]

5. I think some might even learn that she worked for Obama.... and be impressed

[MrCoffee]

7. I thought higher of Obama when she worked for him...now, not so much.

It was stupid of him to accept her resignation. Just as stupid as Clinton having the temerity to attack Samantha Power, of all people.

[julialnyc]

8. I agree with you... why on earth would he accept her resignation?

[K Gardner]

6. Obama was interviewed and did not deny this. So yes, you're right.

[hedgehog]

11. On the other hand, now she's free to say whatever she wants to

without it blowing back onto the Obama campaign.

[MrCoffee]

4. Power was absolutely right to take the Clinton Administration to task

for their shameful inaction during the genocide. I like the Big Dog, but his administration's blind eye to genocide should not be forgotten or swept under the rug.

[julialnyc]

9. Samantha Power: From Obama Asset To Campaign Casualty

snipped....
In early 2005, Samantha Power was working on a follow up to her Pulitzer Prize winning book ""A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," when she got a call from the office of Sen. Barack Obama.

She had never heard of the freshman Democrat who had taken office just months earlier. So Power researched him, downloading the famous address Obama gave to the Democratic convention the summer prior. The two met shortly after -- it was only supposed to last an hour but they ended up talking for four.

"Why don't I quit my job at Harvard and come and intern in your office and answer the phones or do whatever you want?' It was literally that spontaneous," she recalled saying. To which, the senator responded: "Great."


snipped...
That Obama could bring her on board -- he was, Power said, the first government official to have ever called her -- was emblematic of the different style of politics that the Illinois senator was promising to represent

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/07/samantha-power-from-obam_n_90443.html

[johnnydrama]

10. i have a question

you have a Clark avatar, so maybe you know.

I read that in her book she praised Clark a great deal.

Now today Clark slams her for her Iraq statements?

Doesn't that seem a little screwy?

[julialnyc]

12. She was a Clark supporter in 2004.... and he gladly accepted her support

But today he is a Hillary supporter (and God knows I still love him), but some things are political (and it doesn't mean they agree with everything).

[SoxFan]

13. Screwy? No. Opportunistic? Yes.

Wes isn't covering himself in glory by playing the attack dog role for Hillary, and he may be sniping his way out of the vice presidency.

[MrCoffee]

14. She defended Clark throughout.

It's sad that he turned on her today.


http://www.kiddingonthesquare.com/2004/01/the_subtle_art_.html