Samantha Power Tapped For State Department Transition Team

[babylonsister]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/11/obama_adviser_once_critical_of.php

Obama adviser once critical of Clinton is back

Obama adviser who called Clinton a 'monster' working on State Department transition team

MATTHEW LEE
AP News

Nov 28, 2008 16:18 EST


A former adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign who once called Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster" is now working on the transition team for the agency that Clinton may lead.

State Department officials said Friday that Samantha Power is among foreign policy experts the president-elect's office selected to help the incoming administration prepare for Clinton's anticipated nomination as secretary of state.

The Obama transition team's Web site includes Power's name as one of 14 members of the "Agency Review Team" for the State Department.

During the Democratic primary campaign, Power called Clinton "a monster" in an interview. She then resigned, calling her remarks inexcusable and contradictory to her admiration for Clinton.

[SoxFan]

1. Good!

Samantha Power deserves to be a part of the Obama foreign policy team.

[elkston]

2. Cool! She has an awesome name.

Samantha POWER.

[jaysunb]

3. It's all good !

I'd actually hoped SHE'D be named SOS or NSA. Too smart to be left out. :thumbsup:

[gkhouston]

4. Curiouser and curioser... n/t

[tekisui]

5. Very good!

She is one of the best.

[Captain Hilts]

6. Good. They all 'play well with others' better than DUers. nt

[Tom Rinaldo]

8. Yep.

I like her a lot and am very happy to see this move. The potential "drama" of this is a non issue, period.

[H2O Man]

7. Good.

I like her, a lot.

[chieftain]

9. That ought to put the lie to an earlier post claiming that

Hillary had demanded unilateral control of State Department staff and she was going to use that power to settle old scores from the primaries. Were that true, you would have to assume that Power would be at the top of the hit list. It seems one more "inside" report turns out to be speculative rather than informed.Power is brilliant and deeply knowledgeable. She will be a key asset in the formulation of Obama's foreign policy.

[polichick]

14. Who knows - could mean yes to Power, no to Clinton.

[chieftain]

23. Could. But my main point is that until confirmed by Obama all

these inside reports should be treated with a grain of salt. Running around with one's hair on fire based on rumor is not very productive and can be harmful when they are used to attack other Democrats.

[Cosmic Charlie]

10. excellent sign that the Monster might be left out in the cold!

[blogslut]

11. Interesting

I dig it.

[John Q. Citizen]

19. Me too. I like Powers.

[DangerousRhythm]

12. YES!

I thought she was otherwise brilliant and sadly made an unfortunate comment. I was hoping it wouldn't get her canned permanently. I'm glad she's back on board. :)

[FrenchieCat]

13. Yeah!!!!

Brain Power + Beauty = Samantha Power!

Change is a coming, and it will be wonderful....just wait and see! :)

[Whisp]

15. I hope that monster thing doesn't follow her the rest of her life.

sheeesh.

[Posteritatis]

31. Looks like it will for awhile.. don't you just love style-over-substance 'journalism'? :P (nt)

[brianna69]

16. Yay! Samantha's back

[lunatica]

17. Correct me if I'm wrong but being part of a 'transition' team

doesn't mean she's appointed to be in the State Department. The words "Agency Review Team" means that it's just that. A review team only in preparation for the final nomination. Or am I wrong?

[babylonsister]

21. I think some people who were on transition teams

went on to be selected to work in Obama's admin.

Maybe Austan Goolsbee is who I'm thinking of.

[bridgit]

33. I think that's a fair read as a practical matter; but Cheney's view of how to game such transitory

positions has redefined the process. Time will tell. With the world crumbling like a cookie, I do think it's time for Obama to start rolling his state team out front and pronto

[Hippo_Tron]

41. Dupe n/t

[amborin]

18. yuck, she's really a glorified journalist

[babylonsister]

20. You're misinformed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Power

A scholar of foreign policy especially as it relates to human rights, genocide, and AIDS, she is currently the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

In 2004, Power was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 top scientists and thinkers of that year.<1> In fall 2007, she began writing a regular column for Time. Power appears in Charles Ferguson's 2007 documentary, No End in Sight, which alleges numerous missteps by the Bush administration in the U.S. war in Iraq.

The character of Nadia Blye in The Vertical Hour, a play by David Hare, shares key surface similarities with Ms. Power.

Power spent 2005-06 working in the office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama as a foreign policy fellow, where she was credited with sparking and directing Obama's interest in the Darfur conflict<2>. She served as a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign until she was forced to resign for referring to Hillary Clinton as "a monster". Power apologized for the remarks made in an interview with The Scotsman in London, and resigned from the campaign shortly thereafter.

Her second book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World was released on February 14, 2008. It concerns Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and United Nations Special Representative in Iraq who was killed in the Canal Hotel bombing in Baghdad along with Jean-Sélim Kanaan, Nadia Younes, Fiona Watson, and other members of his staff, on the afternoon of August 19, 2003.

[SoxFan]

22. "A glorified journalist"

Samantha Power has done more to raise awareness of genocide than anyone of her generation. Think and educate yourself before you say something this absurd.

[amborin]

26. lots of genocide right here in our backyard in Central America...

[happychatter]

36. wtf? what?

[madrchsod]

25. glorified journalist?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200109/power-genocide

where would we be without google.......

[amborin]

27. there's tons of genocide right in Guatemala and other C.A. countries...

[stillcool]

28. where do you read her...

'glorified journalism'? I've caught her on Charlie Rose a couple of times, but she sure did make a lasting impression. Where can I find more? Does she have a particular area of expertise?

[happychatter]

37. superb interview on democracynow from prior to her resignation during the primaries

search her name on dem now archives

[stillcool]

47. I know who she is..

the poster I was replying to said she was a "glorified journalist". Seeing as how I've only seen her being interviewed, I would love to know where I can read her glorified journalism.

[happychatter]

50. by "glorified" the OP must be thinking of that Pulitzer prize winning book

you know they just pass those out like candy

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

[madrchsod]

24. obama could not afford not to have her advising him.

[Ozma]

29. Please, spell names correctly, and scan posts 30 minutes before

you post again......you have earned my ignore list......you really have a problem following rules.

Is this for YOU or the other guy who posted in the last hour? How is THIS post so much more timely than the other one?

[Tinksrival]

30. Oooo! Ozma!

Are you new to the blog police academy?
..Congrats! :crazy:

[Catherine Vincent]

32. LOL.

:crazy:

[babylonsister]

43. What are you talking about?

This was posted at 4:48 pm Friday. Whacked!

[dkf]

34. Well I said the only way I'd be comfy with Hillary as SOS is if Samantha Power

is giving Hillary her marching orders.

Sounds good to me.

[joshcryer]

42. LOL, so amusing how such a thing could change your tune so completely.

Why, just a day or two ago, you actually thought Obama lost control and Hillary was running things! Amazing!

[dkf]

46. Samantha Power knows Hillary.

She is the watchdog I need and trust to keep Hillary in line.

[SwampG8r]

35. this gives me hope that

hillary will not be named

[Zhade]

40. Knowing Obama's "we gotta set aside differences and work together" meme...

...it might mean he WILL pick her.

Hope not.

[happychatter]

38. kicked because I'm a cruel person - nt

[CarbonDate]

39. This makes me happy.

Now all I need is Wes Clark somewhere in the Obama White House (or at Foggy Bottom?) and I'll be set.

[blindpig]

44. Concerning Ms Powers

The cruise missile left also adheres closely to the party line on genocide, which is why its members thrive in the New York Times and other establishment vehicles. This is true of Paul Berman, Michael Ignatieff and David Rieff, but I will focus here on Samantha Power, whose large volume on genocide, “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide won a Pulitzer prize, and who is currently the expert of choice on the subject in the mainstream media (and even in The Nation and on the Bill Moyers show).

Power never departs from the selectivity dictated by the establishment party line. That requires, first and foremost, simply ignoring cases of direct U.S. or U.S.-sponsored (or otherwise approved) genocide. Thus the Vietnam war, in which millions were directly killed by U.S. forces, does not show up in Power’s index or text. Guatemala, where there was a mass killing of as many as 100,000 Mayan Indians between 1978 and 1985, in what Amnesty International called “A Government Program of Political Murder,” but by a government installed and supported by the United States, also does not show up in Power’s index. Cambodia is of course included, but only for the second phase of the genocide—the first phase, from 1969-1975, in which the United States dropped some 500,000 tons of bombs on the Cambodian countryside and killed vast numbers, she fails to mention. On the Khmer Rouge genocide, Power says they killed 2 million, a figure widely cited after Jean Lacouture gave that number; his subsequent admission that this number was invented had no effect on its use, and it suits Power’s purpose.

A major U.S.-encouraged and supported genocide occurred in Indonesia in 1965-66 in which over 700,000 people were murdered. This genocide is not mentioned by Samantha Power and the names Indonesia and Suharto do not appear in her index. She also fails to mention West Papua, where Indonesia’s 40 years of murderous occupation would constitute genocide under her criteria, if carried out under different auspices. Power does refer to East Timor, with extreme brevity, saying that “In 1975, when its ally, the oil-producing, anti-Communist Indonesia, invaded East Timor, killing between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians, the United States looked away” (146-7). That exhausts her treatment of the subject, although the killings in East Timor involved a larger fraction of the population than in Cambodia, and the numbers killed were probably larger than the grand total for Bosnia and Kosovo, to which she devotes a large fraction of her book. She also misrepresents the U.S. role—it did not “look away,” it gave its approval, protected the aggression from any effective UN response (in his autobiography, then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan bragged about his effectiveness in protecting Indonesia from any UN action), and greatly increased its arms aid to Indonesia, thereby facilitating the genocide.

(more)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=5538

[leftstreet]

45. American Imperialism just needs better management

Haven't you heard?

Excellent article. Also, if you haven't read it, Power writes the introduction to Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism. (Sorry can't find a link to it. I read it in a bookstore.) It's uh, kinda weird.

[chascarrillo]

51. As far as I'm concerned, Chomsky and his fellow Zmag Khmer Rouge apologists can suck my dick.

[blindpig]

52. So, that's all ya got?

An erudite refutiation, fer sur.

[chascarrillo]

54. I don't waste words when it comes to appeasers of genocide.

The volks... er... folks at zmag have never met a genocide that they wished to oppose - from Cambodia to Kosovo to Rwanda to Darfur. I guess I could write a 5000-word critique of their position. However, I still have enough faith in humanity that I feel that it'd be more productive to call them a collective shitstain on the underside of earth and leave it at that.

[blindpig]

55. Utterly confused and ignorant.

Show me where zmag doen't oppose genocide. The point of the article is that Ms Power, in her high profile work, has been very selective about what she condemns, ie, where US interests is concerned she either ignores it entirely or gives it the light touch. She is a tool of US foreign policy and commercial interests.

So, if one calls out such a tool one is not opposed to genocide?

[Coexist]

48. Oh good, I love her!

[Cha]

49. Awesome! I've been wondering about

Samantha Powers..I'm glad she's doing all right!

[Carolina]

53. EXCELLENT!