The secret dinner with Obama you haven’t heard about

[kpete]

The secret dinner with Obama you haven’t heard about
Thu, 01/15/2009 - 5:46pm

At a quiet dinner meeting late last week in Washington's Ronald Reagan Building, President-elect Obama reached out to outside foreign-policy experts, trying to resist the presidential bubble that is rapidly closing around him.

Late afternoon last Thursday Jan.8, scholars and staff at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars noticed an unusual upgrade in the security of the top floors of their building, which also houses USAID, the EPA, a public food court, and some foreign television stations. The Wilson Center hosts high-level people all the time, but this security detail was of a different order, sources said.

..............

Hamilton, the longtime House member from Indiana who cochaired the Iraq Study Group, the 9/11 Commission, and numerous others over the years, has become a kind of wise-man mentor to Obama. Last Thursday, the Wilson Center president assembled a small collection of scholars on the Middle East and South Asia for a meeting that stretched through dinner for hours into the night.

Among those who attended the off-the-record dinner: Iran scholar Haleh Esfandiari, Pakistan expert Ahmed Rashid (who had flown in from Lahore), Obama friend and foreign-policy advisor Samantha Power of Harvard University (who accompanied PEOTUS to the meeting), incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and a few others. Obama told the group, none of whom reached would discuss the details, that he already felt in the bubble and was trying his best to meet with independent experts.

more at:
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/node/15199

[babylonsister]

1. A curious president who searches out knowledge and opinions

will be a wonderful thing.

[Raven]

3. Yes, unlike * I think he can think for himself and make his own decisions. n/t

[blm]

2. Please stay AWAY FROM HAMILTON, Barack. The man was BushInc's favorite coverup Dem in the 80s

and early 90s, until Clinton took over for him.

Hamilton claims GHWBush is too honorable a man to have committed the crimes people KNEW he committed and even though there was plenty of PROOF he committed them.

Hamilton = Coverup. The worst Dem appeaser of the 80s and THAT is why BushInc wanted him so badly for 9-11 Commission.

[Solly Mack]

4. Lee Hamilton...wise-man? mentor? ROFLMAO

This is getting better and better

[cali]

5. Ahmed Rashid and Samantha Power

Terrible. Shameful.