This is probably the best news I've read all week:

Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who earned notoriety for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster" while working to elect Barack Obama president, will take a senior foreign policy job at the White House, The Associated Press has learned.

Officials familiar with the decision say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and potential travel with Clinton, who is now secretary of state. NSC staffers often accompany the secretary of state on foreign trips.

Back when I started working for the Obama campaign during the primary, Power hadn't done much surrogate work yet. But later in 2007, when I set up one of the campaign's first blogger conference calls, Power happily joined to give details of Obama's Iraq policy (and she was terrific). Professor Power communicates Obama's international vision better than anyone else - but instead of a career political adviser hopping on the latest bandwagon, she's an academic and visionary who believes specifically in our new President. It speaks to Obama's commitment to foreign policy that she's joined his administration.

Here's Prof. Power on Charlie Rose, from a year ago:

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I posted this last week, but now I realise why, as a European actively involved in campaigning against Serb ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide, I felt so strongly about her lie. Christopher Hitchens has made it clear. It's not only that Hillary recklessly padded her CV, and refused to account for it in any coherent way. It's much bigger than this. He has now shown, as I always heard and suspected, that Hillary was the brake on Bill when he initially wanted to intervene and hammer the heavy Serb guns to stop the massacre of innocent civilians. That she should use this war, the same war she helped to prolong, to enhance her credentials, is really deeply shameful.

The Hitch's piece is here

http://www.slate.com/id/2187780/

My original diary below

Oh and I should have realised I would get lots of 'What did you Brits do?' comments. Since I've already explained umpteen times how pusillanimous the British government were, and how I and many others really welcomed US military intervention here, I'll refer you to the previous answers I gave

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/3/28/132411/775#readmore

Update [2008-3-31 18:12:56 by brit]: Despite the two instances cited by Hitchens, and because no one seems to trust him or the Bedell Smith book, or Roger Cohen's article, I have also found TWO contemporaneous accounts of Hillary dissuading Bill from intervening in 1993 in Elizabeth Drew's book ON THE EDGE and Richard Reeves, RUNNING IN PLACE. This is not just spin

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Update [2008-3-31 16:11:10 by brit]: This has just got worse. Christopher Hitchens has just posted an article in the Slate to prove what I always suspected. It was Hillary, who as reported then, was against early intervention because she'd read The Ghosts of War, and convinaced Bill that Bosnia was an ancient tribal quagmire

http://www.slate.com/id/2187780/

Bosnia is now coming back to haunt the Clintons, and so it should. Though both America, and the Clintons, are loved in Bosnia for finally forcing intervention after the Srebrenica massacre of 2005, the whole Tuzla Tale media outrage has made me revisit my feelings about the Clintons and American foreign policy in the 1990s

Let me be totally frank. In the end it took the US to silence the Serb guns which had encircled the civilian populations of Bosnia for three years. For Europeans of my generation, the final and effective use of US military power totally changed our mindset about US foreign policy. Through the post Vietnam years, especially in Latin America, myself and fellow left wingers had seen American power as mainly pernicious. Bosnia changed all that. We finally saw the use of military force for humanitarian reasons. The US showed Europeans how ineffective they were at policing their own continent.

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Reliable as always, Hillary Clinton has come up with a Solution to the crisis of finding another running mate after Barack Obama turned down the job.  Rumor has it that Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live has agreed to play Clinton's proposed Vice President at the Democratic Convention in Denver this August.

The crisis arose yesterday when Barack Obama reminded the Clintons that, notwithstanding last week's results in Ohio, he is still the front-runner by a long distance as calculated in states won, votes cast or delegates pledged.  Furthermore, he informed his opponent that he was not available to be her running mate in 2008, as he had made  plans to star in his own series this Fall.  It is not clear how Clinton intends to overcome the vote and delegate hurdles, but at least she has a running mate if she succeeds.

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It is so typical that Obama would try to counteract the Samantha Power revelation with an attack on Hillary. The revelation that what he was promising the American people about withdrawing from Iraq had exactly as much substance and validity as his position on NAFTA in Ohio. Obama's positions were convenient words. Just More Words.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0 308/Obama_responds_She_doesnt_have_stand ing_to_question_my_position.html

I have been against it in 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8 and I will bring this war to an end in 2009.

I guess he forgot to mention the part about not being in the U.S. Senate at the time of the vote and then saying a few years later that he wasn't sure which way he would have voted. Nope, he probably didn't want them to hear that. And I am absolutely certain that Obama didn't remind the crowds that he voted AGAINST withdraw from the war the first time he had an opportunity to change the direction in Iraq. Nope, that doesn't sound so good when you are trying to convince people to ignore reality and believe your lies.

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