OBAMA SLAYS HIS 'MONSTER' - AIDE WHO SLIMED HILL QUITS & SAYS SORRYBy MAGGIE HABERMAN
March 8, 2008
March 8, 2008
A top foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama resigned yesterday after
calling Hillary Rodham
Clinton "a monster." Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Harvard prof who posed last summer for a glamorous
pictorial in Vogue, came under fire after firing off the insult.
She further embarrassed Obama by saying
his plan to withdraw from Iraq could become inoperative if he wins the White House. Discussing Clinton, Power told The Scotsman newspaper: "
She is a monster, too - that is off the record -
she is stooping to anything."
On Thursday night, Obama's camp issued a statement from Power apologizing and Obama denounced the "monster" remark.
Power told RTE, Ireland's public broadcast service, that she spoke with Obama by phone yesterday and he "made it
absolutely clear that we just couldn't make comments like this in his campaign."
Clinton supporters had demanded
that she be axed.
Power announced she was resigning just as word circulated about a BBC interview where
she said Obama's
call to pull all US troops from Iraq within 16 months is a "best-case scenario" that he'd look at again if elected.
"You can't make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009," she said.
"He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a US senator.
"He will rely upon a plan - an operational plan - that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the
ground to whom he doesn't have daily access now, as a result of not being the president."
In her announcement that she's resigning her unpaid post, Power called her
remarks about Clinton "inexcusable" and contrary to her admiration for the former first lady.
Power didn't address her Iraq comments.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe insisted that the candidate's plan to pull back roughly two brigades
a month as president is "a rock-solid commitment."
But it followed a flap over a Canadian government memo that pointed to double dealing by Obama's top economic
adviser, Austan Goolsbee.
According to the memo, Goolsbee privately told Canadian government officials that Obama's talk about renegotiating
the North American Free Trade Agreement was "political positioning."
Goolsbee has denied the remarks.
Clinton, stumping in Mississippi, said her rival "keeps telling people one thing, while his campaign tells people
abroad something else. I'm not sure what the American people should believe."
She added, "
He has attacked me continuously for having no hard exit date [from Iraq], and now we learn
he doesn't have one. In fact, he doesn't have a plan at all."
Obama shot back, "She doesn't have the standing to question my position on this issue.
"It was because of George Bush, with an assist from Hillary Clinton and John McCain, that we got into this war . . .
I will end it in 2009."
Power is an expert on human rights, having written several books and articles on issues like the crisis in Darfour.
A graduate of Yale University and Harvard law school, she moved to the United States from Ireland at age 9.
Power is reportedly close to Cass Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor who has close ties with Obama
and may be tapped as a possible adviser or White House counsel.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03082008/news/nationalnews/obama_slays_his_monster_100949.htm 
