re: #7 MJ

The AP is making this out as a Clinton/Power spat.

The real problem is that Power is a anti-Israel zealot.

See:

Samantha Power and Obama’s Foreign Policy Team

The problem for those who favor a strong US-Israel relationship is that Power seems obsessed with Israel, and in a negative way. Much like the authors of the Baker-Hamilton report, she believes resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to solving other problems in the Middle East. And it is clear that her approach to addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be for the US to behave in a more “even handed” fashion, which of course means withdrawing US support for Israel, and instead applying more pressure on Israel for concessions.

Commentary Magazine, and in particular Noah Pollack, have done a superb job of investigative reporting regarding Power’s record and views. She is a headliner for Senator Obama — a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a professor at Harvard. Power has a column carried by TIME and she writes frequently. Indeed, it is her writing that reveals reasons to be concerned. From Commentary:

Power is an advocate of the Walt-Mearsheimer view of the American relationship with Israel. In a recent interview published on the Harvard Kennedy School’s website, Power was asked to explain “long-standing structural and conceptual problems in U.S. foreign policy.” She gave a two-part answer: the first problem, she said, is “the US historic predisposition to go it alone.” A standard reply, of course. The second problem, though, should give us pause:

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the “national interest” as a whole is defined and pursued…. America’s important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.

americanthinker.com