Barack Obama's Advisers

Advisers

Obama named Zbigniew Brzezinski, the architect of the current situation in the middle east, as his Chief Foreign Policy Advisor.

adviser	description
Note:	This page is organized alphabetically. It focuses on campaign advisers.
	David Axelrod helped the state senator win his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 and currently serves as Strategist and Media Adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign. He is in position to become Obama's Karl Rove. Axelrod runs AKP&D Message and Media, an 11-person firm based in Chicago that over the past six years has worked for candidates in 42 primary and general-election campaigns. They've won 33 of them, or nearly 80 percent. Some of Axelrod's clients are Hillary Clinton, Chicago mayor Richard Daley, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards and Rahm Emanuel. On April 9th, 2007, the DrudgeReport releases a snapshot of Obama and Axelrod meeting in the Senator’s Capitol Hill office. ROLL CALL reports that Congressional ethics rules forbid the use of federal office space for political and campaign activity. After painting John McCain as having a lobbyist problem, Axelrod's consulting firm turns out to do lobbying as well, and in some shady ways.
	Bill Ayers, who has been identified as an Obama "adviser," has long held what the left once knew, broadly, as "maoist" politics -- a view of the world that was opposed to Russian style bureaucratic communism from above, instead advocates of this approach supported sending revolutionary cadre to "swim among the masses like fish in the sea." There are other ex-SDS types around the Obama campaign as well, including Marilyn Katz, a public relations professional, who was head of security for the SDS during the disaster in the streets of Chicago in 1968. She is close (politically) to Carl Davidson, a former vice president of SDS and longtime Fidelista, who is webmaster for a group called Progressives for Obama, that is headlined by other former 60s radicals like Tom Hayden and the Maoist Bill Fletcher. Davidson and Katz were key organizers of the 2002 anti-war demonstration where Obama made public his opposition to the Iraq war that has been so critical to his successful presidential campaign. Davidson apparently moved into the Maoist movements of the 70's after the disintegration of SDS.
	On February 1st, 2008, Obama, shows his international naiveté by naming, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the architect of the current situation in the middle east, as his Chief Foreign Policy Advisor. Two weeks after Obama names Zbigniew Brzezinski as his Chief Foreign Policy Advisor, Brzezinski arrives in Damascus, Syria, to begin talks with the terrorists and political assassins of the Assad regime. The visit is not coordinated with America's embassy and will not be covered by the press, although Syrian press accounts said the delegation would visit Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad; vice president, Farouq al-Sharaa, and foreign minister, Walid Mouallem. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) commented, "I remember thinking, 'Why are we listening to him?' (Brzezinski) He was the national security adviser for Jimmy Carter 30 years ago. He proceeded to talk to us about Iran, and I said, 'Let me see, didn't the ayatollahs come to power, didn't we have this problem when you were in the White House?'" Brzezinski was also the great promoter of Islamic fundamentalism, which he celebrated as the greatest bulwark against Soviet Russian communism. Using the Islamic fundamentalists, Brzezinski hoped to make the entire region between the southern border of the USSR and the Indian Ocean into an "arc of crisis," from which fundamentalist subversion would radiate into Soviet territory, first and foremost into the five Soviet republics of central Asia, Azerbaijan, etc. It was in the service of this Islamic fundamentalist card that Brzezinski first helped overthrow the Shah of Iran, and then insisted that the replacement could be no one else than Ayatollah Khomeini. Brzezinski views history through the lens of Marxism, which, despite its atheism, has much in common with Islam. Both Communism and Islam are universalistic ideologies that reject the idea of the nation-state. Both do not regard adherence to treaties between nations as obligatory. Both Communism and Islam are militaristic and expansionist creeds that do not recognize international borders. Brzezinski’s globalism has become evident in Jimmy Carter. Under Brzezinski’s influence, Carter lowered the defense budget and pursued a soft line toward the Soviet Union. We can expect an Obama White House to pursue a very soft line toward Islam.
	The latest Obama foreign policy adviser who turns out not to like Israel very much is Joseph Cirincione. Last September, in response to reports that the site in Syria that Israel bombed was a potential nuclear facility being established with the help of North Korea, Cirincione insisted that the site was no such thing. "This story is nonsense," Obama's Adviser on Nuclear Threats told Foreign Policy magazine's blog. And not just ordinary nonsense. According to Cirincione, the reports were the product of two nefarious, agenda-driven groups: (1) Bush administration hardliners seeking to derail "the U.S.-North Korean agreement" and (2) Israelis who "want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria." The number one problem with Obama taking advice from Cirincione is not his view of Israel; it's that he's a fool. As Gabriel Schoenfeld notes, the fact of North Korean involvement in the development of a Syrian plutonium plant appears indisputable; indeed, the evidence now includes videos taken inside the facility before it was destroyed. Yet Cirincione dismissed the reports out-of-hand because he didn't like the implications, including the adverse implications for Israel's longstanding enemy, Syria. In essence, Cirincione committed precisely the offense he accused the Bush administration and the Israelis of -- reaching a conclusion of fact based on an agenda, rather than the evidence. It's rather frightening to think that Obama has turned for advice on nuclear matters to someone this grotesquely paranoid about our government and about the Israelis.
	Former White House counterterrorism czar and current Obama's Foreign Policy Adviser Richard Clarke said Tuesday that Osama bin Laden, if captured, should be allowed to appeal his case to U.S. civilian courts. He said bin Laden would benefit from last week's Supreme Court decision giving terrorism suspects habeas corpus, the right to appeal their military detention to civilian courts. "If he were to be brought back," Clarke said of bin Laden, "the Supreme Court ruling holds on the right of habeas corpus." Kerry, who continues to be a damned fool, applauded the Supreme Court ruling, said it will be carried out by whichever candidate wins the presidency. On Monday, Obama applauded the civilian prosecution of terrorists prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. These lunatics sound just as pleased as punch that the left-wing judges have rolled terrorism back to a crime, instead of an act of war. There is no doubt that the dhimmicrats are insane and it appears Obama really meant it when he said: "I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." Osama, Zawahiri and the al Qaeda must be elated. Related: Britain's Labour Party, not to be outdone, have announced that radical cleric Abu Qatada, described as "Osama bin Laden's right hand man in Europe," is to be released in the next 24 hours. If Obama wins the election, the inauguration will be on January 20th, and the surrender will be on the 21st.
	Confirmed: Wesley Clark is an idiot. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a key military adviser for Obama, dismissed John McCain’s war record as a qualification for readiness to be president. Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Clark downplayed the plane crash that led to McCain’s captivity during the Vietnam War, and said the squadron McCain commanded "wasn’t a wartime squadron leader." Unlike Clark's heroic command of the military forces at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas -- 76 Branch Davidians, 21 of whom were children, were killed in the blaze. "He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility," Clark said. Clark had helped drag the U.S. into a near-fiasco at the end of the Kosovo conflict, that led to such ill-feeling toward Clark in the Pentagon that he was fired at war's end. Update: 7/3/08 -- Now watch the hypocrite Clark attempt to defend his support for John Kerry. This man is a damned liar and a disgrace to the uniform -- and he's a lousy tap-dancer!
	Obama selects Gregory Craig, a presidential assassin’s lawyer, as White House counsel. Craig has plenty of experience in politics as well as the courtroom, having served as Bill Clinton’s legal counsel during the impeachment hearings. Craig flipped from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama early in the primaries, and Obama has repaid his support — but Craig’s caseload will raise a few eyebrows: Besides defending Clinton through the impeachment process, an effort that Craig lost, who else had the benefit of Craig’s counsel? John Hinckley, Jr. -- Craig presented and won the insanity defense that allows Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin to spend weekends with his family now. Elian Gonzalez’s father -- Craig represented the father who demanded the return of his son after his estranged wife died trying to take Elian to freedom. Most people saw this as a thinly-veiled publicity stunt from Fidel Castro, attempting to embarrass the US. The dispute got resolved when Janet Reno ordered an armed assault on the house where Elian’s family in the US provided him a home. Kofi Annan -- The former Secretary-General of the UN hired Craig to defend his interests in the Volcker Commission probe of the Oil-for-Food scandal, which put billions of dollars into Saddam Hussein’s pockets while providing cash for Annan’s son, his deputies, and some allege Annan himself. Pedro Gonzalez Pinzon (Active client) -- A Panamanian legislator wanted for murdering an American soldier in 1992. The Dallas Morning News demanded that Obama force Craig to drop the case during the campaign, but no report of whether he did is easily available. I doubt that any President has selected the defender of a presidential assassin as White House Counsel before now.
	Stephanie Cutter, who, as the communications director for the erstwhile campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in 2004, knows about spouses getting unwanted headlines, will serve as Senior Advisor to the Campaign and Chief of Staff to Michelle Obama.
	Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else. Mr. Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: "Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security." He described how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football fans. Obama's plan for national security -- Winnie the Pooh -- if this guy wins the election we're doomed.
	The list of Barack Obama associates that hold views that clash with mainstream America is getting longer every day and now we can add another notch in the "anti-American" column of Obama campaign workers and supporters. This time we find that the Obama campaign's Official Blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, has spent time in France participating in labor riots, has written for a socialist magazine, hung a communist flag in his home, and was a fan of Marx while at Harvard. What we know for sure is that in May of 2006, Sam Graham-Felsen wrote a short piece in the socialist magazine Socialist Viewpoint describing his participation in some French labor riots. Then, back in 2003, Graham-Felsen also wrote a piece for the Harvard Crimson praising Noam Chomsky, known for blaming the United States instead of the terrorists for the attacks on 9/11, and advising him to "tone it down" in order to fool people enough to get his anti-American message out. More here . . .
	Eric Holder, Bill Clinton's former Deputy Attorney General, has been named to the Vice President Search team. Holder was involved in the pardon of Marc Rich, the Democratic donor who had fled the country to avoid prosecution on 51 counts of tax fraud and was not eligible for a pardon under Justice Department guidelines. His ex-wife, Denise, was a major contributor to Clinton campaigns and to the Clinton library fund -- and probably one of Clinton's bimbos. Mr. Holder's recommendation to pardon circumvented normal procedures and kept other Justice Department lawyers in the dark. A congressional committee described his conduct as "unconscionable." Then there was Holder’s involvement in the Elian Gonzalez case in 2000. It was Holder, for the first time in history, that took a child from his residence at the point of a gun to enforce his custody position, even though he did not have an legal order authorizing it. Holder denied that Gonzalez was taken at the point of a gun. When he was confronted with the fact that there was a photograph showing he was taken at the point of a gun." Holder defended himself, saying "They were armed agents who went in there who acted very sensitively…" Holder also argued that members of a terrorist organization should get clemency.
	His Chief Economic Adviser, Austan Goolsbee, is a professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He's young, quirky and a rising star in academia. He's written extensively, both as an academic researcher and as the author of a monthly "Economic Scene" column for The New York Times and a "Dismal Science" column for Slate.com. Goolsbee's media columns touch on a range of topics, including China's weak banking system and high fees charged by administrators of some state savings plans for college, called 529s. He even penned an economic defense in March 2007 of the sub-prime loans that have helped trigger the nationwide housing crisis. Goolsbee's a member of the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research, but while the University of Chicago is identified with free-market economics, he doesn't have an identifiable ideological bent.
	Obama is being given ominous advice from leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to brace himself for an early assault from terrorists. General Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, this week acknowledged that there were dangers during a presidential transition when new officials were coming in and getting accustomed to the challenges. But he added that no "real or artificial spike" in intercepted transmissions from terror suspects had been detected. President Bush has repeatedly described the acute vulnerability of the US during a transition. The Bush Administration has been defined largely by the 9/11 attacks, which came within a year of his taking office. His aides have pointed to al-Qaeda’s first assault on the World Trade Centre, which occurred little more than a month after Bill Clinton became President in 1993. There was an alleged attempt to bomb Glasgow airport in Gordon Brown’s first days in Downing Street and a London nightclub attack was narrowly thwarted. Lord West of Spithead, the Home Office Security Minister, spoke recently of a "huge threat", saying: "There is another great plot building up again and we are monitoring this." Intelligence chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic have indicated that such warnings refer more to a general sense of foreboding (CYA) than fear of an imminent or specific plan. More . . .
	Obama has named his longtime friend and supporter Valerie Jarrett to be his White House senior adviser. Jarrett, who hired Michelle Obama for a job in the Chicago mayor's office years ago, is one of the president-elect's closest friends and advisers. Her name has been floated for several top administration jobs. But Obama settled on the senior adviser role, said a person close to the president-elect and willing to speak only on background because the decision has not been officially announced. A White House senior adviser can handle a range of duties. President George W. Bush's top political aide Karl Rove held the title in the current administration. Jarrett has a background in real estate and politics in Chicago and is linked to a series of real estate scandals, including several housing projects operated by convicted felon and Obama fundraiser/friend Antoin "Tony" Rezko. According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Illinois Secretary of State, Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis, Obama's former boss. Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis. As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama's former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza. According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered "uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage.
	Jim Johnson, the head of Barack Obama's Vice President Search team is also a lobbyist, operative for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, representative of a former head of state, bundler for the Obama campaign, and disgraced mortgage executive who mistated Fannie Mae profits to get a bigger bonus. Today, the NY Sun tells us that he also got sweetheart mortgages from bankrupt mortgage dealer Country Wide Financial. Johnson is one of three people tapped by Mr. Obama recently to oversee the search for his running mate, took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company's CEO, Angelo Mozilo, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. But I am sure that Barack Obama sees nothing wrong with that. After all, he got a subsidy on his own house from now-felon, then-FBI investigation target Tony Rezko.
	Obama has appointed Daniel Kurtzer as his key Middle East Adviser Kurtzer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, has long been recognized by Israel leaders, including prime ministers, as biased against Israel and is notorious for urging extreme concessions from the Jewish State. Kurtzer faulted the Bush administration for not doing enough to pressure Israel into dividing Jerusalem. "With Jews like Kurtzer, it is impossible to build a healthy relationship between Israel and the United States," Benjamin Nentanyahu was quoted saying in 2001 by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Kurtzer "frequently pressured Israel to make one-sided concessions to the Arabs; he constantly blamed Israel for the absence of Mideast peace, and paid little or no attention to the fact that the Palestinians were carrying out terrorist attacks and openly calling for the destruction of Israel." Morris Amitay, former executive director of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2001: "Kurtzer … will use his Jewishness as a protective cover for his anti-Israel views." Kurtzer first rose to prominence in 1988 when as a State Department adviser he counseled the Reagan administration to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat. The PLO had carried out scores of anti-Western attacks, but in the late ’80s Arafat claimed to have renounced violence.
	Was it a recommendation of Zbigniew Brzezinski to bring Robert Malley, another anti-Israel foreign policy expert, onto Obama's Foreign Policy Staff? Malley's father, Simon Malley, was born to a Syrian family in Cairo and at an early age found his métier in political journalism. Simon wrote thousands of words in support of the struggle against Western nations. In Paris, he founded the journal Afrique Asie; he and his magazine became advocates for "liberation" struggles throughout the world, particularly for the Palestinians. Simon Malley loathed Israel and anti-Israel activism became a crusade for him -- as an internet search would easily show. Now, his son, Robert, is following in his father's footsteps and he represents the next generation of anti-Israel activism, through his writings, that are akin to propaganda. He has written a range of pieces over the years that reveal an agenda at work that should give pause to those Obama supporters who truly care about peace in the Middle Peace and the fate of our ally Israel. He is best known for a controversial series of articles in 2001 blaming Israel and exonerating Arafat for the failure of the Clinton peace efforts. Malley is the Director of the Middle East/North Africa Program at the International Crisis Group (ICG). The ICG is funded (in part) by anti-Israel billionaire activist George Soros through his Open Society Institute. Soros serves on its Board and on its Executive Committee. Other members of the Board include Zbigniew Brzezinski (whose anti-Israel credentials are impeccable) and Wesley Clark (who called US support for Israel during the Hezbollah War a "serious mistake"). On May th, 2008, Malley disclosed that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas -- prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him. Robert Malley told The Times he had regularly been in contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza but is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama's Middle East advisory council.
	According to retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, Obama's most Senior Military Adviser, Iran's behavior is a reaction to Bush's tough talk. "Iran is a big enemy of al Qaeda," and "They were a big enemy of the Taliban," said the retired four-star general. "They cooperated with us quite completely in the initial phases of our Afghanistan operation. And it was us that insulted them by including them in the 'axis of evil' and making sure they understood we didn't like them very much." That drove us apart," said McPeak. "Obama's idea is, why not talk to them. Why not see if there isn't some common ground. Certainly, the fight against al Qaeda would be one of them." "With all due respect to Gen. McPeak, what drives the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran apart -- and has since 1979 -- is the unwavering antipathy of the regime in Tehran towards the United States, its ally Israel and freedom-loving, non-Islamist nations more generally," said Frank Gaffney, a Pentagon policymaker in the Ronald Reagan administration who heads the Center for Security Policy. Added Gaffney: "It is not simply naïve, it is reckless to ignore: serial statements by the mullahs and their front man, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, about a world without America; their goons parading in Iranian cities shouting "Death to America"; their active efforts to kill and maim Americans and Iraqis in the hope of defeating the United States in Iraq and rendering the latter an oil-rich satellite and new safe-haven for Iranian-backed terror; and accumulating evidence that Iran’s Hezbollah proxies, and their intelligence agents are developing cells capable of unleashing deadly violence here as well as elsewhere. Even an individual without appreciable expertise in such matters like Sen. Obama should be able to discern these realities. It is inexplicable how a professional military officer like Gen. McPeak could fail to do so." First of all, he must have convenient amnesia when it comes to the takeover of the US embassy in Iran back in 1979, Iranian-backed Hezbollah's attack in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 Marines, sailors and soldiers -- all American. He must have also slept through Hezbollah's kidnapping of UN Observer US Marine Colonel William Higgins and the CIA station chief in Beirut, Bill Buckley. The 9-11 Commission uncovered clear evidence of great cooperation between Iran and Al Qaeda over a period of years, long before the September 11 attacks, and if you Google "iran al qaeda," you can see all sorts of connections discovered between the two. Obama has less than 10 flag rank officers supporting him.
	Here's a quote from Obama's Campaign Manager, David Plouffe: "The vast, vast majority of voters who would not vote for Barack Obama in November based on race are probably firmly in John McCain's camp already." In other words, this man who is managing the campaign for the presumed nominee for the Democrat party believes that if people won't vote for Barack because he is black, that automatically means that they are going to vote for McCain. I guess it follows they will vote for McCain not because of his policies but simply because he is white.
	Samantha "Sam" Power [since fired] is the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide, and she has a professorship at Harvard. She is also a Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to Barack Obama. The Washington Post has identified her as "closest to Obama, part of a group-within-the-group that he regularly turns to for advice." She "retain(s) unlimited access to Obama." The New York Times said that Power has an "irresistable profile" and "she could very well end up in [Obama's] cabinet." She also has a problem: a corpus of critical statements about Israel. These have been parsed by Noah Pollak at Commentary's blog Contentions, by Ed Lasky and Richard Baehr at American Thinker, and by Paul Mirengoff at Power Line. Power made her most problematic statement in 2002, in an interview she gave at Berkeley. The interviewer asked her this question: Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine-Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide? Power gave an astonishing answer: What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing -- or investing, I think, more than sacrificing -- billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line. Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Friedman has called "Sharafat" [Sharon-Arafat]. I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention.... Any intervention is going to come under fierce criticism. But we have to think about lesser evils, especially when the human stakes are becoming ever more pronounced. It isn't too difficult to see all the red flags in this answer. Having placed Israel's leader on par with Yasser Arafat, she called for massive military intervention on behalf of the Palestinians, to impose a solution in defiance of Israel and its American supporters. Billions of dollars would be shifted from Israel's security to the upkeep of a "mammoth protection force" and a Palestinian state -- all in the name of our "principles."
	Penny Pritzker, a member of one of America’s richest families and the current Finance Chair for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, was the chair of Chicago-based Superior Bank’s board for five years. Superior Bank went belly up in 2001 with over $1 billion in insured and uninsured deposits; 1,406 depositors lost much of their life savings. This collapse came amid harsh criticism of how Superior’s owners promoted sub-prime home mortgages. On Nov. 1 [2002] the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. pointed the finger at Ernst & Young, Superior’s auditor, in a fraud suit filed in federal court here. But that action comes two months after a group of Superior depositors accused the bank’s owners and directors, including two members of the Pritzker family, of racketeering, claiming they lined their pockets with money looted from Superior savings accounts. Superior, a suburban Chicago savings and loan, collapsed in early 2001 under the weight of half a billion dollars in subprime loan defaults and improper accounting that had overstated the thrift’s assets by $420 million.
	As a Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to Obama, Susan Rice, 43, has taken a leading role in helping to shape the freshman Illinois senator's vision for the world, building on a bond forged in part by their shared -- and outspoken -- opposition to the war in Iraq. An assistant secretary of state under President Clinton, Ms. Rice also served as a senior adviser on the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004. "Supporting Senator Obama was a clear choice for me," she said. According to multiple sources, including former Clinton official Mansoor Ijaz and Richard Miniter, author of the bestseller Losing Bin Laden, it was she who was a major opponent of accepting Sudan’s offer to turn over the world’s most wanted mass murderer. At the time, Rice was the Clinton Administration’s Secretary of State for African Affairs and a former assistant National Security Advisor under Sandy Berger. According the both Ijaz and Miniter, Rice’s personal beliefs on the Sudan’s credibility led to her convincing Berger to reject their offer to turn over Bin Laden, overruling the advice of Tim Carney, then ambassador to Sudan. Her partner in this colossal error in judgment? Bush hater Richard Clarke. Sadly, a little more than a year later, Bin Laden’s murderers blew up the African embassies, killing U. S. soldiers and citizens. She is one of the few people still vouching for Joe Wilson’s credibility long after everyone else realized that not even vultures could find any shred of credibility on the Wilson carcass. One absolutely shudders at the thought of this woman being in charge of our national security. She has been behind the curve and wrong on just about every issue on which she’s gone on record. The fact that she has the Osama cloud hanging over her head, and her shilling for Howard Dean should automatically disqualify her from being anywhere near a position of influence in national security affairs.
	The Senior Working Group on National Security, which his campaign says he will consult with regularly before the election, includes former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher; former Senator David Boren, who was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig; former Representative Lee Hamilton, who was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who is also helping Obama vet possible running mates; and former Senator Sam Nunn, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and someone who could be on Obama's consider list for vice president. Obama said in a statement. "The stakes in this election could not be higher. John McCain wants to continue George Bush's foreign policy which has made us less safe, less respected, and less able to lead the world. It's time to change course." So much for CHANGE! This is the same tired bunch that gave Osama ben Laden and other terrorists Carte Blank during the Clinton years -- CHANGE? -- JUDGMENT? -- not hardly! I am particularly miffed that Warren Christopher is allowed to advise anyone on national security issues, much less a possible president. Never forget his involvement and responsibility for Blackhawk Down. When the Clinton Administration was planning for the raid, the need for armored vehicle support was pointed out. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said "no" to the use of armored vehicles. His rationale? "We don't want to escalate the situation." Bill Clinton concurred, and there in the air-conditioned safety of the White House, the doom of those Rangers in the stifling, stinking, bloody heat of Mogadishu, was sealed.
	Patti Solis Doyle will be Chief of Staff to the Vice Presidential Nominee. Solis Doyle, Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, was last in the news when Sen. Clinton showed her the door back in February, 2007.
	Rev. Jeremiah A Wright, pastor of the UCC Trinity Church, is Obama's Personal and Spiritual Adviser. Wright preaches African-American unity through antipathy toward whites. He is militantly Afrocentric. His church's website proudly claims, "We are an African people, and remain 'true to our native land,' the mother continent, the cradle of civilization." Wright, who married the Obama's, remains a major influence on the presidential candidate. The title of Obama’s second book, The "Audacity of Hope," is borrowed from one of Wright’s sermons. When he took over Trinity United Church of Christ in 1972, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. was a maverick pastor with a wardrobe of dashikis and a militant message. He graduated from Howard University and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English with a focus on African spirituals. At the University of Chicago Divinity School, he earned another masters degree in the history of religions with a focus on Islam. This video presents an example of the Rev. Wright's beliefs -- it is truly disturbing. Wright sought to build his church on the black theology of liberation, the Marxist ideology introduced in 1968 by Rev. James Cone of New York. It emphasizes Africa's contribution to Christianity rather than that of mainstream white theologians. Wright told The New York Times in an interview, published March 6th: "When his (Obama's) enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli," with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to visit Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, "a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell." If, after 20+ years of a close relationship, where it was clear to everyone else who Jeremiah Wright was, if after that long you so terribly misjudged the man...then please tell me Mr. Obama, who else on this page have you misjudged so completely? Who on your campaign staff? Who of your contributors? Who amongst your other close associates and friends? More telling yet, Mr. Obama, *Who will you so wholly misjudge in the future?* What leaders of nations? What members of your cabinet? What Judges you nominate?