Obama advisor resigns for calling Hillary Clinton a “monster”

Samantha Power, a foreign-policy advisor to Barack Obama and past FP contributor, has just resigned for saying that Hillary Clinton is a "monster" in what she thought was an off-the-record remark to The Scotsman. But that wasn’t Power’s only boo-boo during her trip to the UK, where she is promoting her new book. As the ...

Samantha Power, a foreign-policy advisor to Barack Obama and past FP contributor, has just resigned for saying that Hillary Clinton is a "monster" in what she thought was an off-the-record remark to The Scotsman.

Samantha Power, a foreign-policy advisor to Barack Obama and past FP contributor, has just resigned for saying that Hillary Clinton is a "monster" in what she thought was an off-the-record remark to The Scotsman.

But that wasn’t Power’s only boo-boo during her trip to the UK, where she is promoting her new book. As the Politico‘s Ben Smith notes, Power also deviated from the party line on Obama’s withdrawal plan for Iraq:

Power downplayed Obama’s commitment to quick withdrawal from Iraq on Hard Talk, a program that often exceeds any of the U.S. talk shows in the rigor of its grillings. She was challenged on Obama’s Iraq plan, as it appears on his website, which says that Obama "will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months."

"What he’s actually said, after meting with the generals and meeting with intelligence professionals, is that you – at best case scenario – will be able to withdraw one to two combat brigades each month. That’s what they’re telling him. He will revisit it when he becomes president," Power says.

The host, Stephen Sackur, challenged her:"So what the American public thinks is a commitment to get combat forces out in 16 months isn’t a commitment isn’t it?"

"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 U.S. 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. So to think – it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, ‘Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.’"

"It’s a best-case scenario," she said again.

What do Passport readers think. Should Power have resigned?

UPDATE: It probably wasn’t the savviest political move by Power to compare Obama to a U.N. official, either.

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