Interview with Samantha Powers

My very own home town newspaper (by far the better of the two Seattle newspapers) did an interview today with Samantha Powers--she of the recent infamous "Clinton is a monster" comment which led to her resignation from her position on Obama's staff as a foreign policy advisor. I found the interview fascinating and humanizing. She said

What is so abhorrent about my comments is not only are they hurtful and hateful; they don't reflect my real views of Senator Clinton. These are not thoughts I had been having alone in my own home, storing up to vent over these 14 months.

I really just had one of those bad moments when you lose your temper and you say something that sticks. It sticks out there as something associated with Senator Clinton and also with me -- all because of me.

She's written two books: one about genocide and a new one about Sergio Vieira de Mello, the late U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights. She said of her book on genocide, which won a Pulitzer prize

The genocide book was personal. I had been in Bosnia in my early 20s and I had been shaped by the carnage and emotion, especially the fact that there were NATO planes flying overhead and not doing anything. I felt that I had not acquitted myself as aggressively as I should have in writing about those things. And I wanted to understand the act of bystanding -- how good people can do nothing in the face of very bad things...

Read the whole interview here