Hillary Picks Cheney Aide to Replace PJ Crowley

/in /by

It’s bad enough that Obama didn’t clear out the Cheney folks burrowed into the permanent bureaucracy. Now the Obama Administration will appoint former Cheney aide Victoria Nuland to replace PJ Crowley as State Department spokesperson.

Victoria “Toria” Nuland, the current U.S. special envoy for conventional forces in Europe and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, will be named the new spokesperson for the State Department this week, officials and foreign policy hands told the Envoy.The State Department did not provide comment in response to queries. Nuland did not respond to  a query.

The appointment is expected to be announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as early as Monday, sources told the Envoy.

Nuland, a career foreign service officer, has previously served as U.S. Ambassador and deputy ambassador to NATO, former principal deputy national security adviser to then Vice President Dick Cheney, and as chief of staff to Clinton-era Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, now President of the Brookings Institution.

Well, I guess one way to make sure someone doesn’t go off the reservation like PJ Crowley did is to appoint a former Cheney aide.

Though I do hope Hillary recalls how Cheney sabotaged Colin Powell’s efforts at State Department with his agents there (people like John Bolton).

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  1. BoxTurtle says:

    Change we can believe in. *sigh*

    Boxturtle (11 dimensional theory: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer)

    • bobschacht says:

      Change we can believe in. *sigh*

      *sigh* You beat me to it. I’m with Cornel West about this.
      The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic
      readersupportednews.org

      No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated…

      Now, EW is writing about Hillary, not Barack, but she just seems to be following Obama’s lead.

      Bob in AZ

      • orionATL says:

        an interesting cite, bob.

        tx

        this quote captures precisely why i have become contemptuous of president obama:

        cornell west speaking –

        [ “Can you imagine if Barack Obama had taken office and deliberately educated and taught the American people about the nature of the financial catastrophe and what greed was really taking place?” West asks. “If he had told us what kind of mechanisms of accountability needed to be in place, if he had focused on homeowners rather than investment banks for bailouts and engaged in massive job creation he could have nipped in the bud the right-wing populism of the tea party folk. The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways… ]

        however,

        west’s comment is NOT why i have distrusted obama from the time he was a demo candidate.

        i have distrust obama because he was, self-evidently, a political con-man. i could never feel any passion for justice in his words nor could i feel any conviction in them.

        acquiring, and now, maintaining, power seems to be candidate and now president obama’s single passion.

      • tambershall says:

        folks, you really have to read the link that bob posted:
        The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic
        http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/the_obama_deception_why_cornel_west_went_ballistic_20110516/

        here’s a taste:
        “Obama and West’s last personal contact took place a year ago at a gathering of the Urban League when, he says, Obama “cussed me out.” Obama, after his address, which promoted his administration’s championing of charter schools, approached West, who was seated in the front row.

        “He makes a bee line to me right after the talk, in front of everybody,” West says. “He just lets me have it. He says, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying I’m not a progressive. Is that the best you can do? Who do you think you are?’ I smiled. I shook his hand. And a sister hollered in the back, ‘You can’t talk to professor West. That’s Dr. Cornel West. Who do you think you are?’ You can go to jail talking to the president like that. You got to watch yourself. I wanted to slap him on the side of his head.

        “It was so disrespectful,” he went on, “that’s what I didn’t like. I’d already been called, along with all [other] leftists, a “F’ing retard” by Rahm Emanuel because we had critiques of the president.” ”

        OMG, he’s always been like this. it really was all a ruse. I mean I knew, but maybe a part of me wanted to believe that he was being blackmailed or something. no, he’s just as bad as them. he’s there’s. they own him. they didn’t buy him. he sold out to the greed machine willingly.

  2. Jeff Kaye says:

    Nuland’s neo-con roots go deep. She is married to PNAC’er Robert Kagan.

    A <a href="http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2005/12/3/231957/944"news story from Turkish Press, sometime in 2005:

    PARIS – Reports that the CIA flew terrorist suspects to secret prisons in or via European countries has been discussed at NATO headquarters in Belgium, the US ambassador to the military organisation said Friday.

    “I don’t want to say it hasn’t come up in Brussels, of course it’s come up in Brussels, but it is not getting in the way of our work,” Victoria Nuland told a media conference in Paris.

    “And I think it is not getting in the way of our work because there is anticipation among our allies, and particularly among EU allies, that the questions that have been asked will be answered by my government,” she said.

    ….

    “Obviously we don’t talk about intelligence matters. That said, US activities and actions have been, and will continue in accord with our own laws, in accord with our international obligations and we obviously don’t torture anybody,” Nuland said.

  3. harpie says:

    Wiki:

    Nuland was the Deputy Permanent Representative to NATO from July 2000 to July 2003. There she was instrumental in NATO’s invocation of Article 5 of its charter – “an attack on one ally is an attack on all” – in support of the United States after September 11, 2001. She also worked intensively on the enlargement of the Alliance to include seven new members, the creation of the NATO-Russia Council, NATO’s first deployment “out of area” to Afghanistan and its defense of Turkey during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

    • harpie says:

      October 4, 2001 – NATO Allies met to consider a set of concrete proposals from the United States. In a press statement after the session, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson announced that the Allies had “agreed today – at the request of the United States – to take eight measures, individually and collectively, to expand the options available in the campaign against terrorism.” The European Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights asserts: ”The invocation of Article 5 could have been developed as a basis upon which to conduct a military campaign of a conventional nature […] Instead it became a platform from which the United States obtained the essential permissions and protections it required to launch CIA covert action in the “war on terror””. The committee also notes “the similarity in the language of “options” used to describe the intergovernmental NATO authorisation and […] the US domestic covert action authority in the Presidential Finding of 17.09.2001 […]”

      Council of Europe, Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights report: “Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states”; 6/7/07

      http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/ssi/full_report_marty_060807.pdf?hpid=topnews

      Ironic that this is coming up the day after the SC denied cert. in Jeppesen. [I think I’ve got the terminology right…]

  4. prostratedragon says:

    Might have been hearing things, but could have sworn last year when an interviewer took up with Sec. Clinton the question of serving in a second Obama term, her response was punctuated with a bit of a snort.

    I know what that means when I do it.

      • BoxTurtle says:

        She did. But she didn’t use the phrase “Run away screaming”, so one could assume the door is slightly open.

        Boxturtle (Perhaps she’s waiting for a gOP offer)

  5. Mauimom says:

    And where are all the folks who are always crowing how Hillary would have been SO much more “liberal” than Obama?

    Crickets.

  6. DWBartoo says:

    Hillary is not afraid of any vast Cheney-inspired right-wing conspiracy, EW.

    And please, don’t worry about Hillary, anyone, she certainly is not too terribly worried about any of us … looking forward.

    (Apparently, in her daily, or nightly, chats with Gawd, Hillary makes a point of thanking Him for “rich people” … dodging bullets does help get priorities straight, and, one imagines, that she and Bill are thinking about their nest-egg, now that word has trickled down that the Obamas are worth between 1.8 and 12 million$, the Clintons, likely, have deciderated that they have both done enough public-sector “mentoring” and now need to concentrate on “networking” and such like.)

    DW

  7. tjbs says:

    If only Nazis fought a war on terror we’d be speaking in German now.

    Hillary anything other than a war monger? It’s what she wants and who she is.

  8. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Mr. Obama’s capacity to corrupt through institutionalizing misdeeds seems to be contagious. Yes, Ms. Nuland appears to be a career FSO. She has lovely credentials, but in Foggy Bottom, those are a dime a dozen.

    Her most striking credential is not her work for Strobe Talbott, then a relatively lowly Deputy Sec. State. It is her work as principal national security adviser for the most conservative and powerful, indeed, reckless, vice president in modern times.

    Mr. Cheney was exceptionally careful to ensure that those he hired into his network anywhere in government agreed with his views and about his role in promoting them. Doubly so on national security issues, triply so for anyone allowed near his inner sanctum. Ms. Nuland was all three.

    Of all the signals this administration has sent to the American people and the world’s diplomatic community about how seriously it takes change and responsible, open government, this is among its most cynical. Hillary has either gone to sleep next to her pod or been taken out behind the woodshed by Daley and been shown the light.

    Mr. Obama has a penchant for setting in stone any status quo he inherits. That is, if it represents a narrow establishment consensus or opposing it might make an establishment figure wince in disdain, and thereby deny him the approval he seeks. It is not behavior that will better the lot of 99% of Americans.

    • rugger9 says:

      Well said, but it begs the question as to why the concerted effort to maintain the status quo or even expand it, yet letting the Bushies run free and unfettered. If it were a control issue, almost any new government would have hauled every one of these clowns in to trial or muzzled them in effective ways, especially given the coordinated Koch-Rove-Murdoch-driven attacks since the beginning of the campaign. Yet it did not happen, nor will it happen. Note also there is no viable GOP candidate to run against Obama, although I would say Petraeus will emerge as the 11th hour convention nominee to minimize oppo research [still plenty to find, however].

      What is the quid pro quo that let Obama become President? How will we dig it out? How can we rescue the country from a co-opted Administration?

      • PJEvans says:

        Isn’t one.
        He made pretty speeches that conned most people into voting for him, thinking he was really interested in changing things.

  9. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Ms. Nuland’s professional specialty seems to be making war and coordinating its fighting through allied coalitions. That will not have gone unnoticed by those hoping to discern this administration’s agenda by reading the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup used by its principal spokesperson for international affairs. It’s all a seamless thread, isn’t it?

  11. orionATL says:

    what with senator kerry running hither and yon in the world carrying prez obama’s messages and signature ring,

    i’ve begun wondering if sec-of-state clinton has been demoted to sec-of-state-in-name-only clinton.