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View Full Version : The Shadow Government of the Obama Administration



stephanie
01-24-2009, 10:38 AM
While the media goes through a never ending cycle of adoring adulation toward the new President, there are many inconvenient stories that they simply refuse to answer. One of those stories is the immense number of newly created advisors and envoys. These advisors appear to have no clear role. That's because there are already entire cabinets created specifically for what they are supposed to do. The two latest are George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke. Beyond these two envoys, Obama has named an enormous amount of czars as well as a few other folks simply called advisors.

Obama is not the first to have czars, advisors, and certainly not the first to have envoys. What makes the Obama administration different is first the sheer numbers of these folks, and second the scope that some of these folks will have. In the case of both Holbrooke and Mitchell, there are in fact deputy level positions for each of their roles. In other words, why are Holbrooke and Mitchell envoys to Afghanistan/Pakistan and the Middle East respectively, when the State Department specifies deputies to the Secretary already for those specific roles? In other words, why did he name them envoys when they should have just been appointed Deputy Secretaries for these respective areas?

This is not just some inconsequential concern. Both these men technically operate in the same function as the State Department but envoys aren't necessarily part of the State Department. As such, who do they report to? That is a question with no easy answer.


President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all announced Thursday that two high-profile diplomats will serve as envoys to volatile regions, resolving the outstanding question about American foreign policy: Who will be in charge?

The answer: All of them.

Obama and Clinton appeared Thursday at the State Department to formally announce Clinton’s appointment and to roll out some of her senior staff and envoys. Among them was former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who, a source said, will report to both Obama and Secretary Clinton as Mideast envoy; Richard Holbrooke, envoy to South Asia and Afghanistan, will have a similar arrangement. The Mitchell appointment puts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the hands of an experienced power player and deal-maker, but leaves unresolved some of the lines of command in the new administration.



As such, the role of foreign policy is ripe for a shadow government.

read the rest here...
http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/01/shadow-government-of-obama.html