Team of Rivals or Kettle of Hawks?

ROBERT DREYFUSS
Editor of The Dreyfuss Report and author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, Dreyfuss just wrote the piece "Still Preparing to Attack Iran: The Neoconservatives in the Obama Era," which states: "A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail -- and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead. ... Several top advisers to Obama -- including Tony Lake, UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice, Tom Daschle, and Dennis Ross, along with leading Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke, close to Vice-President-elect Joe Biden or Secretary of State-[nominee] Hillary Clinton -- have made common cause with war-minded think-tank hawks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the American Enterprise Institute and other hardline institutes."
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JEREMY SCAHILL
Available for interviews beginning Wednesday evening, Scahill is author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He just wrote the piece "Barack Obama's Kettle of Hawks," which states: "The assembly of Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Susan Rice and Joe Biden is a kettle of hawks with a proven track record of support for the Iraq war, militaristic interventionism, neoliberal economic policies and a worldview consistent with the foreign policy arch that stretches from George H.W. Bush's time in office to the present.

"Obama has dismissed suggestions that the public records of his appointees bear much relevance to future policy. 'Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost,' Obama said. 'It comes from me. That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing.' It is a line the president-elect's defenders echo often. The reality, though, is that their records do matter.

"We were told repeatedly during the campaign that Obama was right on the premier foreign policy issue of our day -- the Iraq war. 'Six years ago, I stood up and opposed this war at a time when it was politically risky to do so,' Obama said in his September debate against John McCain. 'Senator McCain and President Bush had a very different judgment.' What does it say that, with 130 members of the House and 23 in the Senate who voted against the war, Obama chooses to hire Democrats who made the same judgment as Bush and McCain?"