Obama's Position on Negotiating with Enemies - Samantha Power March 7, 2008

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/02/26/Chasing_the_Flame_Sergio_Vieira_de_Mello

Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Senior Adviser to Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama, revisits the debate between Obama and Hillary Clinton on whether the U.S. should negotiate with hostile governments without preconditions.

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Samantha Power on Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World.

Sergio Vieira de Mello was one of the greatest humanitarians of our time, and while surprisingly few people recognize his name, his role in our world becomes abundantly clear when you describe the details surrounding his death.

He died on the afternoon of August 19, 2003, when a suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives alongside the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, killing over twenty people working there for the United Nations. Vieira de Mello, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy, was buried beneath the wreckage, under the UN flag itself.

Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World is as much a biography of Vieira de Mello as it is a riveting account of the last four decades of global conflicts and our attempts to understand and resolve them.

Despite the tragic outcome in Iraq, the life of Sergio Vieira de Mello yields vital lessons for us today, providing us with his unique expertise on how to unite as nations, rebuild our international institutions, and establish peace and security in those parts of our world that need them the most - Cody's BooksSamantha Power (born 1970) is a journalist, writer, and professor. She is currently affiliated with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Power was raised in Ireland before emigrating to the United States in 1979. She attended Lakeside High School in Atlanta, GA. She was a member of the cross country team as well the basketball team. She is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. From 1993 to 1996, she covered the Yugoslav wars for U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, The Economist, and The New Republic.

She is a scholar of foreign policy especially as it relates to human rights, genocide, and AIDS. Her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2003. She endorses the Genocide Intervention Network.

She spent 2005-06 working in the office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama as a foreign policy fellow, where she was credited with sparking off and directing Obama's interest in the Darfur conflict. She has also been involved with efforts to increase media attention about the Darfur conflict. In 2006, she contributed to Screamers, a movie telling about Darfur, Armenian and other genocides of 20-21st centuries.