You would think she would be someone with at least some experience in foreign policy. Maybe a diplomat or careerist at State or even pentagon. I mean a position as the "senior" advisor on UN about to be appointed the top US diplomat in the UN General Assembly should be earned with some sort of "qualification" shouldn't it?
Yes, you can cut the sarcasm with a knife...
This, being the administration that loop-holed John "Yosemite Sam" Bolton through to the UN, does not disappoint here.
Not only is this appointment wholly without merrit. It raises disturbing possiblities. This appointment, looks, tastes and smells like a Neocon PR stunt designed to sell hostile action against Iran.
Let's go back to 2004 where Mrs. Ameri was a Republican candidate for Congress in OR-1.
Despite being a total novice with no political experience or organization, Goli Ameri becomes the "top Republican challenger" in the whole country. This claim was made repeatedly even before her landslide victory in the primaries over two other Republicans, earning the right to challenge the incumbent Democrat.
PORTLAND, Ore. - In a race closely watched nationally as holding the potential for an upset, Republican challenger and Iranian immigrant Goli Ameri reported having nearly half a million dollars in cash on hand in her bid to unseat three-term Democratic Rep. David Wu this fall.
link
Strong fundraising you say? It's certainly impressive, but she did have a little help.
Ameri's campaign got a boost when Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, who heads the Republican campaign committee, identified her as one of nine Republican challengers deserving the backing of national Republican groups, and the only candidate on the list west of the Rocky Mountains.
Thousands upon thousands of dollars flowed into her campaign from Republican congressmen and PACs, including Tom Delay's ARM-PAC.
And that's not all. Personal fundraising visits by non other than Dick Cheney doesn't hurt either. (although they may have in this case!)
Cheney told supporters that President Bush wants to be elected to "vanquish" terrorists. He mentioned Ameri's background as an Iranian immigrant, and said she "shares the president's determination to fight terrorism at its source."
An estimated 350 people attended the event, with some paying more than $1,000 for private photo sessions with Cheney.
But she got more than financial help. Her campaign manager, Hap Hinman was a former state politician all the way from New Hampshire. She also seems to have received campaigning advice from Karl Rove.
She went negative fast. Accusing her opponent of sexually inappropriate conduct.
Republican Goli Ameri quickly focused TV ads on October newspaper report that Rep. David Wu tried to force a girlfriend to have sex in the 1970s.
In fact, she so inappropriate about these attacks, that the Oregonian, a paper that endorsed her, "strongly objected" to the attacks that were based on the newspaper's reporting.
"We strongly object to the use of our reporting in any political advertisement, particularly in attack ads, which by nature are meant to inflame rather than inform," Sandy Rowe, editor of The Oregonian, said in comments published in Friday's edition of the newspaper.
Also she "accidently" mailed advertisements to 70,000 households in late October without the legally mandated "paid for" language.
But perhaps the most disturbing, and the most relevant, thing is the misrepresentations of her background, expriences and religion. In regards to being Iranian, she tries to give off the impression that she had experienced persecution and misery at the hands of Iran's fundementalist regime and has come to the US as a "refugee," escaping the Mullahs. She outright lied several times to audiences.
As a girl growing up in Iran, I learned about extremism in ways many politicians never will. Thirty years ago, I came to America and discovered a life I could not have dreamed of.
This is certainly interesting since she left Iran in 1973 and wasn't there for any of the Revolution (1979.) Even her parents lived in France at the time of the Revolution. But this little fact didn't stop stupid Republicans from jumping on the "ethnic" bandwagon.
The Iranian-born Ameri left Iran in 1973 during the Islamic Revolution to come to the United States where she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in communications from Stanford University.
This blatent factual error is from the the Republican "Stomp for victory" which was available well past the 2004 elections but was taken down subsequently. Luckily archive.org has a copy.
Dr. Zin from the highly dubious conservative "Regime Change Iran" (Syriana anyone?) eats it right up in his Free Republic post:
Yes, Ameri is Iran-born. She also has been a proud U.S. citizen and fierce opponent of the Islamic extremist regime that forced her to abandon her native land more than two decades ago.
Fortunately our side (Portland IndyMedia) has been on the case:
LIES:
In an interview with Oregon Public Radio broadcast on
June 16, GOP congressional candidate Goli Yazdi Ameri
(Oregon-1st District) referred to herself as a
"refugee". Ameri was NEVER a refugee; at the time of
the 1978-79 Iranian revolution she was matriculating
at Stanford's pleasant campus in Palo Alto, where she
had leisurely arrived in 1974 (according to the
Willamette Week, December 24) at the age of 17
(according to her
campaign bio).
--snip--
REALITY:
What Ameri does not dare confess is that had there NOT
been a revolution in Iran, she would have merely
returned to her privileged life in Iran once she
finished her studies in the US. She told the
Willamette Week (December 24) that "When I came to the
U.S. in 1974, it was a pretty normal thing for a lot
of families...My two older brothers had come here to
go to college, and I was next." The children of the
elite came to the United States "to go to college",
NOT to stay on and begin a new life as immigrants in
the United States.
And IF Ameri is a "refugee", then she needs to explain
her self-admitted voluntary return-visits (plural) to
post-revolutionary Iran, the last time "about four
years ago to give a speech at a telecommunications
conference" in the ayatollahs' Iran. (Willamette Week,
December 24)
Most of her biographies online are designed to circumvent this question of timing. The Wikipedia page, for example, which is obviosly started by herself (She's supposed to be tech savy)
goes to great length not to mention the fact that she lived in the US before the revolution. But the article does mention her subsequent visits to the Islamic Republic, which IIRC would have to mean she used an Iranian passport for. (How does that work out for being a US Representative?)
In spite of generous contributions to her campaign she remains controversial in the Iranian American community for her opportunistic statements and her pro-war, pro-surveilance stance.
I had asked Ms. Ameri to clarify two points. In the primaries, Ms. Ameri had placed and advertisement on the local Television markets and eventually on her web site that erroneously mentions her immediate family being persecuted by the Iranian revolutionary government.
This in fact is untrue, as I was an observant of those events living in Tehran at the time, and was cognizant to the whereabouts of her family. They in fact had left the country a few months before Khomeini and his henchmen took over the country. So in fact they could not have been in the country to be the subject of persecution. It was only 17 years later that her family returned to Iran to redeem their lost property that they had abandoned in the first place.
I cannot classify such action as being any where near being persecuted. link
Anyway...
She even with all that help, she lost the race barely cracking 38% (which is not trivial, but hardly competetive for the "top republican challenger.")
So what happened to a politically novice businesswoman that lost her big election? Of course, she gets a presidential appointment. First as a US delegate to the UN Comission on Human Rights, then as the senior advisor to the US mission to the UN and finally, as the representative of the United States to the UN General Assembly. Here she is swearing in in front of her new boss John Bolton.
Really, have you every seen any "loser" rise this fast in this administration? Who was the last unsuccessfull (hell, even successfull) challenger to get such a high presidential appointment not 6 month after the elections?
Is it possible Cheney, Rove and Co. weren't really concerned with Oregon-1 as much as they wanted a token pro-war Iranian in Congress? And that having been vetoed by Oregon's voters, they now elevate her to the UN?
Doesn't hurt that she's made statements like this:
No people in the world are more empathetic, kind, or generous than Americans. But we didn't choose war, the terrorists did. And if we fail to fight it where the terrorists live, our families will never know real safety again.
Or her March 4, 2004 letter to Colin Powell urging against diplomacy with Iran (not bad for a UN representative huh?):
It was with great concern I read your recent remarks which seemed to indicate your intent to abandon America's long standing policy against negotiating with terrorists and reopen talks with the government of Iran. From first-hand experience and historical precedence, I can assure you that any such dialogue with the ruling clerics will only lead to more deceit and reinforce their belief that they can pursue their radical agenda without consequences.
...
The autocratic clerics stand squarely against nearly every value we Americans prize: individual freedom, personal dignity, equal rights and civil decency.
Please, Secretary Powell, do not negotiate with these tyrants. In a world too often scarred by terror, any dialogue that legitimizes this clerical regime jeopardizes the lives of innocents around the globe.
We must help the people of Iran to do what they desperately want to do: replace this evil regime and make Iran once again a respected and trustworthy member of the civilized world.
Personally, I think there's more than enough evidence that her appointment, as well as her unprecedented backing during the elections, have to do with one thing and one thing alone: her ethnicity. Thus, it is extremely important for Democrats, especially those in the foreign relations committee that helped block bolton, not to sit idly by while she gets rolled through. I think this is quite possibly the biggest PR weapon that BushCo possess in their much-damaged-yet-still-pursued hostile plans on Iran. I'm not sure what those plans are. An aerial attack on Nuke sites? Or go for the jugular under the guise of "human rights," throw some cash for an uproar inside Iran? Seems possible now that the Iranian President has turned out to be such a good PR asset for the neoCons. And the Oil isn't getting any plentier..
Whatever it is, I'd rather not find out.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons (remember when those mattered?) to reject her: Lack of experience, blindly partisan, unobjective rhetoric and fundemental belief in the neocon agenda of forceful transformation.
