America’s decision to support military action against the Ghadaffi regime in Libya was heavily influenced by Samantha Power, the Irish-born National Security Council special advisor to President Obama on human rights.

Power and UN Ambassador Susan Rice were named by The New York Times as the two key figures who convinced first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then President Obama to commit to force.

The Times reported that “The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity.

“Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret."

Ironically, Power was fired from the Obama campaign during the 2008 campaign for harsh criticism of Clinton during an interview she gave to a reporter in Scotland.

In that interview she said about Mrs Clinton: "She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything... if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

Power is originally from Dublin and moved to Georgia when she was ten. She was previously a lecturer at Harvard on Human Rights and won the Pulitizer Prize for her book on genocide.

From 1993 to 1996, she worked as a journalist, covering the Yugoslav wars for U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, The Economist, and The New Republic.