Secretary of State Clinton will be delivering several speeches and attending three swearing-in ceremonies today including Kurt Campbell’s, the new Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs. I have written previously of Campbell’s trials and travails in making it through the confirmation process and the extraordinarly long time it took to move his nomination throught the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because of Virginia Senator Jim Webb. Several sources speculated that Webb had orchestrated a quid-pro-quo with Clinton on the direction of the administration’s Burma policy in return for confirming Campbell. The administration’s review of policy options on a country widely regarded as neck-and-neck with North Korea when it comes to horrific abuses of human rights is now in its eighth month and still not finished. Clinton made noises about dropping US sanctions this summer, and in August, Webb visited Burma, voiced opposition to US sanctions and publicly pushed for the country’s democracy movement –the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel Peace Prize Lauriate Aung San Suu Kyi — to engage in junta sponsored elections next year. The NLD shot back in an unprecedented Washington Post op-ed calling Webb’s efforts “damaging to our democracy movement.” So….on the day Campbell is being officially sworn in for his position, which senator appears on Clinton’s schedule for a closed-door meeting? None other than Webb. HHHHHMMMmmmmmmmm Burma watchers want to know: what could possibly be the topic of discussion? Perhaps it could be the news report released yesterday by Radio Free Asia reporter Sarah Jackson-Han detailing the Burmese Army’s scorched earth campaign against the Karen ethnic group and their forced conscription of childern as young as 10. In a report datelined yesterday from Northern Thailand, Jackson-Han begins with this: