BLITZER: Welcome back to "Late Edition." I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. He's one of holiday's most popular stars, but now the Academy Award-winning actor George Clooney is using his celebrity status to focus the world's attention on the Darfur region of Sudan in Eastern Africa.

I spoke with Clooney earlier this week. We were joined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Samantha Power.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Samantha Power, George Clooney, thanks very much for joining us.

GEORGE CLOONEY, ACTOR/DIRECTOR: Thank you.

BLITZER: Welcome back.

Why did you go?

CLOONEY: Well, it first started, I was reading Nick Kristof's articles in the "New York Times." And he had just come back.

BLITZER: He's the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist.

CLOONEY: I'm sitting next to another Pulitzer Prize winner. And I had read Samantha's articles and her book and felt like it was probably a good time to cash in whatever celebrity credit card you get from having a good year on bringing some attention.

BLITZER: So what do you want? What do you hope to achieve? What's the single most important thing you want to achieve from your journey out to Africa?

CLOONEY: The single most important thing I want to achieve is to try and help make sure that it gets on the air, that people see it, that people are talking about genocide, which they're not, in general, and not just in this country, in the whole world.

But if I show up places, sometimes cameras follow. And that's a good thing because then we can have these conversations and help, perhaps, the administration and the U.N. and all the people who actually want to do something about this but they don't have the political capital. BLITZER: You mentioned what Nicholas Kristof wrote. He wrote this, and it seems to sum up the world's attitude, especially Americans' attitude toward what's happening in Darfur: "Mr. Bush is paralyzed for the same reasons as his predecessors [when faced with genocide.] There is no great public outcry. There are no neat solutions. We already have our hands full and it all seems rather distant and hopeless."

I think that sort of conveys what's going on right now in this country, as far as the horror of what's happening in Sudan.

CLOONEY: But it's interesting how quickly things aren't hopeless when people, a group of people, American citizens, European citizens, suddenly stand up and say OK, wait a minute. Let's take a look at this. This is the first time that I know of that someone's talked about genocide while it's going on.

Well, there's an opportunity there for the people to stand up and say OK, now let's make this simpler by saying we're going to make it -- we're going to make this important enough that it'll make it -- could make it easier for the administration to do something.

BLITZER: Give us the numbers, Samantha -- you're an expert -- on what's happening in Sudan and Darfur. Give us the numbers of the horror.

What's involved right now?

SAMANTHA POWER, AUTHOR: Well, it's been called a slow-motion genocide, but that, I think, underplays what's actually happening. About 400,000 people have died so far. Two or three million people have been displaced -- two million we know about because they're holed up in camps.

Well, they're called camps. They're basically in these wide fields dependent on handouts when they come, when aide workers are actually able to brave the Janjaweed patrols that surround the camps. And those people remain incredibly vulnerable.

But the attacks are even continuing. Just three or four days ago, the Sudanese government again launched Antonov and helicopter gunship attacks at another village.

There have been 80,000 people displaced just in the last two months alone. So that number of three million, which is just almost plucked from the sky because we can't access the people who are in need -- we know one thing, and that is that it's increasing.

We all know that the Sudanese government has become more and more obstructive, that they're expelling aide groups, not allowing even senior U.N. and U.S. officials into the camps.

And, of course, we all know from the 20th century what happens when a government that is intent on committing genocide also knows that people aren't watching. It does it really with abandon and it counts on impunity. BLITZER: And complicating this, George, in recent days, Osama bin Laden has now weighed in and said that the Muslims in Sudan have to stand up to the United Nations, the West, the United States, if they come in to try to intervene.

What do you make of that?

CLOONEY: Well, again, none of this is very simple.

On the other hand, I think that that should point to exactly what it is we're talking about, which is Bashir met with the Iranians two days ago and talked about getting nuclear technology from the Iranians. He is being defended by Osama bin Laden.

BLITZER: This is the leader of Sudan?

CLOONEY: The leader of Sudan. So clearly, when they say to us we're not really bombing people and we're really a bunch of good guys over here, perhaps when you see who they're teaming up with, maybe that tells you something about what the Sudanese government is actually -- what the Khartoum government is actually doing.

BLITZER: Let me read to you another quote from Nicholas Kristof: "Part of the problem is that President Bush hasn't made it a top priority. But at least he is now showing signs of stirring. And, in fact, he's done more than most other world leaders and more than many Democrats. Our failure in Darfur is utterly bipartisan."

Do you agree with him on that?

CLOONEY: I think it is. I think that we are a country that is always slow to act. We always have been, on almost everything, but especially on situations like this.

Rwanda is a perfect example. The Balkans are a good example. But once we get our mind to it, we do it pretty well. We have failed, you know -- it's political savvy to say hey, we're all doing a little bit of something and it's good that we're moving in the right direction. We're not doing enough.

BLITZER: What do you want President Bush to do?

CLOONEY: Well, there's -- immediately we want to try and get security. That's the first thing, security for...

BLITZER: Send in U.S. troops?

CLOONEY: No.

BLITZER: Do you want to send in the Marines?

CLOONEY: No.

BLITZER: What do you want to see happen -- militarily get involved? CLOONEY: I think -- I think through NATO, if we can get a bridging force through NATO while we put together something in the U.N., I think that's our best bet.

I don't think that that -- I don't think anyone wants that to be or thinks that's going to be American troops. It means that we who -- America, who usually is very good at coordinating these things, can be the leader in coordinating these things.

BLITZER: Because the African forces have been pretty much useless, right?

POWER: Well, look, I mean, I wouldn't want their job. There are 7,000 of them spread out, you know, in an area the size of France.

BLITZER: They really haven't gotten the job done, though.

POWER: They haven't gotten the job -- but there's not, I mean, if you had 7,000 of the best trained, you know, U.S. Rangers in Darfur, they would not be able to do the protection job. It's simply not doable.

BLITZER: How many troops do you think are needed?

POWER: Well, what's needed for perfect protection is -- is to blanket the country. But what would mark -- constitute a colossal improvement would be to triple the size of the force, make it 21,000 in places where the A.U. is present.

Even though they don't have the mandate, they don't have the right guns, they don't have the mobility, they haven't been given these things from Western countries and they don't have them organically, they have made a difference. People feel safer. Women can -- in places where they can get African Union escorts, they can leave the camps and go and pick up firewood in order to heat the food that their families depend on in order to live.

In places where those A.U. troops are not present, they're doomed. The Janjaweed are patrolling around the camps. They can't actually get past the perimeter. So they basically have to make a Sophie's choice between feeding their families or getting raped.

BLITZER: So when it comes to this issue, George, you and the president and the Bush administration are pretty much on the same page?

CLOONEY: I think so. I think that -- and I think that most of the world, especially most of the country, is on the same page, if they are reading the book. And unfortunately that book isn't getting read very often right now or loud enough. And so my job is to try and bring attention to that.

BLITZER: When it comes to Iraq, you and the president are not on the same page?

CLOONEY: No. But that's not what we're here to discuss. BLITZER: Well, you...

CLOONEY: You know, I mean I agree. But, you know, I also would suggest that Senator Brownback and Senator Obama, who are the two leading the way in the Senate, don't agree on very many things either. But they certainly agree on this.

And I think that there's -- there's no two sides to this issue, Wolf. I mean there really are no two sides to it. There is simply one side. There's no two sides to the idea of rape.

BLITZER: How do you explain -- how do you explain that 60 years after the Holocaust, after Rwanda and Burundi and what happened in the Balkans, that this kind of thing can go on in this day and age?

CLOONEY: Because we've -- and it happens a lot with us. We've spent a lot of our political capital in other places, and probably Iraq would be one of them. We certainly have not the greatest relationship with the U.N. So there's a lot of other elements that are playing.

China has not been very forthcoming with sanctions against -- against the Sudanese government and they're getting a free reign because they're getting oil by themselves without competing with America right now.

It's a tough, tough situation to solve. But if we get -- if we're able to just protect some of these people and then start a diplomatic -- start some diplomatic measures, we have a chance.

BLITZER: I remember when I went with President Clinton in, I think it was '96, to Rwanda and Burundi and he saw what was happening. He says the biggest regret he had was he was in the Oval Office, he was getting the reports of the slaughter of the Rwandans and he didn't do anything about it. And he just let it pass. And it's hard to believe that that kind of thing is happening again.

You wanted to weigh into that?

POWER: Well, I would -- I'd love to, just on that question, because President Bush actually, when he first got into office, just before 9/11, he read a memo that was actually a summary of how the Clinton administration had allowed the genocide in Rwanda, because he was confused himself. Wait, we let a million people die? That's a little weird.

And he wrote in the margins of this memo, "Not on my watch." You know, I don't want this happening on my watch. It was sort of the 21st century version of never again. And the reality is the Bush administration has done more than any other country on the Earth and the kind of domestic movement we have in this country that we've never seen before, basically with the American people learning and applying the lesson of Rwanda, where governments are only learning it in the abstract.

We only have that movement in this country. And the Bush administration has been well out in front of the rest of the international community. And yet history is not going to remember that the United States was in first place in terms of denouncing it and in terms of funding protection forces.

All they're actually going to remember is, yet again, a million people died under the watch of an American president.

BLITZER: It was '98 we went to Rwanda, as I recall.

Let me give you a couple of quotes that you made in recent weeks. And I just -- we're almost out of time. I want you to have a chance to respond.

The "Sunday Times of London" quoted you in December as saying: "The Democrats were scared on Iraq and the truth is they backed themselves into a corner. They didn't have the political resolve to tough it out and now they are paying the price."

What do you mean by that?

CLOONEY: Well, I think that, you know, there was a time when -- when the issue was you're either with us or with the enemy, as we were going into the war. I think that there were a great many Democrats that didn't truly believe that all of that, the ideas that we were tied to al Qaeda -- that -- not we were tied to al Qaeda, but that Hussein was tied to al Qaeda or that -- that they had anything to do with 9/11.

I think there were a lot of Democrats that didn't buy into that, but they didn't -- many of them didn't stand up. And I think that it cost them in the elections.

BLITZER: You said this about the junior senator from New York, Hillary Clinton. You characterized her as: "the most polarizing figure in American politics."

CLOONEY: Yes, but I didn't -- that wasn't -- believe it or not, that wasn't an insult. Someone was asking me, you know, can she win? And I said I think that she absolutely can win.

She is polarizing. People in one side of the country are, you know, adamant against her and people on the other side are, you know -- and you know this better than anyone; you've seen this for a while. There are very strong feelings on either side for Hillary Clinton.

You know, I'm a Democrat. I like her. But she is certainly polarizing.

BLITZER: Thanks for your good work. Thanks for making the trip. Hopefully, it will result in something tangible.

I'm tempted to say to both of you, good night and good luck, but I'm sure a lot of people say that to you.

Samantha Power, thanks very much.

George Clooney, thanks to you.

CLOONEY: Thanks, Wolf.

(END VIDEO TAPE)