This Q&A between Time and Madeline Albright is just beautiful:
Should the U.S. have invaded Iraq?
I always believed Saddam has the kind of record that justifies taking action. I didn’t see Saddam as an imminent threat, which is where I parted company with them … I think the whole thing has been mishandled.
Has the war made the problem of terrorism better or worse?
The Administration immediately tied Sept. 11 to Saddam. They said, basically, that Saddam and Iraq were a hotbed of terrorism. While I had many criticisms of Saddam, that’s not the way I saw it. But now Iraq is in fact a breeding ground for terrorists.
What should the U.S. do next?
Frankly, if there was a President Gore, we wouldn’t be in this particular mess. But we are, and we cannot fail. I very much hope there will be a U.N. resolution that makes clear the U.S. has military command but that would set up a U.N. high representative to coordinate the political and humanitarian things the U.N. does very well.
Frankly, if my aunt had testicles she would be my uncle. You- bad voters- see what happens when you don’t vote for Democrats?
Francis W. Porretto
You’d think a woman nominally smart enough to be made Secretary of State would have enough mental horsepower to realize that Iraq:
1) Was crawling with terrorists before Operation Iraqi Freedom, because Saddam Hussein tolerated it;
2) Is crawling with terrorists today, after Operation Iraqi Freedom, because the Bush Administration has deliberately lured them there, in rational preference to having them here.
But Madeleine Albright never did strike me as the brightest bulb on the tree.
JKC
Francis-
Iraq may (or may not) have been “crawling with terrorists: they were NOT the source of the 9/11 hijackers. That would be Saudi Arabia. Let’s try not to forget that.
Francis W. Porretto
Oh, no argument, John. But there were satellite-verified al-Qaeda training camps in Western Iraq, and a completely overt linkage between Saddam and Palestinian terrorism. By my admittedly unquantified standards, that qualifies as “crawling.” The situation today sort of speaks for itself.
Kimmitt
Due respect, but the voters did vote for Democrats.
AnswertheQuestion
Albright is too funny. Let’s see, on the Democrats’ watch we had:
1) The first WTC bombing;
2) the cut and run from Somalia, which did more to embolden terrorists and thugs against the US than anything in our recent history;
3) The bombing of Khobar Towers;
4) The bombing of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania;
5) the USS Cole bombing;
6) AND the inexplicable refusal to go after bin Laden…
All of which, IMO, led to the 9/11
attacks. I don’t think any sane person really takes Albright too seriously.
David Perron
You know, before I opened up comments I thought to myself “I bet Kimmitt’s posted some of the same old drivel to the effect that Bush stole the election”. Sometimes being right is just devoid of all pleasure.
To be fair, though, voters did vote for _a_ Democrat in a slightly higher proportion than they voted for his Republican opponent. Just not in Florida. And I hope I don’t need to remind Mr. Kimmitt of the role the nationwide popular vote plays in the election of a President.
David Perron
Oh, and John? When your page popped up, the first thing my eyes locked on was “and Madeleine Albreit is just beautiful.” That rocked me back a step or two, let me tell you.
David Perron
Albright, even.
Jason
John –
You failed to mention the very best part of the interview:
Q: Bush’s foreign policy started as “Anything But Clinton” in almost every area
Oliver
Yes, because Reagan and Bush never trained Islamist militants or gave arms to Saddam Hussein or pulled out of Beirut…
Ripper
Yes, that’s right, Oliver – America has bloody hands and screwed up during Republican administrations, so we deserve every bit of blowback that comes our way when we decide to correct our mistakes. Christ on a crutch, tell the DNC to give you better talking points, will you?
Oliver
No, doof, I’m illustrating that our foreign policy has been bad under both parties – not the GOP talking point that everything was hunkydory until Clinton was elected. Of course, they don’t seem to be getting the message in DC. Instead, they’re making all new mistakes.
Robin Roberts
Odd, Oliver, you don’t “illustrate” that until after you get called for your frothings.
Kimmitt
I referred, of course, to the popular vote — which, of course, was of academic, rather than political interest.
Peter
Interesting how Oliver is still convinced that the Reagan and Bush 41 Administrations gave all those arms to Hussein and Bin Laden when the published pictures of all the damned weapons we’ve captured or that they posed with are old Soviet-Bloc junk.
I must have missed the memo where the old Chryslet Tank Plant up north started making T72s. I probably would have noticed if the Colt plant in Hartford was turning out Tokarevs and AKs instead of M16s and 1911s.
Yeah, the CIA sent some weaponry over to the Afghans when they were fighting the Soviet invasion. Bin Laden might even have got his hands on some of them.
Had that idiot Clinton Administration took Bin Laden when he was offered to us on a platter it wouldn’t matter if we’d given them the Fifth Marines, he’s still have been out of it.
Dean
Oliver,
In an earlier posting, you’d gone on about how bad our North Korea policy is, without giving ONE INDICATION of what your actual policy prescriptions would be.
Here’s Albright, again condemning this Administration for not continuing its policy which, as we know, the North Koreans did not abide by.
Care to explain exactly how the GOP failed on North Korea, or how Albright succeeded?
David Perron
Purely friendly jibe here. I say that because it’s not always friendly. Maybe not even sometimes.
So, Kimmitt, by “academic” do you mean “of no practical value”?
Kimmitt
More that it was something which happened and was important in its own right, but did not have an effect on the result of the 2000 election. For all we know, it will end up being Exhibit A in the 2009 Constitutional Amendment abolishing or altering the Electoral College.
David Perron
Hmmm…if by “important in its own right”, you mean “of no practical value” (or just “irrelevant”), I think that first sentence makes sense.
Kimmitt
See, this is part of where we differ. I tend to believe that knowing how a given vote worked out is important on any number of levels. You’re more results-oriented.
John Cole
In order for something to be legally considered a ‘vote,’ it has to be in adherence with the policies as stated before the election. That is all I care about- and your side is the one who wants to hold get results by holding misvotes up to the light to divine the intent of the voter.
That is absurdity.
Kimmitt
Please. Your side was the one which demanded we count military absentee ballots which were received past the appropriate deadlines.
Both sides took strategic positions; the Bush team sought to prevent a statewide recount through its positions. The Gore team sought to bring one about. One of these would have given us an unambiguous result, one way or the other.
The other did not.
John Cole
Your side wanted a statewide recount with NEW and improved procedures for determining what a Gore vote was.
Kimmitt
Again, please. Florida law requires manual counters to discern the “intent of the voter;” this is obviously an incredibly ambiguous phrase when applied to punch-card ballots (and let’s not even get into how it applies to Palm Beach . . . good grief.) Neither side sought to institute a new standard; instead, both sides sought to interpret the existing standard in different ways.
The law was bad, and so the legal arguments surrounding it were esoteric. But at the end of the day, the Gore team wanted a statewide hand recount, the best, most accurate possible count of the votes, and the Bush team did not.
David Perron
As for “receiving past the deadline”, those votes were actually NOT POSTMARKED AT THE SOURCE. They don’t have to be received by the deadline, they have to be postmarked prior to the deadline. So by using the very common occurrence of not postmarking outgoing mail at overseas military sources as a reason to disqualify the votes of people who had nothing at all to do with how their mail was mishandled, you are in effect disenfranchising a rather large segment of the voting public (compared with the margin of defeat/victory), as well as failing to divine the intention of the voter.
See how that selective application of the rules works?
Kimmitt
I’m sorry, but that is incorrect. Florida 2000->Ch0101->Section%2067″>statute required receipt by 7 PM of the election, rather than postmark.
Disclaimer: I am not a Florida election lawyer.
Florida law sucked.
Kimmitt
Preview is my friend.
link
(go to Title IX, Chap. 101, 101.67.)
David Perron
Not true, according to this ruling.
Here’s the link, in case that screws up:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/documents/20001209_xnjdo.pdf