Madeleine Albright: Bush Talks 'Victory' Too Much

In an interview posted on the Democratic National Committee's web site, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says she doesn't like the way President Bush "repeatedly" talks about achieving victory in the Iraq war.

"I was very troubled recently, particularly by [Bush's] first speech to the Naval Academy," the former top Clinton diplomat complains in a DNC audio webcast.

"They clearly had some kind of a new pollster in the White House tell them that the word 'victory' had to be repeated endlessly," Albright griped. "Plus, [there was] the backdrop that said 'victory' and then there was 'victory' on the podium. I don't know how many times he used the word 'victory.'"

Still, despite her discomfort over President Bush's victory talk, Albright insisted that she and other Democrats really do want the U.S. to prevail in Iraq.

"There's not a Democrat who doesn't want this to work," Albright said. "I think that Democrats are united in not wanting this to fail."

Still, she credited her party with forcing a debate over the question of how President Bush managed to take the country to war without "really having a very good discussion of it."

And Albright complained that it isn't fair for Democrats "to be called unpatriotic simply for asking questions and having a debate."

She also took some pot shots at her successor, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, suggesting that her performance during a recent trip to Europe was a diplomatic embarrassment.

Noting that Rice was repeatedly pressed by reporters to clarify U.S. "torture" policy, Albright said, "I don't think it was a trip that was particularly the one that she had in mind."

"Given the fact that it's being written that she has a great deal of influence with the president, she may have come back and said, 'You know, this was not a great trip - we've got to do something.'"

The former top Clinton diplomat suggested that Dr. Rice may be in over her head, telling the DNC: "I think that you would have had to have been really asleep at the switch not to know what a very hard trip she had and one presumes that others in the White House read the newspapers and could see she had a very hard trip."

The “interview” with former Secretary of State Albright appearing in the Winter 2004-05 issue of the Columbia University magazine reveals her total disregard for the facts. It may be that she is ignorant of the facts, but more likely she is just blind to them due to her obsolete political agenda.

Albright’s comments are so grossly absurd that her lack of intellectual honesty is readily apparent. She thinks “we’re less safe” now than right after the terrorists killed over 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. Perhaps she could provide us with a list of all the terrorist attacks which have occurred in the U.S. since then? Has she not even heard of the new Department of Homeland Security? About Iraq, she says she “was stunned by the extent to which the (Bush) administration did not consider trying to get an international organization involved”. Perhaps she has not heard of the long series of UN resolutions (the U.S. being a member of the UN Security Council) prior to President Bush taking decisive action? Has she not heard about the long list of countries that have provided troops on the ground in Iraq, and other assistance in the liberation of Iraq? She “never thought there was a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein”. Again, she chooses to ignore the facts, such as the existence of terrorist training camps in Iraq, Iraq supplying explosives to terrorists who bombed the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, and Saddam Hussein paying large cash rewards to the families of terrorists who turned themselves into suicidal bombs. She says Iraq “was a war of choice, not of necessity”. Saddam Hussein spent decades torturing people, engaging in mass murder resembling the Holocaust, attacking neighboring countries, and working on increasingly more lethal chemical and biological weapons. Perhaps Albright would have waited until the Nazis were in London before getting America involved to defeat Hitler, and liberate those held in concentration camps? She asks the rhetorical question: “Are we capturing more terrorists or creating more terrorists?” Perhaps she has not been reading the news, that we and our willing allies have been killing and capturing thousands of terrorists in Iraq and around the world, including Saddam Hussein.

While Albright served as Secretary of State, the terrorists attacked U.S. interests repeatedly, yet she and President Clinton were totally feckless in dealing with these attacks. September 11, 2001 was the culmination of years of neglect by Albright and Clinton. President Bush has turned the tide toward democracy in the Middle East by liberating approximately 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan. The recent free election in Iraq was a positive milestone in world history, and the lesson has not been lost on average citizens of the remaining non-democratic countries of the Middle East and the world. President Bush has been quite successful in rectifying the negligence of Secretary Albright and her former boss.

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