Madeleine "held off" in Rwanda, and the French-supported Hutus massacred 1 million Tutsis. Madeleine didn't even want the term "genocide" to be used because it would have required us to act.
"Faced with President Clinton's and her own almost frantic warnings in 1998 that Saddam Hussein had to be dealt with posthaste, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was unable to explain why Clinton failed to act.Nor was she able to explain why President Clinton passed up a golden opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden when it was offered to him.
Meet the Press host Tim Russert played a videotape from February 17, 1998 showing Clinton saying: "Now, let’s imagine the future. What if he [Saddam] fails to comply and we fail to act or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And someday, some way, I guarantee you, he will use the arsenal."
Russert then quoted Albright speaking two days later in a similar but even more bellicose manner: "I can honestly tell you that I don’t think that the world has seen, except maybe since Hitler, someone who is quite as evil as Saddam Hussein. ...If you don’t stop a horrific dictator before he gets started too far - that he can do untold damage. ...If the world had been firmer with Hitler earlier, then chances are that we might not have needed to send Americans to Europe during the Second World War. So, my lesson out of all of this is deal with the problem at the time that you can and don’t step away from it thinking that it’ll go away."