Not at Albright

Madeline Albright addressed some students in the Peoples Republic of Massachussetts:

SPRINGFIELD - Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright openly criticized President George W. Bush's administration yesterday before an audience of 900 women, saying work was left undone in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq was unnecessary.

Albright, 67, who spoke at Bay Path College's 10th Annual Women's Professional Development conference at the Sheraton Springfield, was asked by an audience member about the war in Iraq. "I thought we had Saddam Hussein in a box, and that it was not necessary to invade," Albright said. "I think it was a war of choice, not of necessity."

Of course Ms. Albright does not not add that the reason we had to make the choice was because she failed miserably at her job when a true leader was needed. Saddam was in a box, a box lined with silk and fur courtesy of the corrupt UN and France. That box also had plenty of space for rape rooms and mass graves.

But Ms. Aldull can't stop there:

Albright told conference attendees that she doesn't know how the U.S. is faring in Iraq, and it is hard to tell on a given day whether the insurgency is "going up or down." She said that the job of the U.S. in Afghanistan is not complete, and President Hamid Karzai doesn't have full control of Afghanistan.

At a press conference, Albright said the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and the fact that U.S. intelligence was wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, have badly damaged the country's reputation abroad. "The United States ... I've never seen it in worse shape internationally," she said.

So what? Why are liberals always concerned with what other people or countries think? We couldn't have had a great reputation internationally at the end of Albright's term as soon after we were attacked at home. Perhaps she should have cared more about clamping down on Islamofascism and less about wine parties in Paris or Brussels.

Albright, in her formal remarks, talked about working with female foreign ministers against trafficking in humans and to stop the spread of AIDS. She said women are still undervalued in many nations, and in some cases are subject to appalling abuses, such as forced abortion or sterilization. Albright said such practices can't be excused as cultural. "I say it's criminal and we each have an obligation to stop it," she said.

What of the abuses upon women perpetrated by the Taliban and Uday Hussein? Raping and murdering young girls would would fit into Ms. Albright's definition of appalling I would suspect. As for stopping the spread of AIDS, President Bush has done more on that front in his first four years as her old boss did in eight.

Well, all told it seems that Ms. (not at) Albright had a successful evening spreading the usual rhetoric and accomplishing nothing. Kind of like her tenure at Foggy Bottom.