Albright 'ashamed of Bush'

2004-08-26 23:37

Stockholm - Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright harshly criticised President George W Bush and especially his Iraq policy during a visit to Stockholm on a book tour, Swedish media reported on Thursday.

"Our (US) actions over the past three years don't make me proud. I see America as a force of good, so it makes me very sad to see how America currently receives no respect and how our credibility is questioned," Albright was quoted as saying in an interview with daily paper Dagens Nyheter.

Describing the US presence in Iraq as "a hopeless mess", Albright insisted in the interview that former vice president Al Gore and Democratic presidential nominee in 2000 would not have invaded the country had he been president today.

"There would have been no difference in American actions against the Taliban in Afghanistan in the hunt for Osama bin Laden after the terrorist attacks (on New York and Washington) three years ago ... but in Iraq things would have been different," she said.

"We didn't see Saddam Hussein as an immediate threat. No, there would not have been an invasion under president Gore," Albright, secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 during the second term of US president Bill Clinton, said.

Now that the US is already in Iraq however, Albright acknowledged that getting out would not be a simple task.

"We can't leave Iraq the way it is now. This was an unnecessary war, it was a choice (made by Bush). To finish the war is not something one can choose, it is a necessity," she said.

- AFP