KOMO 1000 News Interviews Madeline Albright

She was the highest ranking woman in American history as Secretary of State during the Clinton Administration, and she was also a UN Ambassador.

A refugee from Czechoslovakia, Albright did not hold office until she was 39 and had three kids.

Pamela McCall: Madam Secretary, let's start with Iraq. You support the ouster of Saddam Hussein -- how do you feel about the U.S. going it alone?

Madeline Albright: Well, I think it is unfortunate that the U.S. is going it alone. I though that it was important to have an international coalition and some more United Nations activities. I agreed with President Bush about how terrible Saddam Hussein was. I didn't think it was necessary to do this war right now, however, because I didn't see an imminent threat.

Eric Slocum: A lot of the justification to go to war was based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. No weapons of mass destruction have been found. Do you feel we've been duped into an unjust war?

Madeline Albright: Well, I think it's very confusing these days because there are a number of different discussions about what the motivations were for going. Some had to do with the weapons of mass destruction. Some to oust of Saddam Hussein. Some to end the torture. And I think there's a shifting ground in terms of what the reasons were for going and I don't blame people for being confused about it.

Pamela McCall: What are we to do now in terms of Americans sifting through what President Bush has to say on the justification for Iraq and the request for $87 billion.

Madeline Albright: I think the most important thing we can do and the members of Congress can do is ask questions. There have been times in the last few months where people have asked questions were accused of being unpatriotic. I think it is the duty of our members of Congress to ask questions and the American public to ask questions, and for the president to answer them. Because I believe that we have to stay in Iraq because it's pretty chaotic and I don't think we can abandon it. And the question is how much do we have to pay, whether the oil that Iraqis have in the ground can be used as collateral so that we can lend them the money and whether we can get other countries to help.

Eric Slocum: North Korea is another hot spot with the threat of nuclear capability looming. You met reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, what's he like? And what kind of real threat does North Korea pose?

Madeline Albright: Well, I do think North Korea is actually more dangerous than Iraq was because we knew that they had a couple of potential nuclear weapons. And with the unfreezing and reprocessing of their fuel rods, they do have the capability of making more. So they are dangerous and I think they read the wrong signals from Iraq -- that if you don't have nuclear weapons, you get invaded. If you do, like the Soviet Union had or China, you don't get invaded.

Pamela McCall: Critics of the Clinton Administration say you had a chance to get Osama bin Laden when President Clinton was in power and that Sept. 11 would not have happened had Mr. Clinton acted. Your thoughts?

Madeline Albright: Well, it's simply not true. We did everything we could to try and get Osama bin Laden. We launched cruise missiles against a camp where he was and we just missed him by a very short period of time. President Clinton put out an executive order to use lethal force to capture Osama bin Laden. And I think we did everything we could to fight terrorism in terms of increasing the size of the budget in the FBI and CIA, putting into place the mechanism for tracking the money and it's a difficult job. And now there's 8,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan after a lot of bombing and they can't find Osama bin Laden. So I think people need to understand how difficult it was. I think we did everything we could and I've examined the records because 1) I was interested and 2) I was writing my book, and I feel comfortable that we did all that we could.

Pamela McCall: Israel has just attacked Syria for the first time in 30 years in the wake of another deadly suicide bombing in Israel over the weekend. Is peace possible in that troubled region?

Madeline Albright: Well, I can understand the problems in Israel, they just had a terrible suicide bombing again with a young woman as the suicide bomber and the horror that is causes to people in Israel not being able to protect themselves. But I'm very concerned the fact that this is now been widened to Syria. Syria clearly causes problems in the region, they're very hard to deal with. We tried to make peace, but I am very concerned about the widening of something that could become a full Middle East conflagration.