'Divorce drove me to the White House' - Madeleine Albright

Ahead of Friday's publication date of her memoirs "Madam Secretary", Madeleine Albright tells the UK Telegraph's Michael Shelden that 'a broken heart' was the making of her political career, and comments that invading Afghanistan was a 'no brainer':

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Now semi-retired after four years as Bill Clinton's secretary of state, Albright has finally told the inside story of her rise in a candid new memoir, which reveals how she remade her life after divorce. The odd thing is that - for such a public figure - she was able to keep the wraps on her private life for so long. When she was in power, few people in the media questioned where she came from or how she had reached the top so fast. "Divorce was catastrophic in my life. I had to put myself back together afterwards, and that was hard. It would have been easier if he had died. But I felt that I'd been betrayed. The rage is gone, but the root of sadness is still there."

Fortunately, she had something to fall back on. In her thirties, she took time during her marriage to return to university and to earn a doctoral degree. She then became involved in Democratic Party politics and - during the Carter presidency - held a minor government post. When her marriage collapsed, she began making friends in high places and prepared herself for another, grander appointment.What saved her was the re-emergence of the ambition and drive that had characterised much of her life before she became a wife and mother. In her youth, she was a brilliant student at Wellesley, the prestigious women's college in New England. Despite her marriage to a member of the American establishment, she was at heart a hungry outsider. In fact, in many respects, she was more European than American, having been born in Prague and brought up in England and Switzerland. Even after she became secretary of state, she was never allowed to forget that she was a woman and a foreigner. Feminist groups kept reminding her that she had special obligations to women, and her colleagues in government had some unsubtle ways of emphasising her foreign birth.

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On Iraq/Afghanistan:

Her strategy was to keep Saddam Hussein surrounded and in check, but not to attempt a conquest through military means. Invading Afghanistan was, however, a "no-brainer", she says. "When you lose 3,000 people and you know where the threat is coming from, then you invade.Iraq was different. We had them in a strategic box. I agree with the 'why' of getting rid of Saddam, but I don't understand the 'why now'. Diplomacy wasn't allowed to work. It was a great victory to get the inspectors back in, but they should have left them in. It was not beyond imagination to come up with something besides going to war."

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More:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/10/15/bomad15.xml

led to the deaths of close to a million
civilians and she didn't give a shit

prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, we'd have
better knowledge of where the leaders of the Taliban
actually were...

Just looked like a big shooting gallery.