Madeleine Albright Dies at 84; Once Defended U.S. Sanctions Despite Deaths of 500K+ Iraqi Children

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has died of cancer at the age of 84. She served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 until 1997, when President Bill Clinton nominated her to become the first female secretary of state. Albright was a staunch supporter of U.S. power and a defender of authoritarian leaders around the world like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Indonesia's Suharto. She was a key architect of NATO's 78-day bombing of Serbia in 1999. Albright also repeatedly defended the Clinton administration's devastating sanctions against Iraq, infamously saying in a 1996 60 Minutes" interview that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from U.S. sanctions were worth it." Democracy Now! confronted Albright on those comments in 2004, when she acknowledged it was a stupid statement," but she denied the sanctions on Iraq laid the groundwork for the Bush administration's invasion.