The Nattering Nabob

"There's no question that we have suffered some loss, if not of prestige then at least of support in the world by following a more unilateral course. But that's not very important to [the Bush White House], because they saw 9/11 as an opportunity to move the country to the right and mold the world the way they thought it ought to be molded.

That's why they morphed the attack by al-Qaida into the war on Iraq, which is something they wanted to do beforehand. Paul Wolfowitz tried to get me to depose Saddam ... They see the world very differently. I believe we ought to be trying to build more and more institutional cooperation in the world, while reserving the right to act alone when we have to. They have believed, at least for the first three and a half years, that they should act alone whenever they can, using the springboard of what happened on 9/11 -- and cooperate when they have to. In the end it may bring us to the same place. In Iraq they've gone to the U.N. to get a resolution. But in the meanwhile we're leaving a lot of broken pottery along the way."

- President Bill Clinton Attribution