Probably - better to say hopefully - the future United States Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke in an interview with French daily Le Monde:

"In eight years of administration Bush, conflict against terrorism conditioned everything, taking the United States resolutely in poor direction. ... In any case, Mrs Clinton will close the prison of Guantanamo and come back on certain aspects of Patriot Act which governs anti-terror measurements on the American soil.

(...)
 
Our presence in Iraq is an error, which will be long to repair. Mrs Clinton thinks hard that there is not military but only political resolution. If she is elected, she will begin withdrawing our battle troops…


Question: Your intelligence services said that Iran stopped its military nuclear researches in 2003. What has it changed?

It is key. It was a true mutiny on behalf of services, that did not want to be again instrumentalised, as it was the case with Iraq. A revenge! This report which surprised everybody, the president the first, helped the reason of the whole world: the Bush administration will not be able to attack Iran.

(…)


Question: How to face up nationalism of Russia? And was this system of anti-missile defence on the European soil, badly perceptible by Moscow, necessary?

There will not be new Cold War. Then, the big collaboration of the time of Boris Eltsine is finished. The aspiration of Russia to restore its influence is legitimate. But she must change attitude on several points.

What the Russians made of worse, it is to have rejected the plan of regulations Ahtisaari on Kosovo. They pushed the United States and the European Union to constitute a forehead joined to acknowledge its independence. They also tried to overturn Mikheïl Saakachvili in Georgia and got involved in Ukraine.

As for the anti-missile system, I think that he is poor and did not prove his effectiveness. Threat for Europe, it is terrorism, such as it knocked in London and Madrid. The Iranians are not going to send missiles against Poland!


Source (French): Le Monde 25.01.2008