She's No Condi Janet Reno

She’s No Condi
Janet Reno is the latest Democrat to hold a knife to her own throat by criticizing the war effort.

“I have trouble with a war that has no endgame,” she told a group of students at Old Dominion University, “and I have trouble with a war that generates so many concerns about individual liberties.

Reno then added, “At Waco, you could be pretty damn sure that after you burned everyone to death, the thing would be pretty much over.” Asked which people had what concerns over civil liberties, the former AG replied, “Like my right to kill religious minorites, or ship small children back to totalitarian dictatorships.”

The former U.S. attorney general said she thinks the government would be hard-pressed to find a legal basis to prosecute many of the Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners being detained at Guantanamo Bay.

“As a former DA and attorney general, I’m no expert on law,” Reno told reporters, “but I don’t see how we can hold people we captured during a war, just because they were holding weapons and shooting at our soldiers.”

Reno, who served during Bill Clinton’s two terms as president, took a break yesterday from running for the Democratic nomination for governor in Florida to make the ODU speech. She had agreed to the $20,000 speaking engagement before deciding to try to unseat Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother.

“Also,” she explained, “Twenty grand will keep me in granny panties for a long, long time.”

The theme of Reno’s speech in Norfolk was that lawyers should serve as problem-solvers and peacemakers as well as combatants. But in an hourlong talk with about a dozen students before her speech, she covered topics from Sept. 11 and the Branch Davidian disaster to Clinton and her run for office.

After the speech, Reno admitted it had been difficult not to play with matches in a room filled with “so many, many helpless people.”