By Louis Nelson
08/26/16 01:37 PM EDT
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The former George W. Bush administration official who is often referred to as the “architect” of the Iraq War says he will likely end up voting for Hillary Clinton for president this fall.
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense under President Bush from 2001-2005, told the English-language version of the German newspaper Der Spiegel that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump represents a security risk for the U.S. and that his praise for strongmen like Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is “pretty disturbing.”
“The only way you can be comfortable about Trump's foreign policy is to think he doesn't really mean anything he says. That's a pretty uncomfortable place to be in,” Wolfowitz said. “Our security depends on having good relationships with our allies. Trump mainly shows contempt for them.”
Because he is so uncomfortable with Trump, Wolfowitz said he would likely vote for Clinton, albeit grudgingly.
“I wish there were somebody I could be comfortable voting for,” Wolfowitz said. “I might have to vote for Hillary Clinton, even though I have big reservations about her.”
Wolfowitz contested a point made frequently by Trump on the campaign trail, that the U.S. should abandon “policies of nation-building and regime change" like the ones pursued by the Bush administration. The former deputy defense secretary countered that it would be “a huge mistake to abandon democracy promotion” pointing to cases of military intervention in places like Bosnia, where Wolfowitz said genocide was threatened. (He also protested being labeled the "architect" of the Iraq War, remarking that if he had been, "a lot of these things would be different."
