While I'm sure so many "appreciate" his expression of regret, I still say "too little, too late". One can only imagine the type of nightmares and personal regret you could suffer when your leadership - or lack thereof - results in the mass murder of so many. I will accept his confessions of regret as true, but rejoice that we no longer have a complacent leader of the free world who steps back the expected PC distance, avoiding the realities of continued genocide.
Now if only the UN could do the same.
KIGALI (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, visiting a Rwandan genocide memorial on Saturday, expressed regret for his "personal failure" to prevent the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 people.
On a brief visit to look at HIV/AIDS projects in the central African country, Clinton laid a wreath at a museum commemorating victims of the 100-day massacre by extremists from the Hutu majority which took place during his presidency.
"I express regret for my personal failure," he said before touring the museum, which features graphic images of people being decapitated and bodies twitching on the road.
"I think it faithfully, honestly, painfully presents the truth of the Rwandan genocide," he told reporters after seeing the museum which his Clinton Foundation partially funded.
"It is an important contribution to the history of the world, that the world cannot afford to forget," he said.
Clinton apologized on a previous visit to Rwanda in 1998 for not recognizing the crime of genocide.
Clinton administration officials avoided the word in public for fear it would spark an outcry for action they were loathe to take, six months after U.S. troops were killed by Somali warlords in Mogadishu.
Rwanda was the last leg of Clinton's six nation African tour to see how the AIDS pandemic is affecting children on the world's poorest continent.
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