“Butcher of Serbia” Madeleine Albright Dies of Cancer at 84

Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of state, has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 84.

President Bill Clinton chose Albright as America’s top diplomat in 1996, and she served in that capacity for the last four years of the Clinton administration.

At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. government. She was not in the line of succession for the presidency, however, because she was a native of Czechoslovakia.

Considered an unindicted war criminal by many, Albright was known as the Butcher of Serbia and also as the Butcher of Georgetown for her role in bombing Yugoslavia for 78 days in 1999.

Albright notoriously declared that the death of half a million children during the U.S. war in Iraq was worth it.