Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Madeleine Albright, who was President Clinton's secretary of state, addresses an audience at Chatham College in September 2004.

It would be fair to assume that Madeleine Albright, who was born a Jew, raised a Roman Catholic and served as President Clinton's secretary of state at a time of religious-based wars, would have something interesting to say about religion. In fact, she has much less to say than one might think.

Her book, ghost-written by speechwriter Bill Woodward, scarcely deals with the religious conflicts and wars of our time. These have included:

Vietnam; Northern Ireland; Cyprus; the Lebanese civil war; the Balkans; Israel, the Palestinians and its other neighbors; and now, Iraq.

Albright, in fact, does devote many pages to a well-chewed-over, unoriginal recounting of the Iraq invasion and her various positions on it along the way, as if anyone cared now about comments she made months ago.

It might be that she wrote this book for the record to explain her version of the sad affair, to excuse herself for not trying to block it or to show that her position was at least partly right at the time.

		"THE MIGHTY AND THE ALMIGHTY: REFLECTIONS ON AMERICA, GOD, AND WORLD AFFAIRS" By Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward. HarperCollins $25.95

P> Whatever the reason, she does not really come to grips with the eternally critical, fascinating, puzzling relationship between the Mighty (state power) and the Almighty (religion), lacking analysis that I had expected considering her background and experience.

What there is of interest are anecdotes, sometimes interesting sketches of individuals such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and then-Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and seven pages on Islam that would be useful for someone who knew nothing about Islam.

She also comments on a very eclectic range of foreign affairs topics and areas, including Kashmir, Saudi Arabia, Muslims in Europe, Turkey and the European Union and Sudan, for example.

I wondered why she hadn't tried to bring them into line with the title of the book by looking at the religious and state power aspects of the situations in the different countries.

It was in Albright's discussion of the foreign policy of President George W. Bush's administration, under the direction of her successors Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, that perhaps the true purpose of her book emerged -- a tally of the folly of the Bush administration's various failed, tinny slogans:

"The axis of evil," "shock and awe," and "mission accomplished" (when it wasn't).

The implication throughout was that these were mistakes that Albright and the Clinton administration wouldn't have made. Who knows?

However, Albright does not examine the role religious faith and Bush's own personal beliefs played in the administration's actions and policies following Sept. 11.

What was of interest was Albright's list of the three critical issues facing the United States at this time:

A fair and just settlement in the Middle East; the legitimacy of U.S. military presence in Iraq; and the overall nature of America's foreign policy intentions.

She is right in observing that nothing would do more than an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement to put relations between Arabs and the West on solid ground.

Unfortunately, even though the interplay between state power and religion bears clearly on all of these matters, Albright doesn't try to tie the package up in clear, cogent analysis based on that dichotomy.

I also enjoyed seven short, snappy, aphoristic ideas she presented in the final pages of the book as what she calls "cautions against foolish mistakes." The best of them probably was "... localize, don't globalize," stressing the importance of dealing with problems as separate issues, rather than lumping issues together that aren't necessarily related.

One thinks immediately of the Bush administration's habit of waving the word "terrorism" around like a mantra, even when it isn't relevant.

A book by someone of Albright's stature and acumen, about the relationship between government authority and religion in determining the content of the important events of modern history, remains to be written.