Rice- Right, But Wrong

In a wide-ranging interview conducted by Nicholas Kralev of the conservative Republican newspaper The Washington Times on March 27, 2008 and published the following day, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke of race in American society, her attraction to George W. Bush, the proposed boycott of the Beijing Olympics, and the foreign policy aims of the remainder of the Bush Administration.

And Iraq. Difficulty rebuilding Iraq, the Secretary claimed, has resulted from "how truly broken the society was." For that, she blamed primarily the Saddam Hussein regime but also argued that now "agriculture is virtually dead in Iraq" as a result of United Nations sanctions.

It would have been naive to expect Ms. Rice to assume for the debacle of Gulf War II any of the blame herself or on behalf of the president she so admires. For a failed Cabinet member trying to establish herself as a political figure in the GOP, it is more convenient to allude to the one success of the venture- overthrow of Saddam Hussein- and blame the United Nations, historically a fun target of the Republican right. Perhaps she is modeling herself after this president in the manner of one of his most enduring traits, the ability to find blame anywhere and avoid looking in the mirror.