Condoleezza Rice's Tenure As Secretary of State - Iraq

Iraq

In January 2000, Rice addressed Iraq in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine. "As history marches toward markets and democracy, some states have been left by the side of the road. Iraq is the prototype. Saddam Hussein's regime is isolated, his conventional military power has been severely weakened, his people live in poverty and terror, and he has no useful place in international politics. He is therefore determined to develop WMD. Nothing will change until Saddam is gone, so the United States must mobilize whatever resources it can, including support from his opposition, to remove him."

In August 2003, Rice encouraged rejection of "condescending voices", who say that Africans and Middle Easterners are not interested in freedom and are "culturally just not ready for freedom or they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibility." She continued: "We've heard that argument before, and we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it. The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East."

In October 2003, Rice was named to run the Iraq Stabilization Group, to “quell violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and to speed the reconstruction of both countries.” "'We're trying to mobilize the entire U.S. government to support this effort' in Iraq ...Rice said at the time." But by May 2004, The Washington Post reported that the council had become virtually nonexistent, with the four leaders of the group taking new jobs and roles, though an NSC spokesman said the Stabilization Group members ‘still meet regularly’.” .

In August 2003, Rice compared experiences in Iraq to post-War Germany stating that "the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers—called 'werewolves' — engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them—much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants." Daniel Benjamin responded, stating that in "practice, Werwolf amounted to next to nothing."

In June 2005, Rice stated: "And at each phase, more Iraqis are involved in this process. Sunni and Shia and Kurds and other Iraqis are concentrating politically on building a united Iraq. That is why I think the insurgency must think that its last days are eventually going to come because the Iraqis are turning to their politics to serve their future."

On September 30, 2005, Rice declared that the Iraq War was "set out to help the people of the Middle East transform their societies."

In 2005, when asked how long US troops will stay in Iraq, Rice said, "I don't want to speculate. I do know that we are making progress with what the Iraqis themselves are capable of doing. And as they are able to do certain tasks, as they are able to hold their own territory, they will not need us to do that." Rice further added, "I think that even to try and speculate on how many years from now there will be a certain number of American forces is not appropriate." Rice stated: "I have no doubt that as the Iraqi security forces get better—and they are getting better and are holding territory, and they are doing the things with minimal help—we are going to be able to bring down the level of our forces... I have no doubt that that's going to happen in a reasonable time frame."

Rice lauded Iraq's voter turnout and peaceful transition into a sovereign government in 2005, and compared the reconstruction of Iraq to that of Europe after World War II. Rice wrote:

"Iraq... in the face of a horrific insurgency has held historic elections, drafted and ratified a new national charter, and will go to the polls again in coming days to elect a new constitutional government. At this time last year, such unprecedented progress seemed impossible. One day it will all seem to have been inevitable. This is the nature of extraordinary times, which former Secretary of State Dean Acheson understood well and described perfectly in his memoirs. 'The significance of events,' he wrote, 'was shrouded in ambiguity. We groped after interpretations of them, sometimes reversed lines of action based on earlier views, and hesitated long before grasping what now seems obvious.' When Acheson left office in 1953, he could not know the fate of the policies he helped to create. He certainly could never have predicted that nearly four decades later, war between Europe's major powers would be unthinkable, or that America and the world would be harvesting the fruits of his good decisions and managing the collapse of communism. But because leaders such as Acheson steered American statecraft with our principles when precedents for action were lacking, because they dealt with their world as it was but never believed they were powerless to change it for the better, the promise of democratic peace is now a reality in all of Europe and in much of Asia."

In 2006, Rice compared US commitment in Iraq to the Civil War, indicating "I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold." BET.com commented "If you’re against the war in Iraq, you might as well consider yourself pro-slavery, according to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."

On January 11, 2007, Rice addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding the President’s Iraq Strategy. Rice asserted that insurgents were mainly responsible for American casualties; Senator Chuck Hagel stated, "Madame Secretary, your intelligence and mine is a lot different." Senator Benjamin Cardin asked Rice troop increases were adequate given the state of the Iraqi conflict. Rice responded "if you were trying to quell a civil war, you would need much larger forces" but that the augmentation was appropriate for the mission.

In January 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate was issued; key judgements included: “The Intelligence Community judges that the term civil war does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent attacks on coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term civil war accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.“

In February 2007, it was reported that Rice encouraged lawmakers to support President Bush's troop increase by saying it would be a mistake to micromanage the Iraq war.

In December 2007, Rice made her eighth visit as Secretary of State to Iraq, making an unscheduled stop in Kirkuk before proceeding to Baghdad, where she called on Iraqi leaders to urgently implement a national reconciliation roadmap.

On January 15, 2008, Rice took a detour to Baghdad from a Middle East trip with President Bush, where she congratulated Iraqi leaders. She said the process of reconciliation was coming along "quite remarkably." At a news conference, she welcomed a decision to let Saddam Hussein supporters return to government jobs, saying: "A democratic and unified Iraq is here to stay. And while it may have challenges, it has passed through some very difficult times and is now moving forward in a way that is promising, yet still fragile." Rice's visit came as Iraq's defense minister told the New York Times he envisioned US security help until 2018 or later.

On April 20, 2008, Rice made yet another unannounced trip to Baghdad, this time to promote what she called the "coalescing center" of Iraqi politics around Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood continued during Rice's visit, and the Green Zone endured three rocket attacks; visibility was so poor due to dust storms Rice had to take a ground convoy into the city rather than flying. Referring to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Rice said she recognized that the "Sadr trend" is a political movement as well as a militia. "Any Iraqi who's willing to lay down their arms and come into the political process and contest in the arena is welcome to do so," she said. "That would include the Sadrist trend."

On June 9, 2008, Senators Carl Levin and John Warner, in a letter to Rice concerning U.S.-Iraqi negotiations on a strategic framework and status of forces agreement, demanded that the administration "be more transparent with Congress, with greater consultation about the progress and content of these deliberations." Levin and Warner also wrote that Congress, "in exercising its constitutional responsibilities, has legitimate concerns about the authorities, protections and understandings that might be made" in the agreements." On October 16, 2008, after several more months of negotiations, Rice and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates briefed senior U.S. lawmakers on the draft SOFA, and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki prepared to circulate it with Iraq's Political National Security Council before going on to the Council of Ministers and the Iraqi parliament. Despite a compromise on the issue of jurisdiction over off-duty U.S. troops who commit crimes under Iraqi law, issues related to the timeline for U.S. withdrawal and Iraqi insistence on "absolute sovereignty" remained. On November 19, 2008, Secretaries Gates and Rice held classified briefings for U.S. lawmakers behind closed doors, and neither official commented to reporters. Democratic Representative William Delahunt said: "There has been no meaningful consultation with Congress during the negotiations of this agreement and the American people for all intents and purposes have been completely left out." And Oona Hathaway, Professor Law at the University of California at Berkeley called the lack of consultation with United States Congress unprecedented, asserting that aspects of the accord exceed the independent constitutional powers of the President of the United States.

Rice said in a late December 2008 Sunday morning talk show appearance that even in hindsight, Saddam Hussein had to go, to further stability in the Middle East: "I know that the Middle East with Saddam Hussein in its center was never going to be a Middle East that was going to change in a way that will sustain American interests and values and security." Speaking with Washington Post editors and reporters on January 12, 2009, Rice argued that Iraq shows signs of becoming an inclusive state—it even "declared Christmas a national holiday"—and said that if the country eventually emerges as a democratic, multiethnic state that has friendly ties with the United States, "that will be more important than what anybody thought in 2002 or 2003." Rice added: "That's not to say that it didn't come at great cost. I myself will be haunted by the lives that were lost. I will always think about the people I visited at Walter Reed or at Bethesda and wonder what their lives are like. I also know that nothing of value is won without sacrifice."