Condi Rice: "No regret" over takiing out Saddam
Condoleezza Rice, the former US Secretary of State, has just published a memoir, “Extraordinary, Ordinary People,” about growing up in the segregated South. She was interviewed by Olivia Ward of the Toronto Star this week, and this interview was made available to the Global Viewpoint Network....
Ward: Iraq is also a painful subject: 100,000 Iraqis dead, and 4,000 Americans. Do you have any regrets about the invasion?
Rice: I have absolutely no regret that we overthrew Saddam Hussein – although, of course, I wish things [afterwards] had gone better. There were many sacrifices made in that war, and those of us who were responsible for helping President [George W.] Bush make those decisions mourn those losses and will always be haunted by them. But I also recognize that the arc of history is a long, not a short one. We shouldn’t judge big historical changes as snapshots. The conversation we’re having now isn’t about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or invasion of Kuwait, but can Sunni and Shia find a way to form a government [in Iraq]. Just think about what that means for the Middle East – a multi-confessional Arab state, the most important one strategically, and the discussion is about forming a government.
Read entire article at CS Monitor
Ward: Iraq is also a painful subject: 100,000 Iraqis dead, and 4,000 Americans. Do you have any regrets about the invasion?
Rice: I have absolutely no regret that we overthrew Saddam Hussein – although, of course, I wish things [afterwards] had gone better. There were many sacrifices made in that war, and those of us who were responsible for helping President [George W.] Bush make those decisions mourn those losses and will always be haunted by them. But I also recognize that the arc of history is a long, not a short one. We shouldn’t judge big historical changes as snapshots. The conversation we’re having now isn’t about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or invasion of Kuwait, but can Sunni and Shia find a way to form a government [in Iraq]. Just think about what that means for the Middle East – a multi-confessional Arab state, the most important one strategically, and the discussion is about forming a government.