During the portrait unveiling ceremony for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, neither she nor current secretary John Kerry explicitly mentioned the foreign policy elephant in the room — the war in Iraq.

But the audience at the ceremony spoke volumes about her work in a region that threatens to once again erupt in sectarian chaos.

The guest list read like a veritable reunion of Bush administration-era Iraq policymakers and officials: former U.S. ambassadors Chris Hill and John Negroponte, Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townshend, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and Chief of Staff Andy Card.

And like her Bush White House colleagues have done in the past, Rice, making what could have been a veiled reference to her role in the Iraq war, said history would be the ultimate judge of all public servants.

“Today’s headlines and history’s judgment are rarely the same,” she said.