Wed, Nov 19, 2003 page9

• Condoleezza Rice passionate in defense of bringing down Saddam

  • By Paul Harris / THE OBSERVER
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  The White House office of US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has a relaxed, homely feel. Flowers grace the desk, and the walls are hung with paintings of scenes from American history and photos of Rice with colleagues.

  Closer inspection reveals the truth. One of those grinning "colleagues" is President George W. Bush, and an automatic dial button on her phone is marked "President of the United States." Rice has a direct line to the most powerful man on earth.

  For many of the left-wing critics of the Bush administration, Rice is the acceptable face of a White House that has gone to war twice in the post-Sept. 11 world. She's smart, highly educated, eloquent and -- in a world dominated by white men -- a black woman with real power in world politics.

  But for those who think the struggle in Iraq might make the Bush administration think twice about the reasons it went to war, Rice has other news: they were right when they invaded and they are right now.

  She also believes that British Prime Minister Tony Blair, despite the huge fallout from risking his tenure on following Bush to war, will bring Britain along with him.

  She is passionate in her defense of bringing down former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime: "It was a regime in which we found mass graves, some of them prisoners tied together so they only had to use one bullet, children still clutching toys," she said in a pooled interview with the British press ahead of this week's presidential visit.

  Rice went on to list the crimes of Saddam's police: "Children coming out of prisons; people with their tongues cut out because they wanted to express a view; people who were gassed by their own regime."

  Rice seemed confident that the Bush trip will go well and insisted that Bush and Blair still share the same vision.

  "Look, we are realistic," she said."We know that people will spend a lot of time reporting the protest. That is fine. Protests are a part of our democratic heritage and our democratic privilege."

  Wearing a smart green dress and discreet golden earrings, Rice seemed every inch the sophisticated operator. Her smile is friendly but her firm handshake guides the receiver to sit and get down to business. She has little time for small talk. This fits with her image as a driven politico. Single at the age of 48, she says she never dates. Her leisure time is spent in her flat, where she eats take-aways, or with the Bushes. Her parents are dead and her friends live many miles away.

  Rice has turned her job into one of the key posts of the Bush presidency. Though less well known than other top aides, and with views sitting between the two competing poles of hawkish Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and dovish Secretary of State Colin Powell, she could be more influential than either of them.

  And with her power comes passion. She is a firm Christian, the daughter of a minister, and has deep convictions about the rightness of removing the regimes of the Taliban and Saddam.

  This pits her against the tens of thousands of people expected to protest on the streets of London at Bush's visit. She believes that not enough attention is paid to the good that has come from toppling the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  This is a line that the White House consciously decided to spin several weeks ago, amid bitter complaints that the mainstream media were ignoring "good news stories" from Iraq.

  Rice points out that Bush and Blair's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq "are finally getting those countries to the place that people might have the same privilege of protest, the same privilege of speaking one's conscience and speaking one's voice that those people who are going to stand in Trafalgar Square have."

  Flanked by media advisers and security men, Rice had one last piece of advice for protesters. "I hope they'll remember that, finally, Iraqis and Afghans may have a chance to have the same privilege," she said.

  With that came the firm handshake again and a quick ushering out of the door. There is business to be done and a trip to Britain to prepare for.
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