President's choice [Condi for SOS]

In April 2003, shortly after the fall of Baghdad, some Pentagon officials lobbied hard to have the Iraq-based Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization transformed into a US asset and ally.

Mujahedin was on the State Department's terrorist organization list because of the methods it has employed to try to overthrow the regime in Teheran.

"There was an attempt by the Pentagon, that was really waged until August 2003, to take the Mujahedin and turn it into a freedom-fighting force, to launder it, turn it into a conduit for US regime change assistance against Iran," one State Department official recalled.

The State Department sternly opposed the idea, arguing that the US could not selectively side with terrorist groups that it found favorable to work with.

"You were really going to shoot down your credibility in the international community," the official said.

It was left to Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush's national security adviser, to mediate. After conferring with the president, Rice announced the US would not alter its position on the MEK.

"She talked to the president and they said, 'a terrorist is a terrorist. We're not going to get in the business of laundering them, or embracing the enemy of my enemy and turning them into vehicles for regime change.'"

US policy toward Iran remained, at least for the moment, containment, Bush and Rice decided. Even though the decision may have disappointed many of the president's political allies, "she took a principled stand and she ended the debate," the official said.

Rice found found herself at the center of such debates, a policy referee who worked to shield the president from interagency squabbling. Shortly after her confirmation hearing as the next US secretary of state on Tuesday, Rice's role as chief mediator of such battles will end.

THERE ARE plenty of questions senators could ask Rice. After all, she was the president's chief adviser on national security and foreign policy affairs during two of the greatest US intelligence debacles in American history - the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the absence of Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism chief, who last year released a blistering account of the White House's preoccupation with going to war in Iraq, and its failure to decisively confront al-Qaida during the first nine months of the administration, placed much of the failure on Rice's shoulders.

"Well, prior to 9/11, the Bush administration didn't have an approach to terrorism," Clarke said in an interview last year. "And it was clear that the national security adviser didn't like this kind of issue; she didn't have meetings on this issue. The president didn't have meetings on the issue of terrorism," he said.

BEFORE THE Iraq invasion, Rice said of Saddam Hussein: "We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into Iraq of high-quality aluminum tubes that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs. We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," she said.

Charles Duelfer, the former arms inspector in Iraq, later told Congress that the tubes were probably for a rocket program. And while a former National Security Council staffer told the Post that Rice made "sure that everybody had their say" and that "the processes at the White House played out fairly," much criticism has been leveled at the White House for ignoring opinions that did not jibe with its political outlook, particularly on the question of Saddam Hussein's relationship with al-Qaida.

Senators may quiz Rice about some of this. Members of the September 11 Commission already had a chance to do so after initial resistance from the White House, which tried to bar Rice from testifying. Yet, despite a wearying sense of unease throughout Washington that the democratic experiment in Iraq may fail without a radical shift in approach, Rice has largely weathered it all unscathed.

Like CIA director George Tenet, who received a medal of honor from the president, Rice has sidestepped much of the criticism. Most of it has been directed toward Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon war planners. Instead of a critical look at her role in policy arguments, most expect her Senate confirmation to be painless and swift.

That could be in part precisely because of the perception that Rice has served mostly as policy referee, rather than policy creator. But that is selling her short. In fact, close associates say she has been at the heart of the decision-making process, whether it be the fashioning of a new doctrine of preemption, putting democracy building at the heart of the Bush administration's Middle East policy, or drafting an approach toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that called for supporting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and dumping the late Yasser Arafat as a negotiating partner.

And that is a role that will become more pronounced once she arrives at the State Department.

"I think she is going to be the designer as well as the implementer," said Dennis Ross, the former US special Middle East envoy who is now counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"I don't think she'll be implementing what someone else has done. I think she will be shaping what it is that's going to be done and then trying to carry it out."

THAT WAS something outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell, often at odds with Rumsfeld or Vice President Dick Cheney, could not always do. Powell built up a group of loyal followers, many of whom will be sad to see him go. But even those most fond of Powell acknowledge that his influence, sometimes diminished in the intra-agency debates, meant they too were also left in the wilderness.

Now, with Rice, one of the president's most trusted confidantes, coming over, many in the State Department believe their influence could increase in the second Bush administration.

"Having a secretary who everyone knows is close to the president is likely to make the State Department feel that it is a more relevant actor," said Ross.

The former NSC staffer agreed. "Secretary Powell is very effective and very much beloved at State. At the same time, Dr. Rice is so close to President Bush. It reminds me a little of the way Secretary (James) Baker was there with the previous President Bush. That kind of closeness can really benefit State and its effectiveness a great deal. Now, when the secretary of state speaks, you'll know that the president is speaking as well."

Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, whom Bush has nominated to be deputy secretary of state, will join Rice in Middle East diplomacy. And there is wide speculation that David Welch, currently US ambassador to Egypt, will replace William Burns as the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs.

Rice has often been the articulator of the administration's policy toward Israel and the Palestinians, especially in closed-door sessions with Israeli interlocutors. Early on, Sharon, after one of his first meetings in 2001 with Rice, famously quipped to Israeli reporters that he had had trouble concentrating during the meeting because "he could not take his eyes off Rice's legs."

But the meetings and communications became increasingly serious, particularly beginning in the spring of 2002 after Israel invaded large swathes of the West Bank after a suicide bombing at a Pessah Seder in Netanya. As Israel constructed its security barrier, or laid the groundwork for the disengagement plan, Rice was often the one who would speak to Sharon's chief of staff Dov Weisglass, to convey administration satisfaction, or displeasure, with Israeli moves.

"She has been the chief interlocutor on (these) issues," said one official with an American Jewish organization. "That's been the most significant thing. I presume that relationship will continue."

RICE IS expected to attend a March parley in London on Palestinian nation-building and then perhaps travel to Israel and the Palestinian areas to meet with leaders and hash out the next steps, post-Arafat.

"She, more than anybody at a senior level of the administration, has been the person who paid the closest attention to this issue," said Ross. "She's obviously part of the channel with Dubi Weisglass. And I think she's someone, I believe, who came to care about the issue and actually believes there's an opening now, especially with Arafat gone."

"She is pro-Israel," said the former NSC staffer. "The United States is very pro-Israel. I also think she's a quite fair-minded and realistic person who sees the situation clearly. Certainly, she and the president and others were seized by what they thought were the failures of the approach taken previously, especially during the Clinton years. That shapes their views about where the United States should be going on this."

The US quickly blessed Sharon's plan for disengagement from the Palestinians. In closed-door sessions, Rice has referred to Sharon as "courageous" and "statesmanlike."

Instead of a step-by-step mediation role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Washington has instead preached Palestinian democracy and reform first. But her belief in the importance of democracies stretches beyond the Palestinian example.

In an August 2002 interview with the National Review, Rice said, "the one thing that has been affirmed for me in the strongest possible terms is the tremendous legitimacy of democracy vis- -vis any other system of governance."

She is a student of the former Soviet Union and the rapid change that came once the Iron Curtain fell. And when it comes to the belief in spreading democracy, whether it be to Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Palestinian areas, Rice and Bush have been in lockstep.

"The president is very clearly motivated by this. And I really didn't see any daylight between him and Dr. Rice on this at all. She seemed completely involved in this," said the NSC staffer.

Condoleezza Rice, 50, will become the first black, female US secretary of state, and only the second female secretary of state after Madeleine Albright, once the Senate confirms her appointment this month.

Yet the former Stanford provost's supreme aspiration would not be to head the State Deaprtment, but the National Football League.

"NFL Commissioner would be a dream job for me," Rice told an interviewer last fall. "I love football, and I think the NFL is an exceptionally well-run league. It's also central to the way we think of ourselves as a country."

Rice grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama watching football games with her father, a Presbyterian minister. She was a child prodigy, who read just about anything at the age of five, went to college at the age of 15 and became a gifted concert pianist. She originally planned to study music but changed direction and focused her studies on foreign affairs. She was guided by political scientist, Josef Korbel, incidentally Albright's father.

She was discovered by the first president Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, in the late 1980s, while she was at Stanford. Scowcroft, now a frequent critic of the Bush administration's foreign policy, brought her to the NSC to direct Soviet affairs. She met the current President Bush for the first time in 1995, and according to news reports, Bush was dazzled by Rice's sports knowledge and her tale of Willie Mays, the baseball hero, being in the same class as Rice's mother in school.

Rice spends time outside of work with the Bush family, both at the Camp David compound in Maryland and the president's home in Texas. They are close friends. Loyal to the president, she is considered an effective messenger for the administration's views.

"She has a really skillful way of delivering messages that can be quite tough," the former NSC staffer said. "She's also the kind of person who makes everyone around her feel like they should sit up straight and mind their manners. She smiles and laughs. But there's a properness about her, a graciousness, a class, that makes people feel like they wouldn't want to, for example, use bad language around her."

"Condi Rice scares me", I heard the lady at my table say. She had just finished mentioning "Now if Colin Powell would run . . .".

Sitting eating lunch at a food court near L.A. City Hall, I had little choice of table mates. I had been doing my best to tune out the discussion about Michael Jackson the heavy set thirty-something was having with her equally heavy set companion. They were ordinary L.A. hispanics generations removed from Mexico -- speaking english with no discernible accent.

I shoveled the lukewarm chinese food into my mouth with a plastic fork while burying my head into a newspaper some previous diner had discarded on the table. The comment about Powell got my attention, though. So it was I heard the observations about Rice quite clearly.

"She's a very intelligent woman, but she scares me", the lady repeated, "I've actually met her and she just scares me."

So Colin Powell is okay but Condi Rice 'scares' this potential voter. (That she is 'scary' suits me fine --- particularly when she needs to face down some very evil enemies).

I myself would vote for Condi in a heartbeat and sensed my fellow angelena could be won over to vote for Dr. Rice, but had neither the time nor insight to address it. I folded up the paper and abandoned it on the table for someone else to read, and left.

Here is some free research for the Republican party (no charge). Perhaps FReepers can pitch in to help Dr. Rice be more of a known commodity to the average voter.

How should the GOP make her less scary?

Tell her to take those vampire fangs out of her mouth.
Do not play the Emperor's Theme from Return of the Jedi every time she speaks.
Give her a State Department limousine and send the Pale Horse back to the Stygian Stables.
Tell weather controllers at HAARP to stop generating ominous stormclouds over her every public appearance.
No more comments to the press about her Bathory rejuvenating regiment.
Replace Lovecraft-inspired biography on personal website with something written by a public relations expert.

I think Dr. Rice will make an excellent SOS--and I was delighted when I heard the news that the President had nominated her. Besides much else she should be admired for, I believe she had nothing but contempt for the late-of-this-world but freshly-arrived-in-Hell Mr. Arafat, and that's always a plus as a character recommendation, in my book.

That said, the key to her success once confirmed as Secretary will be to resist the bureaucrats eternally nestled in Foggy Bottom's swampy corridors appeasement tendencies. I swear, had the bureaucrats in the State Department been in charge of America's "response" to Pearl Harbor after December 7th, the most the Japanese Empire would've gotten from the United States after that unprovoked attack would've been a flowery note begging for a "summit" or "conference" to "discuss" the late unpleasant "incident" on Battleship Row...indeed, I'm surprised that some section whine type isn't around to argue that that's exactly what should have happened in retrospect in this thread.

One thing Dr. Rice will have to always keep in mind while on the job in her new post is that we won the Cold War in spite of the shirking cowardice of our shameful State Department, not because of it...that agency actually helped prolong the reign of Soviet tyranny over the decades. They've never cared a whit about outrages committed against American citizens by foreign powers, either. With them, everything is Jaw-Jaw; supine "talk" in the face of mortal enemies. Indeed, the State Department building should be renamed the "Neville Chamberlain Sewer of Codified Appeasement," given their record to date. And don't even get me started on their disgusting "diplomatic" treatment of Israel over the years.

I hope Dr. Rice can shake that institution up; and I wish her well in all future endeavors (especially that one).

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