Rice is carrying out the President's policy. They are close friends. She would do no other, and would do nothing to betray his trust. Conservatives and assorted a**tards over at The American Spectator and National Review Online do not have this basic understanding of reality.
They might as well be posting grabastic screeds at Daily Kos.
Condi fully understands that the Iranian leadership wants and needs war. She also understands that we have limited diplomatic maneuvering room due to the failure of George Tenet's Clown Car Agency to find the WMD in Iraq (he's about to publish a Poison Pen Memoir blaming everyone else but him for this fiasco, btw).
As a consequence, the Iranian Fascists are feeling their oats. That is good. They will attack first. Like Hitler and Goering after Pearl Harbor, they believe that we have no fight left in us That is also good. They have no understanding of what can be done to them.
They must make the first overt hostile move, and they will. This is a scorpion and frog moment. We would rather not have a conflict with Iran. Rice's preferred solution is diplomacy, but the Iranian diplomatic objective is to create a Persian condominium over the entire Persian Gulf area based on possession of the atomic bomb. This cannot and will not be allowed to happen. Her greatest ally in her diplomacy is Ahmadhi-Nejad himself and his coterie of ambitious Revolutionary Guards Corps Officers, who can be counted on to overreach. It is not in the nature of George W. Bush to leave this kind of problem to his successor.
He is not Bill Clinton, and she is not Madeleine Albright. Thanks be to God.
Here’s hoping you got the stratergy on Iran correct...looks like a hot summer and not due to Globull Whining.