Transcript Condoleeza Rice interview

PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Well first of all, I am very glad that we continue to remember the veterans of the many wars that have been fought on behalf of freedom. We here in the United States of course also celebrate Veterans Day during this weekend. The loss of life is never easy to take, and indeed you can't bring those people back; and those of us who are responsible for decisions that send men and women to war will live with that. But I think it's also true that nothing of value is ever won without sacrifice, and after September 11 it was very necessary to think again about security, to think again about the nature and the status of the Middle East: in Afghanistan to deal with the safe haven that had been there for al Qaeda; and in Iraq to deal with Saddam Hussein who had been a cancer in the region for ten years. He was a monster in the middle of the Middle East, and so yes I believe that it was a sacrifice worth making, although of course the many lives lost will haunt us forever.

ANDREW MARR:

We do have a situation, however, where to many people it appears that frankly we're losing in Afghanistan bit by bit, and ultimately what we don't have is the sort of democratised, more stable Middle East that many people - including yourself, I'm sure - hoped would happen as a result of that war.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Well it takes a long time for a democracy to take hold. Freedom is one thing; democracy is another. The institutionalisation of that freedom sometimes takes decades. Even here in my own country, the United States of America, a mature democracy, my father couldn't vote in 1952 and so we have to remember that history has a long arc. And in Iraq, I do think we are seeing democratic institutions emerge. It will take time for their fragility to give way to a more stable democracy.

ANDREW MARR:

And what about Iran because the biggest crisis really at the moment in the region is over the latest developments in their attempts to get - if that's what they're doing - nuclear weapons and missile heads. Do you take seriously the possibility of the West going to war with them to stop that, or pre-emptive strikes?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Yes, I think over the years we're getting more and more confirmation of what we all really knew - that Iran is intent on a nuclear weapon and one that would be usable. And so, yes, I think the threat of the use of military force is real. The Israelis are not going to stand for an existential threat to their state. I think the American President should never take military force off the table. I read that the Russians and Chinese said …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) But …

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

… something about not backing the Iranians into a corner. It's time to back the Iranians into a corner diplomatically, and we can do so with tougher sanctions.

ANDREW MARR:

Tougher sanctions, but also absolutely clearly and explicitly the threat of military strikes if they don't change course?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

I think you have to at this point. It may well be - and I'm really a believer - that regime change is really going to be our only choice here. Now if the regime changes its policies, it will be a different kind of regime and we need to continue to work for that. But the Iranian regime, which is seeking nuclear weapons, which is the poster child for safe sponsorship of terrorism and which demonstrated in June of 2009 that it no longer has any legitimacy among its people, it is really time now to deal seriously with that regime. The time for sanctions that are kind of lowest common denominator has passed.

ANDREW MARR:

And do you think this should start with the Israelis, or do you think it should be the Americans attacking directly?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Well I don't think we yet need to make a decision to actually use military force, but the Iranians should know, and know in no uncertain terms, that military force is a real option and one that is growing in salience because of their behaviour.

ANDREW MARR:

Looking from the outside during the … what we might call the Bush Wars period, what your book reveals is just how divided and riven some of you were. You're particularly critical of the Vice President at the time, Dick Cheney, who you see as really very, very hawkish - to the point where he wasn't even prepared to listen to the possibility that Saddam Hussein might not have been involved in 9/11.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Well the President wanted strong opinions around him. No president should be in a position of group think among his advisers. And I know that there was a bit of a caricature of the Bush administration that the President only had people around him who told him what he wanted to hear, people who didn't argue vociferously, he didn't have options before him, and I wanted very much in this book to show that he was someone who was able to listen to strong opinions and strong personalities.

ANDREW MARR:

But it was also the case …, it appeared that there was very little really good planning for what would happen to Iraq afterwards and the country fell into bloody chaos. And your department and the people around you had been thinking about what should happen afterwards, but it was because the Pentagon - according to your book - it was because the Pentagon took total ownership of that, that it turned out that there wasn't a proper plan.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Well someone, some agency had to take ownership for the post-war what we call Phase … Phase Four, which is after Saddam was actually overthrown. And it made sense for it to be the Pentagon. But, frankly, I don't think that the Phase Four operations were properly planned. Maybe there was a bit of a hope that the Iraqi exiles would easily ride back into Baghdad and take control. That was obviously not the case. And we made some mistakes. The disbanding of the army was in retrospect a mistake. In any complex operation there are going to be mistakes and I take my … I take responsibility for some share of them, but I do think that we … we could have done better and that the Pentagon could have done better. We frankly didn't have enough troops then in the country - we, Britain, the other allies - to deal with the aftermath of the war.

ANDREW MARR:

What about the hugely controversial way that terrorist suspects were treated at Guantanamo and the rendition system, the waterboarding - all of those things which so damaged America's reputation around the world?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Well I would say controversial certainly because we were in a new kind of war. The President was determined that we would uphold our laws, that we would use every … every weapon available to us that was both legal and necessary. And, yes, we had to do some very tough things because with a terrorist, you can't treat it like law enforcement. What you have to do is prevent the next attack, and every day we thought that the next attack was coming.

ANDREW MARR:

You've seen most, perhaps all of the darkest secrets, the secret fears of the United States. Now what wakes you up in the middle of the night, if anything does? What really worries you in security terms right now?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Yes, well certainly in security terms Iran worries me, as it should everyone. It's probably the single most dangerous state in the international system right now. I worry a great deal about Pakistan. I just don't think that there is the urgency on behalf of the … on the part of the Pakistani government to deal with its … the extremists among the various institutions there. And so I worry about those hotspots. But when I look at that chaotic world out there and I recognise that throughout my lifetime the United States has been willing and Americans have been willing to step up and do the hard jobs of leadership, I am concerned that our own internal problems may bring our attention back home and that you may see an America that is less willing to lead.

ANDREW MARR:

The psychological effect on leaders is often underestimated. There was an extraordinary moment when I think you were told that both the President and you had been poisoned.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Yes, we were in Shanghai for the rescheduled Asia-Pacific Economic Council meeting in October. We were operating and we were fighting in Afghanistan, and so every morning we would have a video conference between the President, Colin Powell, Andy Card, myself, and back in Washington the Vice President and Steve Hadley, the Deputy National Security Adviser. And on that particular morning, the Vice President told us that the White House detection system had detected botulinim toxin - it is a nerve agent for which there was no known antidote - and that we had all been exposed and that we would likely die. And it was put pretty much that bluntly. Fortunately, when the samples were tested at the Centre for Disease Control, it turned out to have been a false alarm, but I will never forget Steve Hadley, with his maybe slight black humour as we would call it, saying that the tests would be made and if the mice were feet down we were fine; if the mice were feet up, we were toast. And when we got the word that the mice were indeed feet down, I passed that to the President who was sitting next to the President of China. I'm sure the Chinese must have thought we were speaking in some kind of code.

ANDREW MARR:

The psychological impact of that level of stress and concern for those numbers of years must have been enormous?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

Yes, the psychological impact was enormous. But the way that you keep going is that you realize that there's something you can do about it. And the something that you can do about it is to be vigilant, to work hard to make sure that an attack never happens again. But yes they were enormously stressful times.

ANDREW MARR:

And finally, last question, it's often been said that of all the administration senior figures at the time, you're the only one with a potential political future of your own if you want one. My question is what would tempt you back into the fray, if anything?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:

I'm a political … I'm not a political person. I'm a policy person and I know the difference. I'm very glad that we have people in our great democracy who want to run for office. We need them. I'm simply not one of them.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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