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November 13, 2002 - Trotter Group
DR. RICE: Well, welcome. DeWAYNE WICKHAM, USA TODAY: Thank you. DR. RICE: Yes. DeWAYNE WICKHAM: Dr. Rice, let me say a couple of things very quickly before you get started. First, I want to thank you because you've been very consistent in your willingness to meet with us. We remember you coming to our convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, and also that you were willing to meet with us in your tenure as provost at Stanford. And so we had no expectation, other than when we requested a meeting, that you would at some time accommodate us. (Laughter.) And we're glad that you did. And as a reward for that, we're going to begin by asking your "home girl" DR. RICE: I was going to say -- (Laughter.) It's only because it's the only time I see Sheryl McCarthy. (Laughter.) DeWAYNE WICKHAM: To put to you the first question. DR. RICE: You got it. Thanks. SHERYL McCARTHY, NEWSDAY: How are you? DR. RICE: I'm fine, Sheryl. How are you? SHERYL McCARTHY: Good. DR. RICE: Good. SHERYL McCARTHY: I don't have to point out to you that this is a very challenging time for the United States in terms of foreign policy. We are fighting a war on terrorism. We are looking at a possible war with Iraq. And we're also looking at a nuclear threat from North Korea. And I think a lot of Americans are wondering whether or not we are over-extending ourselves somewhat in trying to fight a war on three fronts. Could you respond to that? DR. RICE: Well, it is certainly a challenging time. There's no doubt about that. And you play the hand that you're dealt. And it is a period of time in which there seem to be a number of challenges in intelligence politics. But I think I would argue that if you think about this strategically, rather than just piece by piece, there are some real opportunities to work on these very complex issues by bringing together a number of like-minded states that are prepared to deal with the difficult issues before us. And I think you will see that what we're trying to do is to use American leadership to bring these like-minded states to policies that are tough enough to deal with the challenges, tough enough to have an impact on the challenges, but that are multilateral or cooperative in the way that we go about it. And let me just take the three that you mentioned. With Iraq, the President, of course, was able to go to the United Nations and to challenge the Security Council to come out and to be what the Security Council was intended to be in 1945 when it was formed. And we now have a very powerful, strong resolution -- 15 countries, including the Syrians, supporting this resolution; and a clear statement that the kind of defiance that Iraq has engaged in will not stand because the intelligence community will not allow it to stand. Similarly, in the war on terrorism, yes, this is really a challenge that I don't think any American administration ever really expected to be facing in quite this way. Did we really think we would be fighting a war in Afghanistan? No. And, yet, you have a coalition of 90 countries that are involved in the war on terrorism in one way or another, because this is the war that's being fought on a lot of fronts. And we're going to be successful in that war because we finally have a blanket -- intelligence blanket, in terms of intelligence, and law enforcement, and some military contributions that will do that, again, using allies and friends. And then finally, on North Korea, one reason that we believe you can deal differently with North Korea than with Iraq -- though North Korea is a very serious threat, and we take it very seriously -- is that we believe, here you have some regional powers that have very strong interests in not permitting North Korea to be a nuclear power. And so the South Koreans and the Japanese, first and foremost, but also the Russians and the Chinese have a very strong interest in that. And the North Korea regime is one that needs to break out of its intelligence isolation to save itself economically. And what -- we're trying to send the message, through all of these important countries, you're not going to be able to do that until you give up that program. So it gives you an opportunity to work with like-minded states, so that you're not over-extended. And I think we believe that we're managing the challenges pretty well. DERRICK JACKSON, BOSTON GLOBE: Dr. Rice, you've been a lead voice for the administration's skepticism that Saddam will comply even with the U.N. resolution. You said this week, "we do not need to waste the world's time with another game of cat and mouse." And, "this is not a regime that is changing its stripes" -- in the current verb. Based on that, this could easily be read that this administration is on course not to trust Saddam no matter what he says and, therefore, being on a course to going into Iraq. Given that possibility, how do you justify to American mothers and fathers that this action is worth the possible loss of the lives of their sons and daughters in Iraq? DR. RICE: Well, first of all, nobody would like to see this turn out peacefully more than the administration, and most especially, the President. And I want to come back to that. And it's why he's taken the time to mobilize the United Nations to try and get a resolution with a weapons inspection regime that actually has a chance to push Saddam Hussein to cooperate, and thereby, to disarm. The skepticism is that -- we have to remember the history here. We've got 11 years of defiance; we've got 11 years of deceit. And so, of course, we're skeptical. But this time around, the world has to have zero tolerance for Saddam playing the kinds of games that he's played before. Because the truth of the matter is, any weapons inspection regime can be defeated. In a country the size of France, the inspectors going around, hunting and pecking to see what they can find, they can be deceived. And so the regime has to cooperate. Saddam has to cooperate. And that's the skepticism -- will he cooperate? Now, in terms of the potential for American sacrifice, it's the hardest thing any President of the United States ever has to do, is to stand with mothers and fathers and widows and widowers of men and women killed in combat. I've watched this President do it. It is the hardest thing a President of the United States has to do. The reason that he can do it, and the reason that he can ask the American people to make those sacrifices, if necessary, is that there is a grave threat to American security, to the security of our friends and allies, and to our way of life. We saw that on September 11th. It was not as if the United States -- had the United States been doing nothing, these people would have attacked us. They were attacking us because of who we are, and we saw what that can do. And with Saddam Hussein, you have a potential for a homicidal dictator, who has demonstrated that he is ambitious and aggressive in attacking his neighbors and gassing his own people, and gassing his neighbors, to acquire a nuclear weapon. He already has other weapons of mass destruction. But a nuclear weapon, two or three our four years from now -- I don't care where it is, when it is -- to have that happen in a volatile region like the Middle East is most certainly a future that we cannot tolerate. And so the President has to ask, if we come to that point -- has to ask the American people to make the sacrifice in the way that they've made the sacrifice over the centuries to defend this way of life and to defend freedom. But one thing that the President would want everyone to understand is that war is not his first option, it's his last choice -- just because he would be asking a great sacrifice of the American people. LES PAYNE, NEWSDAY: Dr. Rice, in The Financial Times piece in September, you were quoted as saying that you viewed the collapse of the Soviet Union and September 11th as two book ends, and that they called into a play a new threat. And you've defined those threats as weapons of mass destruction and extremism. Now, in terms of linking, we can understand -- I can understand -- that al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, certainly represent the sum total -- not the sum total, but certainly are linked to that threat. But the Iraq and the Saddam Hussein threat seemed to be pre-existing. And I would like for you to comment on the pre-existence of that, in the context of your book ends. And also, we hear -- off the record, at least -- that the recent tape of Osama bin Laden, that is his voice, but it may have been mastered. What is the latest word on the tape? DR. RICE: First on the tape, here's what happened. There have been some linguists who have said that they believe this is his voice. But there is a lot of technical work that has to be done to look at what may have happened to the tape and so forth. And that work is ongoing, which is why we can't really confirm whether it's him or not. We'll see. And we have always said that we had to work on the assumption that he is alive and that this is not really, in any case, about one person; this is about a network and a leadership with multiple people in it that you had to be concerned about. But that's what's going on with the tape and why there's still quite a bit of technical analysis to be done. In terms of the Hussein threat, the Iraqi threat, you're right, it was a pre-existing threat. We were trying to deal with it even prior to September 11th. You remember we had changed the sanctions regime to try to make it less restrictive on the Iraqi people, or more restrictive on Saddam Hussein's military goods and the like. We were looking at a more effective opposition to him, a whole variety of things. But I think you do, as a policymaker, or any of you, the prism through which you see things can change quite dramatically when you face something like 9/11. And what 9/11 demonstrated was, first of all what extremism can do and put on the table what extremism married with weapons of mass destruction might do. And therefore, you have these two threats -- extremism and weapons of mass destruction -- but the real nightmare is that they somehow get linked up. And while there has been a lot of discussion of how much the Iraqis may or may not have had to do with al Qaeda, there are several things we know about the Iraqi regime. We know that it's a regime that has supported terrorism and harbored terrorists of a number of kinds. We know that they've had a number of contacts with al Qaeda over the years. We know that they've provided some training for al Qaeda. And most importantly, we know that -- to be blunt -- bad guys travel in packs. And you will hear sometimes, well, one is secular and one is religious extremists. Well, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin managed to make an alliance less than two years before Adolf Hitler brutally attacked the Soviet Union. Bad guys travel in packs. And so we have to be concerned about the potential union of terrorism, extremism, and weapons of mass destruction. And I think we have to be concerned in any case, and would have been concerned in any case about Saddam Hussein's forward march toward weapons of mass destruction. The truth of the matter is, he was getting about $500 million in illegal profits from oil in 1998; $3 billion by now. That's a lot of money with which to acquire a lot of weapons. BARBARA ROBINSON, LAS VEGAS REVIEW JOURNAL: There is a perception in Europe, Canada, and the Middle East, that our policy in the Middle East is biased. What impact do you think this perception has on the war on terrorism? DR. RICE: It is a perception that I, frankly, wish we could deal with better because it could not be further from the truth. This is the first President of the United States to unequivocally say that the only resolution of the Middle East is going to be a two-state solution; to declare that there needs to a Palestinian state; and who, as a matter of fact, went so far as to call it Palestine, right? And the walls didn't tumble down when he said it. He has laid out a vision of a two-state solution. This is also a President who believes strongly that the Palestinian people deserve the same respect and the same sense of confidence that we have in people around the world in their ability to bring themselves to leadership that will truly recognize their interests, that can move toward democracy, that will give them access to what the President calls the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. I mean the notion that the Palestinians somehow aren't capable of having leadership better than the leadership they have now, is, frankly, a very patronizing and awful thing to say about the Palestinian people. And so this is a President who believes that. We do, every time we are with the Israelis, press them hard about the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories. It is awful. The President said in a speech that the Palestinians should not have to deal with the humiliations that come out of the occupation. So he has very strong views about what the Palestinian people deserve. Now, he doesn't think that their leadership currently is getting them to where they need to be. But he does have strong views about where the Palestinian -- what the Palestinian people deserve. He also has strong views about the Israelis' need for security as a democracy that is in a very difficult neighborhood, where the terrorism has been used against the Israeli population despite the fact that it looked at one time, not too long ago, like Israel was prepared to give back large chunks of land in order to achieve peace. So when he speaks out about Israel's need to defend itself, he's simply saying what anybody would say, which is a democratically-elected prime minister of Israel is going to defend Israel when you have car bombs going off, and bombs going off on buses, and bombs going off in hotels. There is plenty of misery to have gone around, unfortunately, in this part of the world, on both sides of this conflict. And what the President has tried to do is to lay out a path ahead that takes account of the responsibilities that everybody has, but also the aspirations that everybody has. And he believes, fundamentally, that a two-state solution is critical to the Palestinians' future, it is critical to the Israelis' future, and it's critical to a stable Middle East. GREGORY KANE, BALTIMORE SUN: Okay, speaking of bad guys running in packs, the state of Sudan Harbored Osama bin Laden at one time. DR. RICE: Yes. GREGORY KANE: And it continues to murder its own citizens and enslave them. Are they now our allies in the war against terrorism? And if they are, why should we trust them? DR. RICE: Yes. Sudan is -- first of all, the President came in and tried -- and really put together a Sudan policy, and sent Jack Danforth out to be Sudan envoy, but with a very clear message to Khartoum, which was, we expect you to clean up your act where terrorism is concerned. And, frankly, they've made some advances there and there has been some cooperation on terrorism. But he also said, but that's not good enough. You have to also deal with the south in a way that is humanitarian, that recognizes that these are people of different religious views than those held by Khartoum, and you have to allow peace in the third order to be built upon a foundation that recognizes the aspirations of these people and recognizes that slavery and bombing humanitarian workers and all of those things is intolerable to the United States. So, yes, we are very glad that the Sudan is getting better on the terrorism front. It is not by any means a done deal on the terrorism front. There is a lot more Sudan could do. But we have been very tough and very straightforward. The President, despite some reservations about some of the issues about separation of powers, supported the Sudan Peace Act, which puts even more pressure on Khartoum to behave in a way that would be consistent with bringing a lasting peace to Sudan. STAN SIMPSON, HARTFORD COURANT: Dr. Rice, Saudi Arabia is a key strategic ally, maybe the most vital, and they were strongly opposed to any engagement in Iraq to start. Are you comfortable with their level of support at this juncture? DR. RICE: Yes, we are comfortable with the cooperation we've gotten from the Saudis and that we would expect to get from the Saudis. We understand that not every country is going to be able to do everything in the war on terrorism or if we find ourselves having to use military power against Saddam Hussein. But the Saudis have been a good, good partner. They've worked hard on a number of fronts. We have pressed hard on the Saudis on, for instance, terrorist financing, because there have been problems with financing for some of these terrorist groups out of Saudi. They've begun to try to get better control of that circumstance. We've sent teams out to work with the Saudis to get better control on terrorist financing. So it's a good relationship and we continue to move forward. JOE DAVIDSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO/BET.COM: We had a session with Joe Biden, Senator Joe Biden on Monday, and a number of points were raised about a possible war with Iraq -- one, that the Joint Chiefs opposed the war; two, that the CIA, the recent CIA memo indicated that Saddam Hussein would be more likely to use weapons of mass destruction if attacked and probably would not use them if not attacked; and that, as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee on the Senate, that he has seen no evidence of Hussein's -- of an alliance between Iraq and al Qaeda, and that Saddam Hussein does not represent a clear and present danger at the moment. DR. RICE: I think Senator Biden voted for the resolution, didn't he? JOE DAVIDSON: He did. (Laughter.) Do these things argue against going to war with Iraq? DR. RICE: We're trying not to go to war. But sometimes in order to get peace, you have to be serious about willingness to use force. And that's why we are where we are. Let's be very clear. The only reason we have a U.N. Resolution 15-0, the only reason we may have an Iraqi willingness at least in first order to cooperate is because, frankly, we have a gun pointed at the head of Saddam's regime. That's the only thing this regime understands. The Senate -- sorry -- the Congress gave the President the authority that he needed in order to be able to go to the U.N. and say, the United States is united, now give me a resolution that has a chance to disarm Saddam Hussein, and we got it. We would have been talking and debating this for the next 10 months, had we not been prepared to go on our own and brought others along in that way. Now, as to the specifics, first of all, I sit with the Joint Chiefs and the President, and it simply isn't true. The President has asked the Joint Chiefs; the Joint Chiefs are not opposed to this war, and anybody who tells you that they are doesn't know what they're talking about. Secondly, as to the CIA Director, I sit with the CIA Director and the President, and I know that George Tenet has talked a lot about the growing threat from Iraq. Anybody who believes that we can guess exactly what Saddam Hussein may or may not do when armed with a nuclear weapon is a better person than I, and more willing to take risks than I. The President has to take circumstances as he sees them and respond to them. And when I hear, well, if you don't bother him, he won't bother you, I think it's a fundamental misreading of this book of history. This is somebody who has, after all, already attacked his neighbors in this century. This is somebody who has used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and against the Kurds -- against the Iranians. This is someone who has tried to assassinate a former President of the United States. This is someone who is ambitious -- ambitious in a very volatile region like the Middle East, and who is acquiring these weapons for some reason. And it would seem to me that it is at least as likely a prospect that he is acquiring them with the hope that he can either deter us from acting if we need to at some point, or that he can brandish them so that he can act. And I can assure you of only one thing, some place along here in the next several years -- could be next year, could be four years, could be five years -- our interests and Saddam Hussein's ambitions are going to clash, like they did over Kuwait, like they did over Saudi. And when they clash, I don't want him armed with a nuclear weapon. Now, that means that you don't have the luxury of waiting until he gets good at weapons of mass destruction to try to disarm him. You'd actually probably like to try to disarm him before he acquires a nuclear weapon. And all of the arguments that you hear, about how it might be hard and what he might do in response, will be five times, 50 times, 500 times tougher when he actually has a nuclear weapon than they are now. And so you don't have the luxury of waiting until he is there. So, with all due respect, I don't know any way to define imminence of threat or grave and present danger of threat that doesn't take into account our responsibility to act now for what we would be facing in four or five years. DAVID PERSON, HUNTSVILLE TIMES: Dr. Rice, I want to ask you, if we can shift gears for just a minute, and I'm going to ask you to go back to Birmingham, and especially that pivotal year, 1963, and tell us what kind of impact the 16th Street bombing had on you? And I understand that you also knew two of the girls who were killed. DR. RICE: Yes, yes. DAVID PERSON: And if you could tell us who they were and what you knew about them? DR. RICE: Well, I think for any child in Birmingham in that period of time, particularly for a young child -- and I was eight during that time -- we had all grown up in a -- I mean, Sheryl could tell you -- a very protected little community. You know, our parents made sure that we had all the benefits that they could possibly bring to us, and yet you know that there was this other world out there, but it -- the white world of Birmingham -- but it didn't cross with you that much. And then, all of a sudden, in '63, Birmingham turned violent and there were bombings in neighborhoods. And friends like Arthur Shore's house were bombed. And there were duds that went off in our community, and there were White Knight riders. And it all culminated then on that Sunday when the bomb went off at 16th Street Baptist Church. And I think for somebody my age, it was just a very hard shot as to how hateful people could be. How hateful could you be to plant a bomb in the basement of a church near a Sunday school class? And how could people hate you that much? And I think for all of -- I can't imagine what it was like to be a parent, to try to soothe that and to say it isn't a reflection on you, and you really will be safe and all of those things. But I think it was a face of hatred that has to have a kind of searing impact on children. I knew Denise McNair well, and her father was the photographer in the community, so he took everybody's birthday pictures and wedding pictures and all of that. And so I knew Denise. Cynthia Wesley was also from the community; she was older and I didn't know her as well. And, in fact, Addie Mae Collins was in my uncle's home room in school. And I remember the adults just crying about it, and just not being able quite to understand it either. But, you know, in some ways, history takes funny turns, and you have a sense that it shocked good people, if you will, who were perhaps silent, into a recognition that this was intolerable in the long run. And I've been back to the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum on a couple of occasions and seen the stained glass window that's been put into the church. And Birmingham has healed in a lot of ways. I think it probably started its healing when people began to realize that this just -- you couldn't tolerate this level of hate. GREGORY STANFORD , MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL: Do last Tuesday's elections make pursuit of your national security goals easier? DR. RICE: Did it? (Laughter.) I think on the national security side, we've been pretty effective and pretty capable of having the kind of bipartisan consensus in any case. And I've actually worked very closely with Senator Biden when he was chair of Foreign Relations. He and Senator Lugar worked very closely together. You know, there is a bipartisan center in American foreign policy that is extremely important to the maintenance of American foreign policy, because, when you think about it, we were structured in the 18th century, to prevent America from becoming active in the world. When the founding fathers created separation of powers, it was because they wanted the United States to be isolated from foreign affairs. They did not want, as George Washington said, America to be involved in entangling alliances and all of those European problems. And so they structured it so that the President was Commander-in-Chief, but the power of the purse was in the Congress, the power to wage war was in the Congress. And it only grew up over time that it was supposed to actually keep the United States from acting. So it's a kind of miracle in many ways that, under separation of powers, two centuries later, with the United States as the most powerful country in the world, that we're actually able to make it work on a foundation of institutions that were intended for a time when the United States was isolated from foreign policy. And I think it has forced Presidents and the Congress to work together to find a bipartisan center. And I think that's a good thing, because that's when you can be most certain that you've got the American people with you. And this President works very hard at that. And so, on the foreign policy side, I don't expect that much change. I think it's the way we've always thought about it, and I think it will continue, continue to be that way. LORETTA GREEN, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS: Dr. Rice -- DR. RICE: From my other home. (Laughter.) LORETTA GREEN: Greetings from Mixed Media (Mixed Media is the beauty parlor Dr. Rice and Ms. Green both attended in California). DR. RICE: Yes, yes, looks nice. LORETTA GREEN: Thank you. I know you spent a lot of years that were near and dear to you on the Stanford University campus. And right now, there is a group of faculty who are organizing to oppose our going to war with Iraq, and I wondered how you feel about that? DR. RICE: That's what American democracy is all about, is that people have strong views, they ought to organize, they ought to express them. And I do believe that the American people fundamentally understand what it is that this President is trying to achieve. I think they understand that the war on terrorism is a war on broad fronts. I think they understand that extremism and weapons of mass destruction linked up would be something that would be a horror to make September 11th even pale in comparison. And I think they trust this President to make good decisions on this. He's somebody who cares a lot about the pulse of the American people, and it's one reason that we were -- he was never going to try to do something on Iraq without the Congress. It simply wasn't going to happen. And so, while I do think you'll have people who may view it differently -- that's fine, that's what America is about -- I think the American people are behind this strategy. TONYAA WEATHERSBEE, FLORIDA TIMES UNION: What strengths do you bring to your role as a woman? DR. RICE: You know, I've always thought -- it's hard to know because I can't kind of recreate myself as a man and see how I would do it. (Laughter.) TONYAA WEATHERSBEE: But you've seen how men have done it. DR. RICE: Yes, I have. I have. That's fair, that's fair. I think that the most important thing in my job is to be able to take what the President is trying to do in terms of strategic direction -- and this is a President who is very strategic. I mean, he simply lays out new strategic ground -- as he did on the Palestinian issue or on Iraq or all of these issues -- he lays out new strategic ground, and then it's really our responsibility to come up with policies that can support that and can push that forward. And I'm pretty good at bringing people together, even strong personalities, together. And I won't say that women are better at bringing strong personalities together -- I wouldn't dare say that. (Laughter.) But it is important, when you've got strong personalities and strong egos, to try and get people on the same page, and that's what I do for a living. RON THOMAS, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER: I just wanted to ask, has your experience with race-based terrorism in Birmingham when you were a child, has that in any way increased your fuel or resolve to combat terrorism in your position now? DR. RICE: It's a very good question. And for a long time, several months after September 11th, I didn't think much about it. The terrorism in the Middle East is what sort of first -- the pictures of the children and the families and what they were coping with. I think what you recognize, if you've been through home-grown terrorism, which is really what that was in Birmingham, is that you recognize there isn't any cause that can be served by it; no cause, good, bad, indifferent can be served by terrorism. Because what it's meant to do is to end the conversation. It's meant to end the search for a solution. It's meant to terrorize and frighten people and bludgeon them into submission -- that's what terrorism is meant to do. And you can't have a political solution if one side is trying to bludgeon the other into submission. And so I think that probably some of the experience with that helped in that. But I've really become convinced that we have to call terrorism by what it is. It's not freedom fighters, it's not dispossessed people. It is an effort to end the conversation. And no cause can be solved -- can be served by that. BETTY BAYE, LOUISVILLE COURIER JOURNAL: My cousin was nearly killed in the World Trade Center. He was burned, and it certainly came home to my family in a very personal way. But I want to ask you -- I know that you are a Russian specialist -- how fast did it take you to come up to speed on the Middle East? You know, when the administration came in, you weren't interested so much in focusing on nation-building. But how was that for you, who had focused a lot of your life on one part of the world, to then have to advise the President and to help him deal in that area? DR. RICE: Well, I had always read pretty broadly about other parts of the world. I've even taught about some other parts of the world because I am trained in Russian and East European affairs, but I taught on Europe. I taught military affairs about the entire world. So I had a significant background in those areas. But for an academic who -- you know, academics trade on deep knowledge, right? At one point in my life, I knew more about the Soviet general staff than the soviet general staff knew about itself. I know this because I sat next to a chief of the -- former chief of the Soviet general staff who kept saying, how did you know that -- because I had spent my life understanding this organization. So you're right, academics love to be able to go into depth and know something better than anybody else. The best training came from being provost of Stanford, because that was a job, also, where I couldn't possibly have the deepest expert knowledge on everything. I need to learn how to ask the right questions of people. I had to learn how to have experts around me who could answer every question. I had to learn how to go from principle and instinct and strategic direction, and to pull in the specifics that I knew -- or the specifics that others knew to point policy in a particular direction. And I think I brought that to being National Security Advisor. There is a fantastic reservoir of deep knowledge in the U.S. government in places like the State Department, Foreign Service, in the National Security Council staff -- most of whom, by the way, are career people, they're not political appointees. Most of them are career people. One nice thing about this job is that you can always call up the best experts and say, gee, could you just come by, I'd like to talk about X, Y, Z, and they'll come. (Laughter.) And so you can draw on that. And I now feel that on the big, key issues, I have both a reservoir of people I can draw on and a pretty good depth of knowledge myself. But I will tell you, the biggest problem in this job is that you're always surprised. I don't think any of us thought when we came here that it was going to be Afghanistan. And on the day that we took out the map of Afghanistan up at Camp David, on that Saturday, and put it out and everybody kind of looked at it, and the color kind of started to drain from people's faces -- Afghanistan, what are we doing in Afghanistan? Remember the Soviets in Afghanistan, the British in Afghanistan. So you're always surprised. But the good thing is you have a real reservoir of people you can draw on. BETTY BAYE:I was just going to -- one question. When you study, how do you study? You use the experts and you sit up at night with books -- DR. RICE: Yes, I use the experts, I do read. But I'm an oral learner and I like to talk to people about what they -- DeWAYNE WICKHAM: Dr. Rice, let me ask you a question about the potential for war with Iraq. The trigger, as I understand it, in the U.N. resolution is a finding of a material breach, which would allow the U.N. inspectors and, in the administration’s interpretation, a member state to come back and to present evidence of that material breach. If the United Nations Security Council does not, in fact, agree with the presentation that there had been a material breach, where does that leave the Bush administration? DR. RICE: Well, in fact, we have it such in the resolution that really this is just a finding of fact for Dr. Blix or Dr. El Baredei. They bring the fact of a violation or an interference to the Security Council and the way that the resolution is worded, the next finding of a violation is a material breach. So you don't get into the definitional question of was that a -- the last thing we wanted to do, as you rightly pointed out, is to have to sit down and say, well, maybe it's just a little material breach, or maybe it's just a kind of material breach, and is that really material breach. No, the next time he's in violation or slows things down or delays or interferes or refuses, he's in material breach. What the Council will reconvene to do is decide what serious consequences that then warrants. SHERMAN MILLER, DELAWARE STATE NEWS: I’ll ask the last question. It has to do with homeland security... DR. RICE: I'm just telling -- we'll get your question, okay. (Laughter.) SHERMAN MILLER: -- since that's not in yet. And we've been watching in the news what has been this recalls of meat, recalls of bacteria contents and so forth, and one of the worries that you have is with Thanksgiving coming up, if I'm a terrorist I'm looking for soft spots to go after that would give maximum impact. What are we doing now -- since you're the National Security Advisor, we don't have a formal homeland person -- what are you doing to prevent the possibility of terrorist acts that would crucify Thanksgiving? DR. RICE: Yes. Well, we're working hard at it. There's no homeland security department yet, although, hopefully, there will be very shortly, and we need that homeland security department because this is a big country, there are vulnerabilities. We need to be able to address them systematically. We have in Tom Ridge someone who is worried a lot about those vulnerabilities, here from the White House. There are really kind of three lines of attack. One is that we're getting better information now and sharing it better among the agencies because after September 11th we had to take a hard look at how those agencies that are responsible for what goes on inside the United States, like the FBI, and those which are responsible for foreign, like the CIA, how they related to one another. And they're doing much better at it. They meet together in the Oval Office; they're much better at it. Secondly, I think local officials are more cognizant now and more involved both with the federal level and themselves in hunting down and pressing for these cases. The third thing is the American people are more aware. The last couple things that have been uncovered have actually been uncovered by the American citizens who were just particularly vigilant. Nobody can be confident that we will -- I think nobody can be confident we won't be attacked again. In fact, I think, unfortunately, we have to plan on the assumption that we probably will be, or somebody will try. So all that you can do is disrupt and disrupt and disrupt, and share information and get the American people involved in it. It changes our way of life, but I hope -- I mean, it changes our way of life, but I hope it doesn't change it in fundamental ways so that we worry about Thanksgiving. I often say that -- Loretta will understand this well -- those of us who lived with earthquakes in California don't get up every day thinking there might be an earthquake, there might be an earthquake. But you do things to make sure that you're prepared just in case there is. And you're aware in the back of your mind that there might be. So you don't build your house out of brick. You just don't do that in California. (Laughter.) You don't put your good china up on top of the china cabinet. When I moved here, the guy who was helping me with decorating said, oh, we're going to put this picture over your bed. I said, no, you're not. Laughter.) You don't do that in California. There are accommodations that you have to make to the possibility, although you don't every day worry about it. And I hope that as we deal with terrorism and get better at it, that that is the state that we'll get to with the American people. We'll be vigilant, we'll do the things that we need to do, but it won't be a drag on our daily lives. I think he's got the last question. DERRICK JACKSON: In one profile you said "I decided I’d rather be ignored than patronized. Given that, is the Democratic Party today patronizing women, minorities and the poor? DR. RICE: Well, let me describe instead why I like where I am, all right? (Laughter.) The fact of the matter is, race matters in America. It has, it always has. Maybe there will be a day when it doesn't, but I suspect that it will for a long time to come. It matters in different ways today than it did in 1963 in Birmingham. But it still matters. That having been said, the real key is how does America now provide opportunity for all people, regardless of what race, recognizing that it matters, to be what they would like to be, and to fulfill themselves and to, therefore, contribute to this larger experiment called America. And it is not that I mind being associated with the group. I am African American and proud of it. I wouldn't have it any other way. And it has shaped who I am and it will continue to shape who I am. I do not believe that it has limited who I am or what I can become. And that's because I had parents who, while telling me that what it meant to be African American and exposing me to that, also allowed me to develop as an individual to be who I wanted to be. So they didn't say to me, you know, it's really weird for a black girl from Birmingham, Alabama to want to be a Soviet specialist. They didn't say, all right, I understand that you love Motown -- which I did and still do -- or, I understand that you love "Gatemouth" Brown Express or that you love "Kool and the Gang," you also play Brahms. That's fine. It was that expression of the individual and a willingness to put the educational opportunities before me that led to who I am. And sometimes when we say to our kids, you are a minority, we don't say it in a way that says it is part of who you are, and race matters, and all these things -- we talk about it as if it's an impediment that cannot be overcome by hard work and access to education and all of those things. And I just think the messages are wrong when there is only focus on what group you happen to belong to, rather than the group is part of who you are, but also, who you are is who you are as an individual. And I do think -- we don't talk about it very much, but, yes, do I think that it is a very good thing for the rest of the world that when Colin Powell and I walk in with the President of the United States, we are there as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, because I think it says to people that there aren't boundaries in which black Americans are not supposed to play. I think that's an extremely important message to the rest of the world. I think it's an extremely important message to our kids. And that's why I talk so much about the individual. It's not to deny the group, but I really think it's important that we appeal to each individual's worth and capability. Thank you. DeWAYNE WICKHAM: Dr. Rice, today is a special day, but someone told us that tomorrow is an even more special day for you. DR. RICE: Well, depending on how special birthdays are. (Laughter.) SHERMAN MILLER: A few of us have seen a few of those birthdays. (Laughter.) DR. RICE: Thank you very much. That's really sweet. Thank you. |
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