Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 03/31/06 9:08 pm:
Oh, baloney. The only one who is to blame for the one-sidedness of the question is you Ronnie.

If you are going to quote something, try putting it in context.

QUESTION: Rosemary Hollis. I'm Director of Research at Chatham House, and not only from there but in general, myself personally, welcome this opportunity to have access to you. Now, I wonder if I could point something out and base my question on that. Whilst it is a very, very close alliance and British commitment to the United States in the last three, four years is probably without parallel, that not only means that we know we are in a sense junior partner, but we also feel that we're not always sure where you're going to lead. I wonder if you could give us some reassurance to the effect that some lessons have been learned from some of the mistakes made over the last three years which will be used to judge situations going forward.


SECRETARY RICE: Well, thank you. And first of all, I'm delighted you are at Chatham House, which is a fantastic institution, and I have from time to time been able to take advantage of the work of Chatham House, so thank you for that and thank you, Lord Hurd, for that.


First of all, we have partners in the world and I don't think of it in terms of junior partners and subordinate partners. We have partners in the world. And it starts from shared common values that those partnerships exist. You then, of course, have goals in common and you can sometimes then have disagreements about tactics. There's no doubt about that. And the only way to overcome those differences is through constant dialogue and constant discussion. And I think if you look back over the record of the last three-plus years, you would see that there's been extraordinary consultation, discussion, problem-solving, between the United States and Great Britain -- how often the Prime Minister and the President have met, how often Jack Straw and first Colin Powell and now I have talked. And I can assure you, these are not conversations in which I say, "Here's what the United States is going to do. Would you like to come along?" That's not the way that it goes. It really is a discussion about how we are going to jointly move forward.

Now, as to whether you learn, of course, you learn lessons. If you are impervious to the lessons of the period that you've been just been out of, you're really rather brain dead; you're not thinking. Of course, you're trying to trying to learn lessons. I've often said that one question that often comes to me is, well, tell me about the mistakes you've made. And I've said many, many times I am quite certain that there are going to be dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush Administration and I will probably even oversee some of them when I go back to Stanford. But one of the things that's very difficult to tell in the midst of big historic change is what was actually a good decision and what was a bad decision. And I will tell you that decisions, when you look at them in historical perspective that were thought at the time to be brilliant, turn out to have been really rather bad, and vice versa.

And so I think what you have to do is to make certain that you've got the right strategic choices and the right strategic decisions, and you're going to make a host of tactical mistakes along the way. I believe strongly that it was the right strategic decision that Saddam Hussein had been a threat to the international community long enough that it was time to deal with that threat, that you were not going to have a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein at the center of it, and that it was best, once having overthrown that dictator, to set on a course of democratic development in Iraq.

You know, there were people at the time of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein who actually said, oh, yes, you should get rid of Saddam Hussein but your goal shouldn't be democracy in Iraq; your goal should be to find another strongman for Iraq because Iraqis will never be able to self-govern. Now, that would have been a tactical decision that I think would have been a huge mistake. But as we're in the midst of this in Iraq, are there people who probably think, yeah, it would have been a better idea to put a strongman in his place? I just don't agree.

So my point to you is that yes, I know we've made tactical errors -- thousands of them, I'm sure. This could have gone that way or that could have gone that way. But when you look back in history, what will be judged is did you make the right strategic decisions. And if you spend all of your time trying to judge this tactical issue or that tactical issue, I think you miss the larger sweep.

Now, absolutely we think all the time about what can be done better, what needs to be adjusted. But I think I just think of it a little bit differently than trying now to catalogue every "mistake" and react to it.

Full speach with all questions and responses:
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/63969.htm

Try again, Ronnie.

Clarification/Follow-up by Erewhon on 03/31/06 10:27 pm:

Baloney to you.

Rice said:

"I've said many, many times I am quite certain that there are going to be dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush Administration"

I reported:

"I am certain that there will be many dissertations written on the mistakes made by the Bush administration."

What is your problem?

Don't be so quick to shout "stinking fish" until you are in possession of the full and complete facts.

Shouting baloney at the top of your mistaken voice does you no good and deameans me by suggesting that I made the quote up. I did not.

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 04/01/06 1:33 pm:
Ron ; care to clarify about what you consider "his lies " . I'm sure we differ on the contention.

Clarification/Follow-up by Erewhon on 04/01/06 4:19 pm:

Three will serve to illustrate:

1. The reason he gave for attacking Iraq - WMDs.

2. The supposed acquisition of weapon-grade uranium by Iraq from Nigeria.

3. Tying Saddam Hussein to the 9-11 Terrorist attack on the WTC, etc., which, like the previous two, were simply untrue.

A half-decent Commander-in-Chief makes sure that he is not taking his own nation and more than twenty other nations into a bloody and seemingly endless war before he takes irreversible action.

Plus, if he was mistaken in the beginning, he should say so as soon as the truth comes to light, not continue to hide behind falsehoods until he is forced out into the open by his own people.

lie ~ noun: a statement that deviates from or perverts the truth [syn: prevarication]

Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 04/03/06 3:25 pm:
Ronnie,

Re: Bush's 'lies'

1. Is that the only reason Bush gave, or the only one you remember?

2. Your version is a lie. The statement was: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Which part is a lie?

3. By all means, furnish the quote or quotes where Bush tied Saddam to 9/11. Can you?

Steve