Condoleezza Rice’s Retrospect on Iraq: ‘We Could Have Done Better’

ABC News(NEW YORK) -- She served eight years in the Bush administration as national security advisor and secretary of state, and now Condoleezza Rice is out with a memoir, No Higher Honor, where she paints a detailed picture of policy making while conducting two wars.

Though she never directly addressed it in her book, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked her the question on many people’s minds -- if she thought the war in Iraq was worth the sacrifice in lives lost and money spent.

“Now, we didn’t go to Iraq to bring democracy to the Iraqis.  And I try in the book to really explain that that wasn’t the purpose,” Rice said.

“This was a security threat of Saddam Hussein, who had started wars before, used weapons of mass destruction, was shooting at aircraft in the no-fly zone, was still threatening his neighbors, had tried to assassinate George H.W. Bush, was a cancer in the Middle East and a great source of that volatility in the Middle East, needed to be dealt with,” she said.  “And I, as much as anybody, understand and really regret the cost, particularly in lives.  But I also know that nothing of value is ever won without sacrifice.”

Rice remained confident that Hussein was not “removable by any other means” and writes in her book that she’s “grateful that today’s concern is not an impending nuclear arms race between Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.”

But don’t we know now that Hussein had no meaningful nuclear weapons program?

“He had the scientists, he had the infrastructure,” Rice said.  “He was buying all kinds of stuff through front companies.  He had not reconstituted it.  But the idea that Saddam Hussein had given up on weapons of mass destruction, I think, is simply ahistorical... And I cannot imagine that Saddam Hussein watching Iran move along a nuclear path [and not reacting], given all the infrastructure he had, given all the knowledge he had, given that we know that when in 1991, the inspectors got there, he was far closer to his nuclear device than they thought.”

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Gadhafi's Condi Rice Scrapbook: State Dept. Calls It 'Creepy'

September 5, 2008: Then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Moammar Gadhafi in Tripoli marking an historic reconciliation with the former enemy state. AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD TURKIA (TRIPOLI, Libya) -- Libyan rebels who have overrun Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s compound have apparently found a photo book that prominently features former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Secretary Rice’s office had no immediate comment on the find.

Asked about the scrapbook, U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said she hadn’t seen the reports but added, “I think I don't need to see the photos, but bizarre and creepy are good adjectives to describe much of Gadhafi's behavior.”

In a 2007 interview with Al Jazeera, Gadhafi said of the former top American diplomat, “Leezza, Leezza, Leezza...I love her very much.”

When the two finally met a year later, in his famed tent which was set up inside the very compound being ransacked now and where the photo book was found, he reportedly gave her a locket with his image etched inside.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio