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Dan Raviv

What Condi Served Hillary for Dinner

Q: Did they hold your job?

A: Well, George Schultz was on leave for 12 years! I've been on leave for only eight. I'll go back. I plan to do some writing. I want to write, obviously, about foreign policy. I want to write a book about my parents, who were educational evangelists. I want to do work on something I worked on a lot before I came here, which is excellence in K-12 education.

You know, as Secretary of State, I've been privileged to represent this great country, and I know its strengths, and I know its challenges. One of its strengths is the belief—here and abroadthat this is a place where you get ahead on merit. It doesn't matter where you came from; it matters where you're going. It's the Log Cabin myth: modest circumstances, great achievements.

But I worry that the weakness—particularly of our public schools—is going to make that less and less true for everybody. And if we ever lose that as our core, then we're going to lose our confidence. We're not going to lead. We're going to protect. We're going to turn inward. That would be very bad for the world. So as a former Secretary of State, I think I can advocate for education as a national security priority.

Q: Do you want to give us a peek into your memoirs and tell us which leaders you've enjoyed dealing with, and which you really didn't look forward to?

A: Oh, I think I'd better wait until after I'm Secretary of State. (Laughs) I really don't know who I may need to call! No, it's been a great experience. It's been hard at times. For those of us who were in positions of authority on September 11th, every day since has been September 12th. I would like to be able, if nothing else, to vivify for the American people the dramatic change that that event made.

It would be wrong to say that America had a kind of innocence before September 11th. But it wouldn't be wrong to say that we had a kind of complacency about what the great oceans protected us from—having not had an attack on our soil really since the 19th century. That changed a lot—changed the way we viewed foreign policy, the way we viewed failing states—that the greatest threats came from failed states, not from powerful nations. I'll hope to have a chance to vivify that and try to talk about how we tried to deal with the threats and also try to capitalize on the opportunities.

Dan Raviv is the author of books including Every Spy a Prince and host of a radio magazine show, the CBS News Weekend Roundup. CBS's Charles Wolfson also interviewed Rice.

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December 9, 2008 | 9:18pm
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Comments ()

Arlan001

Rice states, "having not had an attack on our soil really since the 19th century." Doesn't December 7, 1941 count as an attack on our soil?

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11:24 pm, Dec 9, 2008

juju705

She voted for Obama....I can feel it in my bones.

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9:22 am, Dec 10, 2008

agering

"What she's doing next"?

What did Condo do in the first place? And what has she done lately, besides give a piano recital for the Queen of England while Mumbai burned?

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11:48 am, Dec 10, 2008

agering

Arlan001:

Yes, Condo's historical specialization in Communist-era Czechoslovakia really shows; not only Pearl Harbor, but Pancho Villa's raids into Texas (which led to an failed expedition, led by Pershing, into Mexico to capture Villa), the Japanese invasion during World War II of the Aleutian Islands (certainly "our soil," if not a state), and Japanese balloon-launched bombings constitute attacks on our soil in the twentieth century.

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11:58 am, Dec 10, 2008

DelbertBCooper

Hawaii wasn't a U.S. state in 1941. It became a state in 1959. So no, it doesn't count.

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8:46 pm, Dec 10, 2008

Shockacon

When is somebody going to call this b-word out? Just because she can ice skate, play classical piano, and be black when it's convenient, doesn't mean her mouth is a prayer book. The only thing she did well during the past eight years was serve as an apologist for the sorriest administration in U.S. history, and defend her so-called integrity from , both vehemently and vociferously, whenever she was hauled before Congress to explain her shortcomings and failures. Let's face it. She presided over an illegal, preemptive war in Iraq. North Korea developed nuclear weapons on her watch and Iran is close to doing the same. She failed to achieve even a semblance of a Middle East peace accord, as Hezbollah expanded its reach in Lebanon and fought our ally Israel to a draw. She and Lil Bush were continually poked in the eye by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Meanwhile, Bolivia and coughed up a leftist regime. The rest of Latin America, including woman-led Chile and Argentina have been ignored. Russia invaded Georgia and cannibalized its own economic elite then ignored her protestations. She and confrere Alberto Gonzales were exposed as having sanctioned the use of torture and turned a blind eye to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. She of the Ferragamo shoes and the steely-eyed press interview is nothing more than the attractive face on that pile of dogshit known as the Bush Presidency. Who needs her sudden applause for the newly-elected Black President? Especially since she spent most of her career seeking favor and denying her blackness within the lily-white confines of conservative Repulicanism? She can go west of the Mississippi and spend the rest of her life writing travel books and opining about what it all meant. You can rest assured I'll never spend a dime on those books -- nor another moment if I can help it -- listening to what she might have to say.

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11:02 pm, Dec 10, 2008

UP-Bill

The multi-talented well educated Rice has done a beter than adequate job under very difficult circumstances. There's a good chance that she's not hit the peak in her career. I have a sense that there's much more to this woman than has managed to emerge so far. And if "that's all she wrote" then farewell and thank you for a job well done, but I'll be watching for the next chapter anyway. To be sure there are critics aplenty. I wonder how many of them are as successful in their chosen professions as Rice has been in hers.

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1:43 am, Dec 11, 2008

Southpaw

Hey, Condi, Sea Bass is an endangered species. Are you that oblivous and/or insensitive to what's happening in the world around you?

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7:31 am, Dec 11, 2008

diogeron

Am I the only one who thinks that a person who was so involved in all the major foreign policy decisions of the past eight years wants to write a book on K-12 EDUCATION? Granted, that is a major issue, but I find it strange. If tha was/is her passion, perhaps she would have been better suited to head up the Department of Education.

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6:58 pm, Dec 11, 2008

paulraffaele

What is it about African Americans like Condoleezza Rice that they have to claim that any American who has any African ancestry is an African American. Ms Rice claims that Tiger Woods is an African American. Nonsense! Tiger Woods' mother is Thai and surely the Secretary of State of all people should know that Thailand is in Asia. Given that his father claimed African and Native American ancestry, if anything Woods is an Asian American. Of course, that doesn't suit the politics of race in the US and so time and again I've seen African Americans claim Woods to be an African American. To his great credit Woods rejects the inaccurate label 'African American' and instead accurately describes himself as mixed race.

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9:54 pm, Dec 11, 2008

craxzyl

Washington's two most powerful women ?
Is Nancy Pelosi chopped liver ?

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8:22 pm, Dec 12, 2008
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What Condi Served Hillary for Dinner

by Dan Raviv

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