Neo-con star rising: Condoleezza Rice: as a darling of the neo-conservative syndicate that is running the presidency, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is poised for bigger things.

"She will be big. Rock star big. A major cultural figure, adorning the bedroom walls of innumerable kids and the covers of innumerable magazines." Thus enthused Jay Nordlinger of the neo-conservative magazine National Review in a 1999 profile of Condoleezza Rice, future national security adviser and secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration.

Foreign policy appointees generally don't cast a very big cultural shadow. Certainly, they don't compete with the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Napoleon Dynamite for wall space in the bedrooms of American adolescents. Why was Rice wreathed in such expectations even prior to the Bush ticket's triumph in 2000? And why is she widely regarded now as a plausible GOP presidential contender in 2008?

At the time that Nordlinger made his mildly delirious prediction of Rice's cultural impact, she was serving as George W. Bush's foreign policy "tutor," a role she had taken at the urging of former Secretary of State George Shultz.

Rice's role as a preelection tutor morphed after the election into an appointment as national security adviser, in which capacity she was "usually the first to see the president in the morning and the last at night," observed Newsweek's Evan Thomas in a 2002 profile of Rice. In an arresting example of the psychological misfire commonly called a "Freudian slip," Rice once publicly referred to Mr. Bush as "my husband."

Thomas points out that within a week of the 9/11 attacks, Rice began "talking to Bush about going after all rogue nations that harbor WMD," rather than focusing specifically on al-Qaeda. And like other prominent administration neo-conservatives, Rice insistently advocated "regime change" in Iraq long before President Bush allegedly made the decision to go to war in 2003, and even prior to the 9/11 attacks. In fact, she called for a campaign against Iraq before George W. Bush was elected. In a January 2000 article for Foreign Affairs magazine, Rice--acting as the official foreign policy expert of the Bush-Cheney campaign--declared: "Nothing will change until Saddam is gone, so the United States must mobilize whatever resources it can, including support from his opposition, to remove him."

CFR Career Ladder

Foreign Affairs is the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group that advocates an all-encompassing internationalist agenda and with which Rice has had a long and active association. She has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1984, serving as an international affairs fellow of the organization while she was special assistant to the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1986.

Rice abandoned plans to become a concert pianist at the University of Denver after taking a political science course taught by Joseph Korbel, father of the Clinton administration's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, another CFR member. "I really adored him," Rice told National Review in 1999. "I really did. He's the reason I'm in this field." Rice moved to Stanford after receiving her doctorate in 1981, where she attracted the notice of CFR member Brent Scowcroft in 1987.

Brought to Washington by Scowcroft as a specialist on Soviet/Russian affairs, Rice served on the National Security Council staff under Bush the Elder until 1991, when she returned to Stanford. She later served on the board of directors for Chevron, which named an oil tanker in her honor.

In the buildup to the second Iraq war, it was Rice who flogged the now familiar sound bite warning that the "smoking gun" proving Iraq's nuclear ambitions could take the form of a "mushroom cloud." Like other administration neo-cons, Rice was determined to unseat Saddam, and wasn't picky about the quality of intelligence used to support that objective.

Defending the Indefensible

In a June 8, 2003 Meet the Press interview, Rice defended the discredited claim by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union Speech that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa. "The president quoted a British paper," she told interviewer Tim Russert. "We did not know at the time, no one knew at the time in our circles--maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew--that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course, it was information that was mistaken."

It was entirely untrue that "no one in our circles knew" that the African uranium story (so easily discredited that it had been rejected as implausible by an Italian tabloid) was a fabrication. Rice's chief deputy provided her with a copy of a report stating that Bush's claim was false. Steven Hadley, Rice's chief deputy, stated in a July 31,2003 press conference: "Today I learned of a second memorandum sent by the CIA on October 6 [2002].... The memorandum describes some weakness in the evidence.... The memorandum also stated that the CIA had been telling Congress that the Africa story was one of two issues where we differed with the British intelligence. This memorandum was received by the Situation Room here in the White House, and it was sent to both Dr. Rice and myself."

In dealing with Iraq, the Bush administration was eager to concoct bogus intelligence to justify a preordained decision for war. Equally disturbing, in the weeks leading up to 9/11, however, the administration was notoriously disinclined to act on reliable intelligence about the impending al-Qaeda attack. And Rice, reflecting the dismal standards of reliability and integrity that prevail in the administration, was just as evasive when pressed about the 9/11 intelligence failure during her testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste asked Rice about the August 6, 2001 President's Daily Briefing (PDB), which warned of a potential attack within the U.S. by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. "I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States," Rice replied. "He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al-Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about."

"Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice," pressed Ben-Veniste, "that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?" "I believe the title was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'"

Rising Star

That Rice's star is rising in the Bush administration should perhaps be understandable, considering the fact that she is willing to doggedly reassert administration positions that have long been proven false. It is a signature that runs throughout the "neo-conservative" syndicate that appears to be running the presidency.

Rice is also not averse to trading on her ethnic background in support of the neo-con foreign policy. During a 2003 address to the National Association of Black Journalists, Rice none-too-subtly intimated that opponents of the Iraq war are motivated by racism.

"Knowing what we know about the difficulties of our own history, let us always be humble in singing freedom's praises," stated Rice. "But let our voice not waver in speaking out on the side of people seeking freedom. And let us never indulge the condescending voices who allege that some people are not interested in freedom or aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities. That view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad."

Despite the fact that Rice has no conservative credentials (for instance, she describes herself as "mildly pro-choice" regarding abortion) and has expressed a desire to be NFL commissioner rather than president, some Republican leaders have started a draft-Condi campaign. It is possible that the same network of elitists who elevated Rice to the status of secretary of state may have her slated for another promotion.