Rice On Democracy: People Do Not Decide

Anne Gearan (AP): …In the run-up to the elections, there were a lot of Sunni voices, some thoughtful ones, saying that while they didn't support violence, they also didn't support continued U.S. troop presence; and others saying that even if though they understood the necessity of troop presence for now, they wanted a pretty clear timeline for when they should leave. Does a successful election hasten the day that U.S. forces will come home?

Sec. Rice: I don't think that it makes sense to have any timeline [which the Iraqi people overwhelmingly support]. I think it's better to have a results-based approach to this,…. …but I think everybody understands that no one wants coalition forces to leave before the job is done.

,…nobody wants to have foreign forces on your soil, and they want to take responsibility for their own future.

…[The interim government] convinced international financial institutions that they have an economic plan that is worth supporting or they wouldn't have gotten money from the World Bank and from the IMF.

…[The U.S. program] lent a kind of predictability to the political process that gave them something of a roadmap to follow… And it's been quite remarkable how well they've done in following it,…

…President [Bush] has operated within the law, within his constitutional authorities, within his responsibilities. And that's an assurance that I think will stand the test of time. … the United States is absolutely going to uphold its laws and its international commitments.

… But obviously, what this points out is that Iran and a nuclear weapon, even the ability to have a nuclear weapon, is simply too destabilizing to the international system in the midst of what is probably the world's most volatile region. It's simply not acceptable, and it was never acceptable.

… Israel is, of course, a sovereign state and we're not in the habit of telling the Israelis how to defend themselves.

… Just think about whether three or four years ago anybody would have uttered the words "Iraqi elections."

… I'm a historian, you know, a political scientist/historian, and I tend to see things in the big sweep of history.

Interview With Anne Gearan of Associated Press, Washington, DC, 12/16/05. [empahsis added]