Condi Rice (Condoleezza Rice) Interview. Dr. Condoleezza Rice wearing light blue suit seated with American flag and Abraham Lincoln portrait behind her. She is interviewed by Gwen Ifill, though she is not seen in footage.
Condoleezza Rice says "The President has been very clear that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is one of the two most important threats of the 21st century, the other being terrorism and of course the possible links between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction being our worst nightmare. So he has had an active proliferation non-proliferation agenda including making certain that Iraq finally paid the consequences for its refusal to deal with the international community on its weapons of mass destruction. That helped to stimulate in Libya a decision to voluntarily disarm, and so Libya is no longer a proliferation threat. There's 50,000lbs of Libyan equipment sitting down in Oak Ridge, Tennessee which is no longer a proliferation threat. This administration was key in the breakup of the A.Q. Khan network, this horrible shadowy Pakistani scientist who in the shadowy black market way was marketing nuclear expertise and materials around the world. And where it comes to states like Iran and North Korea to develop coalitions of states that diplomatically are trying to deal with those situations..."
Condoleezza Rice states "We don't know where Osama bin Laden is, people suspect that he's someplace between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but who knows for certain." She continues "The point is that we have the Al Qaeda leadership on the run, they don't have the kind of safe haven and training areas and base of operations that they had in Afghanistan, but they are still dangerous. And so we are continuing to work with our partners in law enforcement and through intelligence to root out this organization, but it doesn't mean that it's still not a dangerous organization."
Condoleezza Rice says "We hear more about Zarqawi because he's operating these days, and he's operating in Iraq. I should mention that he operated in Iraq before the war, one of the clear indications that terrorists were taking safe haven in Iraq was that Zarqawi was in Baghdad, he operated his network out of Baghdad, I mean before Saddam Hussein was overthrown." She continues to explain that he is the "face of terror" in Iraq.
"We'd all love to go back to a day when terrorism wasn't a daily part of our vocabulary; I think every American feels that way. But, we have to remember that September 11th did change our strategic perspective forever. Much as Pearl Harbor changed our strategic perspective in 1941, September 11th changed our strategic perspective. We have to fight the terrorists on the offense..."
Condoleezza Rice is asked to sum up President Bush with one sentence, she responds "I think he will be remembered as someone who believed that freedom and liberty were the birth right of all human kind, not just Americans and that America is safer when freedom and liberty are on the march."
Condoleezza Rice explains that terrorism is one of the threats of the post-cold war reality.