Condoleezza Rice on Iraq, Lebanon and Cuba

GREGORY: Secretary Rice, I want to return to the subject of Secretary Rumsfeld. James Baker, a Republican, very close to this administration, was reportedly writing the following in his book that is critical of the Defense Department. "After fighting successfully against the State Department to secure the lead role in winning the peace and reconstructing Iraq, the Defense Department," he writes, "made a number of costly mistakes, including disbanding the Iraqi army, outlawing the Baath party, failing to secure weapons depots, and perhaps never committing enough troops to successful pacify the country."

It's not just Democrats, Republicans, too, who think Secretary Rumsfeld has led a failed policy.

RICE: I don't know what Jim Baker has written in his book, but I do know that the policies that were pursued in Iraq were the policies of this administration as a whole.

Now, was anything executed perfectly? No, everything was not executed perfectly. Did we plan for every contingency? No. Did we plan for and prevent contingencies that did not come about? Did we succeed in places that we might have failed? Absolutely.

David, there will be plenty of time to go back and examine what might have been done differently, but whenever you're dealing with something as complex as taking down a dictator of Saddam Hussein's depth and breadth in his society, trying to deal with institutions that turned out essentially not to be institutions. The army essentially disbanded itself. Dealing with a society that had really been traumatized by all of these years of tyrannical rule, it's going to be hard and you're going to make some mistakes and I'm sure we did.

GREGORY: Should the Malaki government fail to succeed in its mission of securing Baghdad, which is where the focus is, there's more U.S. troops there, what is plan B in Iraq?

RICE: We are very focused on helping Prime Minister Malaki succeed with his Baghdad security plan. And it's not just a matter of more troops in Baghdad. I think it would be a caricature of what he is planning and what we are planning to just talk about more troops in Baghdad.

The more troops in Baghdad are to help deal with the very difficult security situation, but he also has a plan for national reconciliation, a plan that really does invite people to lay down their arms. It's become a part of the new Iraq.

There are efforts going on to reform the interior ministry and to make the police a more important and, indeed, reliable factor in Iraqi security. He has worked to increase electricity in the area to show that the government can do that, and, by the way, they have increased electricity since he became prime minister.

So, yes, the troops are important, but we really have to note that it's a broad-scale plan for the security of Baghdad.

GREGORY: But is there not some discussion about what happens if this doesn't work, a plan B?

RICE: David, what you want to do is to settle on a plan and then press as hard as you can to make that plan work and that's where everyone's energies are at this point and I think this plan is going to work.

GREGORY: But when does staying the course become less a strategy and more of a copout?

RICE: David, we've just begun the Baghdad security plan. Malaki has only been in office several weeks. This is...

GREGORY: But it was your administration, this administration that said he would not have an unlimited amount of time to succeed.

RICE: Well, I think we should probably give him more than, what is it, two months. These are very difficult changes. And I know there's a certain concern and impatience. Sometimes I feel that impatience myself.

But I also know that when you are undertaking something of as big a circumstance as historic instance, as really unprecedented instance, that you also have to recognize that it's hard and that it takes time.

The Iraqis have been given a chance, by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, to build a very different kind of polity in the Middle East.

They're working at it. They're sacrificing.

Sometimes there's almost a sense that the Iraqis don't want this.

Well, of course they do, or they wouldn't be making the sacrifices that they're making in order to achieve it.

And so I think our best course is to support them, to help them build their institutions, to help them provide security, to help them with the reconstruction, and to give them a chance to achieve what they clearly are all trying to achieve.

GREGORY: I want to turn to the other war in the Middle East right now that is between Hezbollah and Israel. You are pursuing a resolution in the Security Council. There's a lot of diplomacy at work now. What are the particulars, if it all comes together? If the administration gets what it's looking for, what will happen?

RICE: Well, remembering that it was the attack by Hezbollah on Israel that started this, and that that attack was because Hezbollah is a kind of state within a state. The authority of the Lebanese government to control all of its territory, to control all of its actors, not to let its territory be used in this way, is really the centerpiece of any future resolution of the crisis.

And therefore, the Security Council resolution is, of course, aimed at stopping the violence -- that's very important -- but stopping it in a way that doesn't permit the conditions to come back into being that led to the circumstance that we find ourselves in now.

It's also a resolution that, when it's passed and when it's implemented, I think will show that, in the short term, while Hezbollah may be enjoying -- Nasrallah may be enjoying having his picture on television all the time, that the loss of the south by Hezbollah, the deployment of international forces to the south, the extension of Lebanese authority throughout the country, the rebuilding of the Lebanese armed forces will be a strategic defeat for Iran, which, after all, is Hezbollah's principal sponsor.

GREGORY: We'll pick up on that point when we come back in just a minute. More with Secretary Rice on the wars in the Middle East when we come back on HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.

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