US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice Sunday dismissed allegations in a new book by one of the
top US investigative reporters that she played politics in 2006 with growing
violence in Iraq.
Rice, who spoke in Morocco during an ongoing trip through northern
Africa, said that she had tried to avoid a review of Iraq during the 2006
mid-term elections to prevent the issue from becoming a political football.
She was not trying to protect Republicans who ended up losing control of
Congress in the vote, she told reporters, according to a transcript of her
remarks released in Washington.
According to excerpts from Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's new book,
The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008, Rice realized the strategy
in Iraq was in trouble - but didn't want any public knowledge of a White-House
driven review because it would give ammunition to the opposition Democrats.
Rice dismissed the suggestion, saying she was concerned "that in the
hothouse environment of the fall, we needed to have a review that was not going
to turn political with headlines every day about what we were thinking or what
we were not thinking."
The day after the 2006 elections, US President George W Bush dismissed
controversial Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, and thereafter announced
the review of Iraq policy.
Rice said that in fact, had Bush fired Rumsfeld and announced the review before
the elections, Republicans may have come out on top.
"I think there are an awful lot of people who think that
that would have helped our electoral prospects, not hurt it," she said,
according to dpa.
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