Rice admits Iraq tactical mistakes

LONDON – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that she was sure the Bush administration has made “thousands” of tactical errors in Iraq, but defended the decision to oust President Saddam Hussein in 2003 and said she thought it would be vindicated by history.

Dogged by anti-war protesters throughout what was supposed to be primarily a social visit to northern England in the company of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Rice appeared reflective when she asserted at an event sponsored by the foreign-policy think tank Chatham House that the invasion of Iraq was meant to set the stage for democratic reforms in the Middle East.

“I know we’ve made tactical errors, thousands of them I’m sure,” she said in answer to a question put by Rosemary Hollis, a Middle Eastern expert at Chatham House, about what lessons the United States had learned. “But when you look back in history, what will be judged will be, did you make the right strategic decisions?”

Earlier, she said: “I believe strongly that it was the right strategic decision that Saddam had been a threat to the international community long enough … that you were not going to have a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein at the center of it.”

Hollis said afterward that she would have liked to question Rice more closely about what she meant by “tactical errors” and how the Bush administration plans to apply the lessons it had learned.

Rice had come to the northern English city of Blackburn and also looked in on Liverpool, the home city of the Beatles, after Straw promised to introduce her to the real Britain. The trip to Straw’s home constituency of Blackburn, in Lancashire, was to reciprocate for Rice serving as hostess to Straw in her hometown of Birmingham, Ala., last year.