Politics & Power Quote by Condoleezza Rice

Rice’s sentence is built like a legal brief delivered as moral indictment: you’re not just allowed to doubt Saddam Hussein, you’re obligated to. The repetition of “take the word” does double duty. On the surface it’s about credibility and verification; underneath, it’s an argument that the normal rules of diplomacy no longer apply. If you can’t rely on speech, you can’t rely on agreements, inspections, or promises. That’s the bridge from skepticism to preemption.

The phrase “an American president and allies” is carefully inclusive. It widens the frame beyond U.S. appetite for action into a shared coalition duty, positioning restraint as negligence. “Safety and security” is the talismanic post-9/11 pairing, a rhetorical shortcut that collapses uncertainty into urgency. Rice isn’t offering new evidence; she’s narrowing the range of acceptable interpretations of incomplete evidence.

Calling Hussein a “dictator” sets the moral hierarchy; calling him a “pathological” liar medicalizes the threat. “Pathologically lies” suggests compulsion, not strategy, which is crucial: a strategic liar might be deterred or bargained with; a pathological one can’t be managed, only contained or removed. It also launders a policy claim through a character claim. If the man is incurably false, then any counterstatement, any denial, any cooperation can be dismissed in advance.

The context is the early-2000s case for Iraq, when credibility itself became a battlefield. Rice’s intent is to make disbelief feel like prudence and doubt feel like risk.