Condi Rice Strikes Back in New Memoir

It's time for Dick Cheney to take a little return fire from Condi Rice. Less than 2 months after his memoir described her as turning tearful during a political discussion, Condoleezza Rice has written her own book, No Higher Honor, which comes out next month, the New York Times reports. Rice recalls White House clashes and encounters with creepy foreign leaders:

• Rice argued with "ultra-hawkish" Cheney that terrorism suspects can't just be "disappeared"; President Bush agreed, and moved several from secret prisons to Guantanamo Bay.
• Rice opposed increasing troop levels in Iraq, telling Bush, "If they want to have a civil war we're going to have to let them." The president appeared pained over a war going badly, she writes.

• "You’re obviously bright and committed, but it just doesn’t work," a testy Donald Rumsfeld once told Rice. She interpreted "bright" to mean that Rummy didn't see them as equals.
• Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir "looked as though he was on drugs"; shaking hands with President Émile Lahoud of Lebanon made her feel like she needed a shower.
• Rice touches on Gadhafi's “eerie fascination with me"—including a homemade video of Rice to the tune of “Black Flower in the White House.” “It was weird, but at least it wasn’t raunchy.”
• Rice recalls several regrets, saying the rejection of the Kyoto climate change treaty was a "self-inflicted wound," and concluding she was "tone deaf" for going on a shopping spree during Hurricane Katrina.

(More Condoleezza Rice stories.)