Condoleezza Rice played an important part on the American diplomatic scene at crucial times of change in foreign relations. Rice first arrived at the White House in 1989 as the expert on the Eastern European Communist bloc for then–national security advisor Brent Scowcroft. These were the final years of the Cold War, and Rice had a key role in shaping the policy of President George H. W. Bush’s administration toward the process of German reunification. But it was in the administration of Bush’s son George W. Bush that Rice acquired national and international visibility as a politician and public figure. Rice’s work with the elder Bush would later help her to be appointed national security advisor and then secretary of state in the administration of the younger Bush. In a speech given at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., on December 13, 2005, “International Support for Iraqi Democracy,” Secretary of State Rice outlines the successes of American military intervention in Iraq just before the first parliamentary elections.