What do you consider the greatest mistake of this administration? What really troubles me is that democracy is getting a bad name because it is identified with imposition and occupation. I'm for democracy, but imposing democracy is an oxymoron. People have to choose democracy, and it has to come up from below.

Did you see Saddam Hussein as a threat to this country? He was horrible. But I did not think he was an imminent threat to the United States. You can't go to war with everybody you dislike. I think Iraq may end up being one of the worst disasters in American foreign policy.

And yet you and Condi Rice, the current secretary of state, were educated by the same professor -- Josef Korbel, a Czech diplomat who was dean of the school of international relations at the University of Denver and who happened to be your father. What I like about her is that she continues to give credit to the fact that my father had a big influence on her. It is quite remarkable that this Czech émigré professor has trained two secretaries of state.

I imagine that you have known her for a long time. My father died in 1977, and I was home and there were many flowers, and among the flowers was a ceramic pot in the shape of a piano, with philodendron leaves. I asked my mother who had sent it, and she said, "It's from your father's favorite student, Condoleezza Rice."

You were raised as a Catholic, but you learned in the 90's that your parents had converted from Judaism and that three of your grandparents were killed by the Nazis. Do you see yourself as Jewish now? No. I was baptized. My name is actually Marie Jana. I was named for the Virgin Mary. That's how I was raised. It's very hard to totally change when you are 60.