The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was attempting to defuse a spat with the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on Friday over the number of mistakes made by the US so far in Iraq.
Rice said her relationship with Rumsfeld "couldn't be better," even after he had told a radio interviewer that he did not know what she was talking about when she told a UK think tank last week that the US had made thousands of "tactical errors" in Iraq.
The row has come at a time when public faith in the Republicans' ability to defend the country is at an all-time low. An AP/Ipsos poll published yesterday found that Americans no longer saw Republicans as any better than Democrats on defense, their flagship issue for decades. Bush also recorded his lowest rating in that poll since taking office, with only 36 percent of respondents saying he was doing a good job.
The White House was on the defensive once more yesterday over legal documents alleging that Bush had broken his ban on leaking classified information to bolster the case for war in 2003.
The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said he could not talk about the documents as they were part of a court case involving a former vice-presidential aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. But McClellan said the president sometimes found it necessary to "declassify information in the public interest."
Meanwhile Rice was under pressure to explain her "tactical errors" remark. Rumsfeld was withering in his response, suggesting she did not understand warfare.
"I don't know what she was talking about, to be perfectly honest," he told a radio station in Fargo, North Dakota, earlier this week. "The reality in war is this ... The enemy watches what you do and then adjusts to that, so you have to constantly adjust and change your tactics ... If someone says well, that's a tactical mistake, then I guess it's a lack of understanding ... of what warfare is about."
On Thursday, Rice said he had not seen what she had said.
"I guess I shouldn't use figures of speech," she added.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
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