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.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS