Press Review: What They Said About... the Rumsfeld-rice Rift

Tensions within the Bush administration over postwar Iraq were exposed this week after a major rift emerged between Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and Condoleezza Rice, President George Bush's national security adviser.

On Monday Mr Bush announced a new body, the Iraq stabilisation group (ISG), led by Ms Rice, to oversee the rebuilding of Iraq. The following day Mr Rumsfeld, who was hitherto responsible for reconstruction, gave an interview to four European newspapers in which he said he had not been consulted and only learned of the new body after receiving a classified memo from Ms Rice. "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English? I was not there for the backgrounding," he erupted after being pressed by a German reporter.

"Mr Rumsfeld is upset with the national security adviser... and he has shared his annoyance with the world," explained the New York Times, which put it down to "[his] being chastised for botching postwar Iraq".

The defence secretary had responded "with schnauzer-like testiness", reckoned Jim Hoagland in the New York Post, and identified it "as an acknowledgement that Mr Bush realises he has a huge problem with the way things are being reported and with how things are going in Iraq".

In the Washington Post, David Ignatius felt that while the administration was pretending that "everything was chummy with Rummy", behind the scenes there was a lot more debate and disagreement than the "administration's public 'happy talk' would suggest". And he welcomed this. "Given the stakes in Iraq... the current internal debate is healthy, so long as it results in clear, sensible policy. If it simply amplifies the bickering, then Iraq policy - and US national security - are in trouble."

But the Los Angeles Times was not impressed with the creation of the ISG: it would take more than spin to stop Afghanistan and Iraq "from sowing terrorism that strikes at the US and its allies".

"As entertaining as all this is to fans of Washington psychodramas," added the NY Times, there was little reassurance that important decisions about postwar Iraq were being made. "If Ms Rice's memo signals a real attempt to exercise political control over the violence and instability in Iraq, that would be welcome. But so far, the grandly named Iraq stabilisation group seems more like an attempt to substitute title-building for nation-building."