Rumsfeld-Rice, scandale dans la famille

En déroulant les nouvelles hier, sur la divergence de vues entre Rumsfeld et Rice, nous agissions d’un cœur léger. Nous ne pensions pas qu’il fallût prendre tout cela trop au sérieux. Julian Borger, du Guardian, s’en charge aujourd’hui.

Voici le rapport que Borger fait de cette tempête dans un verre d’eau (en omettant d’ailleurs l’intervention de Rumsfeld pour apaiser les choses, lors d’une conférence de presse, mercredi) : « The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was attempting to defuse a spat with the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday over the number of mistakes made by the US so far in Iraq. Ms Rice said her relationship with Mr 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 thinktank last week that the US had made thousands of “tactical errors” in Iraq.

(...)

» Meanwhile Ms Rice was under pressure to explain her “tactical errors” remark. Mr 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, Ms Rice said he had not seen what she had said. “I guess I shouldn't use figures of speech,” she added. »

On serait tenté de dire comme le grand Will, — much ado for nothing. Cela n’empêche pas quelques observations : le constat qu’à Washington, dans nos temps médiatico-virtualistes, rien n’échappe à la tendance au gonflement de la moindre nouvelle répercutant une mésentente ou une divergence au sein de cette administration. Le constat, également, que ce n’est qu’un juste retour des choses, cette administration ayant systématiquement joué des médias, des fausses informations ou des informations manipulées, des déformations et ainsi de suite.

Mis en ligne le 8 avril 2006 à 11H54