ABOARD A C-32 JET, over the Persian Gulf, Dec. 29 - It was a rare moment last month when Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly contradicted his boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. On Thursday, however, General Pace essentially said never mind.
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When General Pace was asked again on Thursday by reporters in Bahrain about the exchange, he said for the first time that he and Mr. Rumsfeld had not really disagreed at all. General Pace said he was talking about the obligations of American soldiers in a war zone like Iraq or Afghanistan; Mr. Rumsfeld, he said, was talking about the obligations of Americans in a nonhostile setting like, say, Tokyo.
"When I discussed it with him after the fact, it seemed to me he was talking about global conditions, and I knew that I was talking specifically about conditions in Iraq," General Pace said in an interview later aboard his plane as he continued a weeklong troop visit in the Middle East.
But a transcript of the November news conference shows that Mr. Rumsfeld was asked specifically about the suspected abuses by Iraqi Interior Ministry forces and the United States' obligations to address and prevent them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/30/international/middleeast/30pace.ready.html