Washington ? You could almost hear the dam breaking two weeks ago.

President Bush gave a “major” speech about Iraq, as did Secretary of State Colin Powell. Vice President Richard Cheney weighed in on the subject, along with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, in separate addresses. Meanwhile, at a conference in Colorado, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complained publicly that he had not been advised that Miss Rice was to be put in charge of a new task force to push the reconstruction and democratization of postwar Iraq.

This prompted Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to lament on “Meet the Press” that the Bush, Powell, Cheney and Rice remarks were four “distinctly different speeches,” and that President Bush “has to be president, over the vice president and over these secretaries” on postwar policy. That, in turn, led President Bush himself to respond, in another television interview, that his administration has had a “strategy from the beginning” in Iraq, and in an echo of Bill Clinton’s 1994 I-am-still-relevant moment, explained that “the person who is in charge is me.”

It was as if a great safety valve had finally been pried loose, and all the pressurized air had blown into the open. The press was suddenly awash in stories about the rancorous rivalry between the State Department and the Pentagon — the diplomats vs. the Neocons — and Condoleezza Rice’s evident failure to smooth things out. Suddenly the specter of disarray hung over the Bush White House, and anonymous sources shook their heads in sorrow.

For the past 2 1/2 years, the principal media complaint about the Bush administration has been its pursed lips and rigidly disciplined methods of operation: The White House is a) impervious to outside influence, and b) determined to keep participants in line at all costs. This has been especially frustrating to many journalists who, as a permanent presence in Washington, like to think that they exert some power, though they often have to be satisfied simply with stories about internal battles.

Yet now that the Bush White House is furnishing such stories, the complaint is that the president is a) susceptible to outside influence, and b) permitting the factions to wage their fights in public. We don’t like conformity, and we don’t like chaos. Translation: Bush can’t win.

In truth, only George W. Bush knows whether his administration is or is not in disarray: He has affirmed his status as the parent in the household even as public comments on the subject are delivered by people with axes to grind.

Postwar Iraq is obviously complicated, and the peaceable kingdom will not be realized for some time. But is this inconsistent with anything Bush has said before? Since Sept. 11, 2001, his litany has always been that the war on terrorism will be waged for years, maybe decades, that the struggle will be fought in many different places, and the will to prevail is the most important thing.

By any measure, Iraqis are relieved to be rid of Saddam and his gang, and the prospects for regional stability have been enhanced. That is not say, of course, that the quest for chemical, biological and nuclear stockpiles won’t be long and complex.

For that matter, the signs of internal debate are healthy, not disturbing. If the Bush administration were as rigidly disciplined as its critics have insisted, it would be the first government in the history of the republic to claim that distinction. It is entirely natural that experienced, strong-willed public servants — Colin Powell, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. — would hold opinions with conviction, and that those views would inevitably clash on certain points. It is equally natural that critics will choose sides, issue dire warnings when advice is ignored, and mistake temporary conflict for permanent chaos.

As a sometime member of the Carter State Department, I had a front-row seat for the rancorous disputes between Secretary Cyrus Vance and the NSC adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Kennedy administration was riven by personal rivalries and double-crossing leaks (“Adlai (Stevenson) wanted a Munich” — Robert F. Kennedy). The antagonism between Madeleine Albright and Clinton’s NSC adviser, Anthony Lake, was as poorly disguised as U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s ambition to displace Secretary Albright.

This is not to suggest that disarray can’t happen, or that conflict cannot easily be transformed into paralysis. But when any president declares that “the person who is in charge is me,” we may safely assume that he is telling the truth. We may also assume that critics have motives, and that the press is much happier with hints of discord than evidence of progress.

Philip Terzian is the associate editor of the Providence Journal.