You Keep Using That Word...

You keep using that word . . .
2004’s top changes to the American lexicon

By Ulysses S. Taxpayer

December 23, 2004-What would the end of a year be without a seemingly endless offering of lists categorizing that year’s most blank blanks? Here’s one more. Over the past year, the American vocabulary has undergone several significant changes. We are told we live in a divided country, hopefully by trying to understand what others are trying to communicate we can seek to bridge this divide. Here I present four of the most significant changes, and I advise my fellow Americans to take note and adjust your vocabularies accordingly.

1. Moderate

2004 was quite the year for the word ’moderate.’ The term has been used ad nauseum by pundits, politicians and journalists, mostly as a description of men like Senator John McCain and outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell. McCain is apparently so moderate that the Democratic Party made numerous overtures to the Senator to join Senator Kerry on the party’s presidential ticket. Since the records of these men is available for public consumption, one need only to examine them to find the appropriate definition for this term.

Moderation no longer means avoidance of extremes. Mr. McCain, for example, is a fervent supporter of George W. Bush’s "War on Terror." I could suggest that anyone who so eagerly supports a war against a concept is quite comfortable with extremes, but that allows too much room for the standard excuse of "in this post-9/11 world . . ."

Let’s step into the Wayback Machine and take a little trip to the world pre-9/11. Everyone remembers 1999 right? During NATO’s air assault on Serbia, it was Sen. McCain calling for "lights out in Belgrade." So intent on decimating the enemy, McCain implored the Senate to destroy Serbia "by any means necessary." Does this retroactively make Malcolm X a moderate?

Colin Powell has become the poster-boy of moderation. The man is constantly referred to as the "dove" of the Bush administration, a diplomat’s diplomat. Our new definition of moderation must be sure to include ’knowingly presenting false evidence to the United Nations in order to facilitate an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation.’ Sure, former CIA chief George Tenet symbolically fell on his sword to take the blame for the inaccurate intelligence assessment, and one-time neocon darling Ahmed Chalabi’s information was exposed as false, but facts are facts, and Tenet’s "confession" and the outing of Chalabi do little to make Powell’s denial plausible.

For instance, in depicting the nuclear threat posed by Iraq’s alleged possession of aluminum tubing, Powell asserted to the UN that "Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries even after inspections resumed . . . There is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium."

Apparently, Powell’s definition of "most U.S. experts" does not include those employed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (where America enriches its uranium for its nuclear weapons). Secretary Powell was told by State Department analyst Greg Thielmann (then acting director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs) that it was Oak Ridge’s conclusion that this was not the intended use of these tubes.

But surely, being the moderate that he is, Powell learned his lesson from his presentation to the United Nations. He wouldn’t again cite evidence from a lone "exile group" to claim another sovereign nation is a threat, right? Oh, but he would. Take this November for instance, when Powell claimed that Iran was "ramping up" its nuclear weapons program. In making this claim, Powell referenced information from a single unvetted source. He repeatedly made references to information from an Iranian exile group (incidentally listed on his own departments list of terrorist groups). One can envision a scenario in which Osama bin Laden, a Saudi exile, and his group (al Qaeda) which seeks to reform the Saudi government, presents Powell information suggesting the Saudis were a threat, leading to US "liberation" of Saudi Arabia.

2. Antiwar

This is an easy one, right? What else could antiwar mean other than opposing war? Ask Michael Moore or Medea Benjamin what antiwar means. These two exemplify the thousands who backed the candidacies of Kerry and Edwards because of their opposition to Bush’s illegal war. Never mind that Kerry and Edwards both abdicated their senatorial oversight obligations by voting to support the invasion of Iraq-Bush initiated the war, Kerry and Edwards just "did what they had to."

For Edwards, this included giving a speech on September 12, 2002 (coinciding with Bush’s speech to the United Nations). To quote Senator Edwards: "As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I firmly believe that the issue of Iraq is not about politics. It’s about national security. We know that for at least 20 years, Saddam Hussein has obsessively sought weapons of mass destruction through every means available. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons today. He has used them in the past, and he is doing everything he can to build more. Each day he inches closer to his longtime goal of nuclear capability-a capability that could be less than a year away. I believe that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime represents a clear threat to the United States, to our allies, to our interests around the world, and to the values of freedom and democracy we hold dear."

Apparently unsatisfied with this Bush impersonation, Edwards went one step further, referencing that favorite of White House tall tales, the Iraq-9/11 connection: "What’s more, the terrorist threat against America is all too clear. Thousands of terrorist operatives around the world would pay anything to get their hands on Saddam’s arsenal, and there is every possibility that he could turn his weapons over to these terrorists. No one can doubt that if the terrorists of September 11th had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have used them. On September 12, 2002, we can hardly ignore the terrorist threat, and the serious danger that Saddam would allow his arsenal to be used in aid of terror."

Dick Cheney or Richard Perle couldn’t have said it better themselves.

Antiwar candidate Kerry rivaled Cheney in bellicosity informing America that he would "hunt down and kill" the terrorists. He was going to send more troops to Iraq. These are the words of the antiwar candidate. As report after report came to light stating that there were no WMD and no connection to 9/11, Senator Kerry stood by his approval of the invasion. Even when his opponent claimed he didn’t support the war, he still continued to support the war.

Kerry even had a final chance at semi-redemption. He was asked in no uncertain terms, given the knowledge that there were no WMD in Iraq, would he still have authorized the war. Antiwar candidate Kerry stated that the right to declare preemptive war was an important right for a president to have and he still supports it.

And Michael and Medea just kept lauding this man as the only antiwar choice against pro-war Bush. Sure, Dennis Kucinich was actually against the war, so much so he even voted against it, but he wasn’t "electable." Considering that Mr. Kucinich holds elected office, I still don’t know what this means. Michael and Medea. and their band of pseudo-peaceniks. traversed the country imploring people not to support Ralph Nader, who, like Kucinich also opposed the illegal invasion (as well as nearly every illegal military operation ever engaged in by this nation). From their behavior we can learn that antiwar activism means lending credibility to undemocratic legal maneuvers to keeping someone who opposes war off the ballot, while laughing off Kerry’s warmongering as a "deficiency."

3. Moral Values

This is it, the big one; the one that allegedly won Bush his second term. We’d better pay close attention to what people mean when they use this word. If "moral values" are those things which Mr. Bush stands for, then our definition could not be easier to come by.

Moral values means that it is perfectly acceptable to lie. Yes, I know, ’every politician’ lies. This is hardly news to me. Mr. Bush’s lies are not limited to the usual political fare, nor are they limited to campaign-promise deceptions.

Mr. Bush lies to promote his brutal policies of global dominance and preemptive war. Mr. Bush and his administration repeatedly lied about Iraqi WMD. They lied to the UN, to the Congress, to world leader after world leader, to the media, to, well, to everyone who would listen. Even after all of their claims were exposed as falsehoods, they continued to make the claims. Opinion poll after opinion poll showed that Americans believed Saddam did 9/11 even after Bush said he didn’t (then said he did again and again). They lied TO START AN ILLEGAL WAR OF AGGRESSION and were ’rewarded’ with a second term. Seems pretty clear that morality is not opposition to ’bearing false witness."

Than what is it?

There is one issue about which Mr. Bush did not lie; his refusal to grant equal rights to all Americans. Moral values has nothing to do with deceiving Americans to support an illegal war. It has nothing to do with a series of systematic deceptions which have led to the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis, 1,200 Americans, and counting. Moral values means gay people can’t get married. That’s it, it’s that simple.

4. Torture

This word should be put on some sort of linguistic endangered species list. If Mr. Bush and his pal, Mr. Gonzales, have their way, the word will no longer exist.

There are documents, including FBI emails which illustrate that the inhumane and illegal interrogation techniques being used to prosecute the "War on Terror" are not isolated incidents of frustrated soldiers, rather they are a policy of systematic physical and psychological abuse authorized by no less an official than Bush. The documents show that "the president directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs," and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc."

There are FBI emails declaring "that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the president is said to have authorized." The FBI knows it is getting illegal orders from the White House. Mr. Bush and his bloodthirsty advisors pontificate endlessly about the need to use such harsh interrogations to "protect America." According to the documentary evidence, this includes the following:

Another email, dated December 2003, describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" against a detainee. The email concludes "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] the ’FBI’ interrogators. The FBI will [sic] left holding the bag before the public."

The document also says that no "intelligence of a threat neutralization nature" was garnered by the "FBI" interrogation, and that the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) believes that the Defense Department’s actions have destroyed any chance of prosecuting the detainee. The email’s author writes that he or she is documenting the incident "in order to protect the FBI."

Now, perhaps the "moral values" crowd is skeptical of any documents which speak ill of Bush. To them, documents are not proof of anything, just ask Dan Rather.

However, a picture speaks a thousand words, and apparently these pictures said "blowing off steam" or "isolated incident," but not torture. Torture is not practiced by the United States. George Bush said so himself. Of course, he has his legal counsel hard at work to redefine torture to uphold the technical veracity of his statement. After all, we wouldn’t want someone to misconstrue this as torture:

"FBI agents have lodged repeated complaints of physical and mental mistreatment of prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, saying in reports that military officials have placed lighted cigarettes in detainees’ ears and humiliated Arab captives by wrapping Israeli flags around them . . ."

Conclusion

Our nation is divided. The TV continues to tell me so. I can only conclude that the problem is largely a breakdown in communication. We have taken the language for granted. Remember, the world changed after 9/11. The language did too.

My only question is, in an America where antiwar means pro-war and moderate means vehemently pro-war; where it’s perfectly moral to lie to justify an illegal war but not for two private citizens of the same gender to enjoy the same civil rights as two private citizens of opposite genders; and sadistic military interrogations and detentions continue to become the law of the land, just what does everyone mean this season when they say, "Peace on Earth?"