Saturday, October 23, 2004

Bush Keeps Misleading

Why is this not a lie?:

Bush on Telemundo on the reletives of those who have died in his wars, "I would tell them the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war against those who caused the deaths on 9/11 is necessary." Now, parsed carefully this could be read as true if you believe that Afghanistan was chiefly responsible for 9/11; he does at least use the singular 'war' instead of 'wars'. However, the clear intent and effect is conflate the two wars as both being justified by 9/11. Otherwise, Bush is tacitly admitting that Iraq was NOT necessary. He says 'the war... is necessary', not 'are necessary'. Thus, the clear inference is that Iraq, in contrast to Afghanistan, was not necessary. Though Bush is seldom clear, what is clear is that, in Bush's mind, Iraq and Afghanistan are one thing. His choice of the singular verb 'is' is the tell-tale that Bush considers both wars justified by 9/11 and both wars to have been necessary.

Ah, the joys of naturally mangled syntax. No one can ever be sure if you mean what you say, despite your constant avowals that you mean what you say ('cause America must mean what it says), because no one can figure out what you mean when you say it. Bush is a shameless marble-mouthed misleader.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home




Feeds:
RSS/Atom Feed Site Meter
Powered by Blogger