Words....can mean whatever.

[Ichingcarpenter]

1.
Justice Department white paper, which was leaked last year, intended to justify the killing of Americans overseas:


An “imminent” threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons will take place in the immediate future.


To translate: “imminent” can mean a lot of things … including “not imminent”.


2

How about "combat" or "ground troops"? They're not what you think they are either, because a malleable language can do anything:

As the New York Times’s Mark Landler detailed over the weekend, White House has “an extremely narrow definition of combat … a definition rejected by virtually every military expert.” According to the Obama administration, the 1600 “military advisers” that have steadily been flowing in Iraq fall outside this definition, despite the fact that “military advisers” can be: embedded with Iraqi troops; carry weapons; fire their weapons if fired upon; and call in airstrikes. In the bizarro dictionary of war employed by this White House, none of that qualifies as “combat”.


Yes, the English language changes over time and that's generally a good thing. But we're not talking about the way the word "decimate" once meant to lop off 10% and now means "destroy everything." This is a deliberate misrepresentation of things.



3

Moving on. The definitional jujitsu covers the people who were killed by the bombing as well. Civilians? What civilians?

Buzzfeed’s Evan McMorris-Santoro reported that the Pentagon is “confident” that no civilians were killed in any of the initial airstrikes in Syria, despite a credible report to the contrary. But we have no idea what that actually means either.


The White House previously embraced a re-definition of “civilian” so it could easily deny its drone strikes were killing anyone than “militants” in Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere, according to a New York Times report in 2012:

It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

So any casualties, if they’re men, might well be tallied as “militants” even if the actual dead people were not.


https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140924/17360528630/obama-administration-learns-if-you-redefine-every-word-dictionary-you-can-get-away-with-just-about-anything.shtml

[hobbit709]

1. A dead Vietnamese peasant in black pajamas was VC no matter what.

A dead Middle-Easterner is a militant the same way.

Neither can refute the accusation.

[ctsnowman]

3. Nailed it.

[woo me with science]

2. War is Peace!

Torturers are Patriots!

Mass Surveillance Protects our Freedoms!

[joshdawg]

4. This is how we got involved in Vietnam:

"combat … the 1600 “military advisers” that have steadily been flowing in Iraq fall outside this definition......"
"Military advisers" indeed!
While I reluctantly agree with the airstrikes, I vehemently oppose these "advisers" being in Iraq. They need to come back to the U.S. ASAP.

[marym625]

5. This is just so sad

What the hell are we doing? Who have we become?

There is no wonder most of the world hates us.

[woo me with science]

6. We all live in Oceania now.

We are ruled by gaslighting, warmongering thieves and criminals.

[marym625]

10. yep.

I have never been one to buy into conspiracy theories until bush. Now, I tend to believe that we are where we are with very calculated, well thought out plan by the powers that be.


I may be mixing you up with someone else but are you the one that gave up everything to live in a self sustainable, a little off the grid, farm with your wife?

[woo me with science]

12. I rarely

post about my 3d life here.

You may be thinking of bvar22....wonderful posts.

[marym625]

15. I dig your comments

Even if it wasn't you that I was thinking about.

[woo me with science]

16. It's mutual.

Last edited Sat Sep 27, 2014, 11:47 AM - Edit history (1)

We're all in this together, trying to wake up a brainwashed nation. Your post asking people to think about the need for peaceful revolution is spot on.




NSA Affiliated Spy Satellite Mission Patch Slogan: "NOTHING IS BEYOND OUR REACH."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/new-us-spy-satellite-features-world-devouring-octopus/

.

[marym625]

18. OMF DOG!

That's hilarious! Thanks for sharing!

And thank you for the compliment. Really nice to hear after a day of being the subject of ridicule by a few.

[zeemike]

11. And we are all Winston Smith.

Knowing it is all bullshit, but fearing room 101.

[woo me with science]

13. No privacy, no dissent.

US declares socialists Freedom Road a terrorist organization
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/09/raid-s29.html

FBI launches powerful face recognition/tracking system
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025590818

DOJ's outrageously aggressive prosecution of internet activist, Aaron Swartz
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/al-franken-eric-holder_n_2934627.html

DOJ defends NSA's Associational Tracking Program; No justification even in Patriot Act
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023455121

[Dustlawyer]

7. My HS former Airborne Ranger buddy was a "military advisor" with the Contras under President

Ronald Raygun. They would link up with them and go looking for the Sandinistas. When they would run into each other it was on!

[CJCRANE]

8. The actual phrase used in the presser was "imminent plotting". nt

[woo me with science]

9. Are you sure it wasn't

"imminent considering plotting"?

[Solly Mack]

14. Words are tools....sometimes weapons.

So yeah, words can mean almost anything and nothing at all.

[woo me with science]

17. Superb post.

We all live in Oceania now.

His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.