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The US war on words
A recently declassified Pentagon document reveals how euphemisms sugar coat Department of Defence's actions.
President Barack Obama makes no bones about it.
He calls the treatment of hunger-striking prisoners at Guantanamo force-feeding.
But in a just declassified Pentagon document, many of the detainees are described as engaging in long term non-religious fasting.
Its the latest linguistic leavening from the US Department of Defence, a title in itself emblematic of the culture of euphemism at an agency that for 150 years proudly called itself the Department of War.
Since the Bush administrations declaration of a Global War on Terror, the military has worked overtime to enlarge its encyclopedia of euphemisms.
Heres just a sampling of terms that have become common parlance, and their translations:
Environmental manipulation applying extreme hot and cold temperatures for interrogation
Kinetic firing bombs, missiles and bullets
Countervalue attack fire-bombing a city
http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/americas/us-war-words
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)RC
(25,592 posts)To many renegade alphabet soup agencies are giving our country a bad name.