Friday, May 02, 2003

U.S. says Canada cares too much about liberties So stop with the Civil Rights crap already, Canada, that's our schtick.  Can't you see we have an agenda here?  Hey, and by the way, your security sucks! (Read the whole thing, it's funny) Laura 7:20:23 PM    comment [] Notice the subtle shift in wording: Condoleezza Rice has talked her way into a U-turn, writes Marian Wilkinson.  President George Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is now acknowledging that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program is less clear-cut, and probably more difficult to establish, than the White House portrayed before the war. She has no doubt that the US-led coalition, assisted by experts from Britain and Australia, will find Iraq's WMD programs. But for the first time, Dr Rice is saying publicly that it is less likely many actual weapons will be found. Rather, she described the programs as being hidden in so-called "dual use" infrastructure. In other words, chemicals and biological agents could be in plants, factories and laboratories capable of being used for legal and prohibited purposes. Almost three weeks since the fall of Baghdad, with senior Iraqi scientists and officials in US custody, no chemical or biological weapons stockpiles have been found. Neither has any evidence been uncovered that Iraq had restarted a nuclear program. In explaining the gap between the prewar and postwar claims on Iraq's WMD, Dr Rice said the US was now seeing the programs in a different light. "The fact is that we are beginning to see a kind of pattern on how Iraq may have hidden its weapons of mass destruction from the outside world for all of these years," she said this week. According to Dr Rice, the weapons programs are "in bits and pieces" rather than assembled weapons. "You may find assembly lines, you may find pieces hidden here and there," she said. Ingredients or precursors, many non-lethal by themselves, could be embedded in dual-use facilities. All I can say is, UNBEFRICKIN'LIEVABLE!  She's good, she's really good.  Just you wait, Henry Higgins, all the players are going to start talking about WMD programs.  A well-placed file in the rubble of a Ministry building in Bagdhad, and we're all set.  But this is brilliant.  The cool thing about having a program is that you don't have to find the finished product anymore.  You just need the "precursors" like pesticides and hey, we've been finding those all over the place.  Presto, you've got a WMD program going on.  Yes, it's brilliant, but I still get the feeling that these tactics are being thought up on the fly, like they're reacting to criticisms as they spring up.  They're kinda like the Borg, who expect us to be assimilated, and all the barbs flung at them kill off a few, but many more take their place as they adapt and reconfigure their sheilds.  Refresh me, please.  How did Picard finally defeat them?  Oh shit, that's right, he became one of them. Laura 5:13:09 PM    comment [] I've been noticing this stuff for a long time now (scroll down): "A growing trend disturbs me: passive verb choices are used in embarrassing war headlines. With normal verb subjects omitted, actions and responsibility are suddenly obscured. Story content becomes more difficult to understand. Upsetting news is not registered by readers, while credit can still be taken for running hard stories on page one. Editors making such choices remain unblamed. "Today's print-edition L.A. Times has these news headlines on its front page -- and one of these things is quite plainly not like the other: High Court Upholds Jailing of Immigrants GOP Budges On State Budget Asia Bands Together On SARS Palestinian PM Urges End To 'Armed Chaos' Music Industry Tries Fear As A Tactic To Stop Online Piracy Tense Standoff Between Troops And Iraqis Erupts In Bloodshed Look closely -- of the six headlines, the first five are clear, simple, Noun-Verb-Object structures: A) these folks B) did this C) to that. You can get the gist of these stories in a single glance. The last, however, is plainly different -- structured passively, turning a simple story into semantic mud: Tense Standoff Between Troops And Iraqis Erupts In Bloodshed Hmm. Odd, isn't it? It's actually impossible to know what happened, who was responsible, or what it means. Did blood just suddenly start spurting from every orifice, perhaps, like the Monty Python version of a Sam Peckinpaugh-directed lawn party?" Go and read the whole thing, it's pretty enlightening. Laura 4:45:53 PM    comment []

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