Hidden away somewhere within the labyrinth of the Pentagon there must be a top secret euphemism department engaged in the invention of the Orwellian surrogate words that have crept surreptitiously into the American English vocabulary and from there translated into many other languages. In my mind I see a unit of studiously serious executives, coffee mugs in their hands and their neckties awry, devising senseless terms for terrible things and used unthinkingly by people today from New York to California, from Maine to Texas. The goal of my imaginary secret unit is to render ugly terms meaningless or to transform them into their opposite. To quote the perceptive Scottish writer, Candia McWilliam, “plain words are always under threat.” There are words that don’t say what they mean and there are words that say what they don’t mean.
Intensified or enhanced interrogation sounds oh so much more genteel than the hideous word TORTURE. Collateral damage goes down quite well instead of the savage bombing and strafing of a funeral procession or a wedding party…
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/26/euphemisms-away/
Truly Orwellian, but it’s our reality:
Thousands of people have been killed by the U.S. war on terrorism, but that hasn’t stopped the Obama administration from planning to add even more names to the so-called assassination list of those considered a threat to the country. The administration does not use the word “assassination,” preferring the term “targeted killing.”
The administration has spent the past two years developing a secret “disposition matrix” that The Washington Post says represents a “next-generation targeting list” for ridding the world of terrorists…
http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/obama-plans-to-expand-assassination-list/24389/
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
George Orwell
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