Rhetoric

Luntz Memo Helps To Greenwash Republicans

"Over the last six months, the
Republican Party has subtly refocused its message on the
environment, an issue that a party strategist Frank Luntz called 'the
single biggest vulnerability for the Republicans and
especially for George Bush' in a memorandum encouraging the
new approach. The Republicans, as the memorandum advised them, have
softened their language to appeal to suburban voters,
speaking out for protecting national parks and forests,

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Unleashing "Shock And Awe" At Home & Abroad

"[O]n the first day of Gulf War II: Die Harder, the Pentagon reportedly intends to launch 300 to 400 cruise missiles at targets in Iraq -- more than during the entire 40 days of the first Gulf War. '[Y]ou have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes," says Harlan K. Ullman, who ... did co-author the 1996 book that defined the strategy that the U.S. military will be following. Euphemistically known as 'Shock and Awe,' the plan is designed to cow those Iraqis it doesn't blow up into immediate submission.

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Self-fulfilling Prophecies?

As the nation marches toward war in the Middle East, millions of Americans believe in Biblical prophecies of Armageddon that predict war and mass slaughters of Jews and Muslims. "Genocide, in short, becomes the ultimate means of prophetic fulfillment," writes historian Paul Boyer. "Without close attention to the prophetic scenario embraced by millions of American citizens, the current political climate in the United States cannot be fully understood. ...

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Christian Coalition Sponsors Anti-Islam Speakers

At a Christian Coalition symposium on Feb. 15, Don Feder, a syndicated columnist for The Boston Herald for 19 years, and Daniel Pipes, New York Post columnist and director of the right-wing Middle East Forum, agreed that militant Islamists are the real enemies of the U.S., reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Feder "railed against U.S. leaders who insist Islam is a religion of tolerance and compassion and charity," O'Dwyer's writes.

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Powell Welcomes Osama to the Rescue

The White House is using Osama bin Laden's latest message to sell an attack on Iraq . Maureen Dowd notes that "the president and his secretary of state had been huffing and puffing to prove a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. ... And then who but Osama himself should pop up on an audio tape, calling on Muslims to fight the U.S. if the 'infidels' attack 'our brothers in Iraq.' Osama's disdain for Saddam still gleamed through. ... Still, the administration pounced on the tape... Mr.

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The Defence Of The Indefensible

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. ... Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness, " George Orwell wrote fifty-five years ago in his essay "Politics and the English Language." In this month's Ecologist, Paul Kingsnorth points out the relevance of Orwell's words today.

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Lying Us Into War

"President George W. Bush and his foreign-policy team have systematically and knowingly deceived the American people in order to gain support for an unprovoked attack on Iraq," writes writer and college communications instructor Dennis Hans, who tallies 15 "techniques of deceit" that Bush has used "to deceive the very people most inclined to trust him."

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The Truth Behind Powell's "Poison Factory"

"If Colin Powell were to visit the shabby military compound at the foot of a large snow-covered mountain, he might be in for an unpleasant surprise," reports Luke Harding. "The US Secretary of State last week confidently described the compound in north-eastern Iraq - run by an Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Islam - as a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory.' Yesterday, however, it emerged that the terrorist factory was nothing of the kind - more a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings at the foot of a grassy sloping hill.

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Downing Street's Deceit

"Downing Street was last night plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on 'intelligence material' - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old," the Guardian writes.

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