Weasel words

Hums

In Oz the Liberal government is in power at the federal level. And it aint 'small l', I can tell you!

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I don't understand the "small I" thing, msolga. Can you explain more?

As with this issue of "weasel words" worldwide, the political parties in other countries (Ireland, Germany), who use the word, "Democrat" in relationship with their official party names, are, actually, the most extreme and extremely related to the Republican Party behavior and platform in the U.S.

I'm not familiar with the parties in Australia, however, and would find reading more from you, about your experiences there, interesting.

You get arrested for being "legally drunk" - hmmmm!

Hums, am I right in thinking you apply the political use of conservative to conservation as an environmental topic? They are rather different usages.

Msolda was using a lower case L, not I, by the way, probably to distinguish The Liberal Party from liberal.

roger:

You've now wandered "off topic," but, because you're asking me something further, "off topic" or not, I'll reply:

Yes, remarking, earlier, about the misapplied use of the word, "conservative" and "conservationist" to those of the current Republican Party persuasion, BECAUSE and IN RESPONSE TO the misappropriation of both words and the concepts they represent, to and by current Republican Party affiliates, to themselves.

I don't, on a personal or academic level, confuse the two concepts and/or words and their disparate definitions. However, because both are misapplied, to repeat, by those who misapply them, to the Republican Party behavior and politic, I made mention of both as being, again, misapplied.

About msolga's typed "I," it's clearly typed there as to what I was asking about. But, thanks for responding about msolga's intentions (I hope that's alright with msolga).

Hums & Roger

Yes, it was a small "l" ... So I was referring to liberal ideals. So different to those of our so-called "Liberal" government! A correct description of their political position would be conservative. They are rather like a throw back to the 50s.

Ah-HA!
msolga:

Ah-HA! More of those weasally words (I know there's a misspelling in there somewhere). I sorta understood that you were describing more of those perplexing political misapplications of words, there, earlier.

One I discovered this weekend:
"down shifting" = making the choice to reduce working hours & pay for lifestyle reasons.

It's not 'gambling' anymore, it's 'gaming entertainment'.

Mr Stillwater

That's much more respectable!

Can anyone explain the "shock & awe" strategy?

Never heard of it!

Must be "Murrican"!

Ask PDiddie.

Its Murrican, typical Murrican (and Texun) understatement:

CBS News A-Day Shock and Awe

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2003 (CBS) They're calling it "A-Day," A as in airstrikes so devastating they would leave Saddam's soldiers unable or unwilling to fight.

If the Pentagon sticks to its current war plan, one day in March the Air Force and Navy will launch between 300 and 400 cruise missiles at targets in Iraq. As CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, this is more than number that were launched during the entire 40 days of the first Gulf War.

On the second day, the plan calls for launching another 300 to 400 cruise missiles.

"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," said one Pentagon official who has been briefed on the plan.

"The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before," the official said.

The battle plan is based on a concept developed at the National Defense University. It's called "Shock and Awe" and it focuses on the psychological destruction of the enemy's will to fight rather than the physical destruction of his military forces.

"We want them to quit. We want them not to fight," says Harlan Ullman, one of the authors of the Shock and Awe concept which relies on large numbers of precision guided weapons.

"So that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes," says Ullman.

In the first Gulf War, 10 percent of the weapons were precision guided. In this war 80 percent will be precision guided.

The Air Force has stockpiled 6,000 of these guidance kits in the Persian Gulf to convert ordinary dumb bombs into satellite-guided bombs, a weapon that didn't exist in the first war.

"You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted," Ullman tells Martin."

Thank you, LarryBS. Now I know:

The battle plan is based on a concept developed at the National Defense University. It's called "Shock and Awe" and it focuses on the psychological destruction of the enemy's will to fight rather than the physical destruction of his military forces.

"We want them to quit. We want them not to fight," says Harlan Ullman, one of the authors of the Shock and Awe concept which relies on large numbers of precision guided weapons.

"So that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes," says Ullman.

<sigh> ... So it's another plan to devastate the civilian population then? < even heavier sigh ..>

Yup, margo, "Murrican" it was!

DUMB BOMB? Is that the ordinary, run of the mill, everyday use sort of bomb?

Free-falling bombs as opposed to guided, "smart" ones using inertial navigation and gps.

Precision or lack thereof

" . . .Despite the efforts a decade ago by the military to turn Gulf War press conferences into video games, the General Accounting Office found in 1997 that the efficiency of ''smart bombs'' was significantly overstated by the Pentagon and weapons contractors. At least 2,500 Iraqi civilians died in our ''smart bombing.'' Human rights groups said that at least 70,000 Iraqi civilians died from the resulting squalor of Operation Desert Storm.

None of that mattered to Americans back when we thought that ''collateral damage'' was a concept reserved only for poverty-stricken desert people. It has to matter now that we know the enemy can kill more than 5,000 of us here at home.

An America that wants to avoid more ''collateral damage'' in New York had better lead by example in [Kabul]. It does not matter how smart your bombs are if they are dropped in a tantrum."

LarryBS

What can I say? obviously "smart" has next to nothing to do with compassion. Truly terrible, this garbage that is presented to us as "reporting" in the media.

Yes, its a bit depressing and disturbing, especially if one is a `Murrican.

msolga - I watched "A Little Romance" tonight, it was on Turner Classic Movies, the one channel I can't do without.