There Is No Cat - Our flexible language

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly

Tuesday, April 1, 2003

Our flexible language

For the nine hundred and seventy-third time today, I heard a reporter state that the Republican Guard divisions south of Baghdad have been "degraded to half their fighting capability". I want to know what that means. Does it mean the US has blown up half of their tanks? Destroyed half of their artillery? Killed half of their soldiers? I know they're used by the military and their political masters because they obscure meaning, but I wish reporters would dig a little deeper to tell us what these annoying military euphemisms specifically mean rather than just acting as court stenographers.

Posted at 6:31 PM

Comments

I think "degraded to half their fighting capability" might mean that all of the soldiers are alive but working at 50% efficiency. Of course, they might have suffered "arbitrary deprivation of life" during "violence processing." I just hope we can achieve "governmental unconsolidation" soon so that Iraqis will be able to live in "permanent prehostility."

Posted by lilbro at 10:06 AM, April 2, 2003 [Link]

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What do you mean there is no cat?

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

- Albert Einstein, explaining radio