[Peace-discuss] [Fwd: Bush was right, but too late]

[chason at shout.net]

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Very interesting view on how the sheeple are manipulated in our leader's
speeches....

Bush was right, but too late

By Robert Fisk

07/07/05 - - I belong to that generation of undergraduates who cut their
teeth on linguistics. Lancaster University in its second year of
existence: Class of '67, if I'm not mistaken, was as innovative as it was
a bit odd. "Digs" were on the Morecombe seafront, lectures in a converted
chapel and tutorials in an old linen factory. But the books we studied
invariably included the immensely boring Zelig Harris and the stunningly
brilliant Noam Chomsky.

Less famous then than now, it was Chomsky who introduced me to the
"foregrounded element." That is when someone places words in such an order
that a new meaning is attached to them or deliberately leaves out a word
that we might expect. The big bad man emphasizes the meanness of the man.
But the bad big man makes us think of size. "Big" has been "foregrounded."
Real linguists won't like the above definition but journalists, I fear,
sometimes have to distort in order to make plain.

Presidents too, it seems. Because I did a little linguistic analysis on
George W. Bush's Fort Bragg address to Americans on June 28 and came up
with some pretty strange results. First, of course, was his use of the
words "terrorism" and "terror" 33 times.

More interesting was the way in which he deployed these massed ranks of
terrorists. If you divided his speech up into eight parts, "terrorists" or
"terror" popped up eight times in the first, eight times in the second,
three times in the third, nine in the fourth, two in the fifth, none at
all in the sixth, a measly three in the seventh and again none at all in
the eighth.

The columns in which "terror" disappeared were full of different clichés.
Challenge, a good constitution (an Iraqi one, of course), a chance to
vote, a free society, certain truths (I won't insult you by telling you
where that was snitched from), defending our freedom, flying the flag,
great turning points in the story of freedom, prevail (one of Churchill's
favorite words) and no higher call.

Put through Chomsky's machine, Bush's speech begins by frightening the
audience to death with terrorism and finishes triumphantly by rousing them
to patriotic confidence in their country's future victory.

It wasn't actually a speech at all. It was a movie script, a screenplay.

The bad guys are really bad but they're going to get their comeuppance
because the good guys are going to win.

Other elements of the Bush speech were, of course, woefully dishonest.

It's a bit much for Bush to claim that "terrorists" want to "topple
governments" when the only guys who've been doing that -- in Afghanistan
and Iraq -- were, ahem, ahem, the Americans.

There are plenty of references to the evil nature of "the enemy" --
tyranny and oppression, remnants, the old order -- and a weird new version
of the Iraqi-9/11 lie. Instead of Saddam's non-existent alliance with
al-Qaida, we now have the claim from Bush that the Iraqi "terrorists who
kill innocent men, women and children on the streets of Baghdad are
followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our
citizens" on Sept. 11, 2001. Whoops! It's no longer the Saddam regime that
was involved in these attacks, it seems; it's now the post-Saddam
insurgents who are part of the same gang.

It's strange that for a White House that writes screenplays, the words of
Osama bin Laden appear so uninteresting. Whenever Bin Laden speaks, no one
bothers to read through his speech. The questions are always: Was it him?
Is he alive? Where is he? Never: What did he say?

There are real perils in this. Let me show you why. On Feb. 13, 2003, bin
Laden's latest audiotape was broadcast by the Arabic satellite channel,
al-Jazeera. This, remember, was five weeks before the Anglo-American
invasion.

In that message, bin Laden made a statement in which he said that "it is
beyond doubt that this crusader war is ... directed against the family of
Islam, irrespective of whether the Socialist party and Saddam survive or
not ... Despite our belief and our proclamation concerning the infidelity
of socialists, in present-day circumstances there is a coincidence of
interests between Muslims and socialists in their battles against the
Crusaders."

And there you have it. Bin Laden, who hated Saddam -- he told me this
himself, in person -- made a call to his followers to fight alongside an
Iraqi force that included Saddam's Iraqi Baathist "Socialists." This was
the moment when Iraq's future guerrilla army fused with the future suicide
bombers, the message that would create the detonation that would engulf
the West in Iraq. And we didn't even notice. The U.S. "experts" waffled
about whether bin Laden was alive -- not what he said. For once, Bush got
it right -- but he was too late. Always, as they say, read the text.

Robert Fisk writes for The Independent in Britain.

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