Okay, I know that the spin doctors really get under our skin at times but you’ve got to admit this cartoon is just simply fun. After all, in this world of political corruption, foreign policy disasters, military failures and plain and simple torture of innocent people, we have to have a little humor in our life. And, even if you like old Condi, this caricature is just…well, hilarious, especially with that little gap between her teeth. Thanks to the spin doctors for giving us a break from all the tragedy by allowing us to poke fun of ourselves because we all know that there really is no truth left in politics no matter what party, belief or affiliation. The truth just doesn’t exist anymore. Let’s take a look at some classic examples…

5. Of course, I have to begin with Condoleezza Rice’s swap of words in order to downplay the negative connotation of “escalation” in Iraq. Her spin doctors, known as the Department of Communication (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), came up with “augmentation”. Now, that’s a word that conjures up pleasant thoughts, doesn’t it? I guess it really didn’t catch on though because then it became “surge”…maybe that was more manly for Bush. I suppose as a Texas cowboy, augmentation just didn’t cut it. But “surge”, now that’s a man’s word.

4. We have also been fully informed by the Republicans about the despised Democrats plan in dealing with Iraq…it’s called the “Cut and Run Policy”. Then we have the Democrats, of course, correcting this terminology and calling it “Redeployment”. Which is it? I’m still confused.

3. When George W. was attempting to repeat his father’s famous cooperation of nations in which they kicked Sadaam out of Kuwait, he wanted to call his military adventure something memorable. So, W. called his infamous military incursion into Iraq the “Coalition of the Willing”. This, of course, was so that he could do something he has been known to state privately that he wanted to “kick Sadaam’s ass”…well, he wouldn’t do it personally but his 19 year old soldiers would. This later became known as the “Coalition of the Coerced”.

2. Then there’s the famous terminology of “coerced interrogation” or simply “debriefing” that Bush/Cheney came up with for torture. You have to agree that it more politely describes simulated drowning, electrical shocks, forced homoerotic behavior including photography, dog attacks, sleep deprivation, light and sound techniques, and more.




Of course, none of this violates the Geneva Convention language prohibiting the treatment of terrorist prisoners or suspects in “cruel,” “humiliating” and “degrading” ways because Bush said it himself “we don’t torture people”…so it must be true. I can just hear Cheney now declaring that it is a valuable weapon in the war on terror, and one that should not be restricted by unnecessary rules and limitations just to satisfy a mob of whining liberals and the namby-pamby international community. Of course, as a response, the Democrats haven’t found a better spin than “torture” because there really isn’t one.

1. Then there’s the elite, intellectual, “I speak foreign languages including Russian”, version of spin coming from Condoleezza Rice. Now, this is a true hybrid of spin. It is so sophisticated and intelligent that you don’t even know you’ve been spun. Here is an example of some of her testimony after the 9/11 commission findings:

“The fact is that this August 6th PDB was in response to the president’s questions about whether or not something might happen or something might be planned by al Qaeda inside the United States. He asked because all of the threat reporting or the threat reporting that was actionable was about the threats abroad, not about the United States. I don’t remember the al Qaeda cells being something that we were told we needed to do something about, to the best of my knowledge this kind of analysis … actually was never briefed to us.” - Condoleezza Rice

Huh?

Well, I hope you have enjoyed my little incursion into the world of spin. I used to get upset by all the garbage that’s heaped upon us every day but now I am learning to enjoy it. I mean, do we really need the truth anymore? Isn’t it just more fun to be entertained? This reminds me of a famous quote by the literary theorist Stanley Fish who once put it, the death of objectivity “relieves me of the obligation to be right;” it “demands only that I be interesting.”