International watchdog group Amnesty International released a report condemning the U.S. for the abuses occurring at Guantánamo Bay ("Gitmo"). Our deranged chimpanzee President George W. Bush calls the allegations "absurd," adding
In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. (President George W. Bush, press conference, May 31, 2005)Translation:
Terrorists are guilty until proven innocent, and since they're obviously guilty (since we say so), anything they say can be disregarded. We shouldn't trust reports from prisoners about the conditions in the prison, nor the reports from neutral third parties; instead, we should trust the reports by the people who run the prison, who promise they won't torture anyone (while you're watching). And on that we can take the word of a deranged chimpanzee who doesn't even know the difference between "dissemble" (to tell a lie) and "disassemble" (to take apart), and clearly hadn't even heard the word not long ago.The links are to the official White House transcript of the press conference in which Bush made the statement.
This isn't some harmless little "Bushism," this is ironclad proof of stupidity. I don't throw around grammar or spelling errors lightly; after all, the content must always be more important than the form. However, these are instances where the faulty form exposes the lack of substantive content. (In other words, sometimes, stupid is as stupid says.)
There are only two possible reasons for this issue to be anywhere in the headlines below Paula Abdul, Jennifer Lopez, or Michael Jackson: (1) "the media" will only carry the news that sells ads, or (2) "the media" has a consistent RIGHT-WING bias, evident in the extent to which they DOWNPLAY the statements the President himself makes. These "Bushisms" ought to be more than fodder for Jon Stewart; they ought to be top of the news.
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