Words have meaning. When a president speaks - he speaks for a country, and his words have meaning. If he mumbles and stumbles, and basically masticates the language (as Bush was so often prone to do) it reflects badly on the president and the country. I recall, for years, liberals would moan about how Bush was destroying our reputuaion by his inability to speak and articulate whate he believed. They moaned about a lot of other issues, but how he said what he did was up there on the list.
What he said bothered them greatly as well. This issue not only caught Bush, but many politicians - Trent Lott and his statement about Strom Thurmond. Words have meaning, and we were told each time a Republican made a stupid comment, that however stupid the words, the words had meaning and apologizing was not enough.
Follow me so far?
Words are important, whether spoken or written, and whether it was a politician who uttered the words or a minister - we had this fiasco with Obama and his reverend - Mr. Wright had several problems - everytime he opened his mouth he sounded like a racist to 70% of the country.
Words have meaning. The former school czar - words he used, statements he made, had meaning and he ended up unemployed (or at least no longer employed by the White House - AKA the American people). We fired his ass for words he used.
So words are important and what we say or write has meaning and we should be careful about our words ...
What are the words? There is a chasm of difference between MILITANT and AL QAIDA or TALIBAN. using militant relegates the action to some low level dispute. These 'militants' took control of highly secure facilities ... not something militants can do, not in Pakistan when the ISI is in control! Not in Pakistan with nuclear weapons. A militant with a nuclear weapon is not a militant, he is a person to be listened to and respected and that was the intent of the 'militants' who took control of the military base ... to gain access to the nuclear material.
Militants.
Relegating al qiada or taliban off the page and dragging in militant ... it was NOT A MILITANT that staged the co-ordinated attacks, took control of the military complex, threatened the nuclear codes ... it was Taliban with al qaida assistance.
But in this new world of hope and change, we don't use those terms any more, it causes fear and anger, hate, and concern ... instead we use militants, to belie the real issue.
Words have meaning, and not using the words, intentionally, although the entire article is littered with references ... is not journalism, it is politics, and it threatens more than just American lives with its simplistic ignorance - it threatens the lives of millions in Pakistan and India.
A couple articles. One is from Agence France Presse, and the other from The New York Times.
The AFP article, 40 dead as militants ambush Pakistan police by Nasir Jaffry
and the other article:
Coordinated Attacks Strike at Police in Pakistan
The New York Times
Published: October 15, 2009
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Militants dressed in police uniforms simultaneously attacked three law enforcement agencies in Lahore on Thursday morning, the fifth major attack in Pakistan in the last 10 days.
The assaults took place on the regional center of the Federal Investigation Agency and two police training centers just before 9:30 a.m. in Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province and Pakistan’s second most populous city.
More than 30 people were killed, including 19 police officers and at least 11 militants, police officials said.
The umbrella group for the Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban, claimed responsibility for the multiple attacks in Lahore, the independent television news channel, GEO, reported on its Web site.
Also on Thursday, militants attacked a police station in the garrison town of Kohat, killing eight people, in the North-West Frontier Province, and a car bombing killed one person in a residential complex in Peshawar, the capital of that province.
The coordinated attacks, the most sophisticated in a wave of violence that began this month, threw parts of Lahore into chaos, closing roads and shuttering shops and offices.
Five militants scaled the wall of the police training center, where more than 800 recruits had just started classes, said Maj. Gen. Shafqat Ahmed, the officer commanding security forces in Lahore.
In the ensuing two-hour battle between the hundreds of army commandos and the gunmen, one attacker was killed early on and another detonated a suicide bomb. The three surviving militants then tried to move to a residential compound, but families locked themselves inside while commandos fired on the assailants.
Six police officers were killed and seven were wounded, police officials said. In all, five of the attackers were killed, they said.
The attack on the elite school was particularly unnerving because its graduates, trained in counterterrorism techniques, are considered the toughest in the province. They wear black T-shirts with the words “No Fear” inscribed on the back and are easily distinguished by their fit physiques and well-trimmed hair.
In Islamabad, officials expressed dismay at more attacks five days after Taliban militants had attacked the nation’s army headquarters in Rawalpindi, taking more than 40 hostages and raising serious questions about the security of the military establishment in the nuclear-armed nation.
“The enemy has started a guerrilla war,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said. The nation had to unite to defeat “this handful of terrorists.”
But other officials said Pakistan was handicapped in fighting the onslaught because of discord between the civilian government and the military that spilled into the open in the last week, particularly over American aid legislation that the army said represented a violation of sovereignty.
“We cannot fight the Taliban when the army and the government are at loggerheads,” said Jahangir Tareen, a member of Parliament from Punjab and a former federal minister.
The interior minister, Mr. Malik, a confidant of President Asif Ali Zardari, was prevented from entering the army headquarters on Wednesday for a ceremony he had been invited to, apparently because he has fallen into disfavor with the military command.
The synchronized attacks in Lahore appeared to be timed ahead of a planned offensive by the Pakistani Army against the headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, and may have been intended to send an ominous signal that the militants were daring the army to come and get them.
By exposing the weak links in the country’s security apparatus and complacency among top officials, the Thursday’s attacks again risked undermining the faith of ordinary Pakistanis in the military, the police and the intelligence agencies, said a retired army brigadier, Javaid Hussain.
The frequency of the assaults, Mr. Hussain said, also demonstrated that the new Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, remained aligned closely to Al Qaeda and was receiving technical training, planning and support for the attacks from the terrorist organization. They furthermore showed how the Taliban was working in tandem with the cells and supporters among jihadist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad, based in southern Punjab, Brig. Hussain said.
Baitullah Mehsud, the previous Taliban leader, was killed in an American missile strike in August.
At the Federal Investigation Agency, a law enforcement branch that deals with matters ranging from immigration to terrorism, gunmen forced their way into the building, and at least 10 people died, including a militant, four police officials and two civilians.
An assistant inspector said he heard shooting as he left his post to eat breakfast. “I heard firing at around 9:30 and rushed back,” said Ziaullah, the assistant inspector, who gave only one name. “The scene was horrific. The duty inspector was dead at the spot.”
A witness working near the building said he had seen a man in his 20s running toward the compound. “He started spraying bullets, then there was constant firing for 15 minutes and two low-intensity explosions,” said Muhammad Aslam, who makes fresh juice in a neighborhood shop.
About 50 officials of the agency were reported stranded on the first floor of the building before security forces ended the siege, according to local television reports, but they had not been taken hostage.
Simultaneously, militants dressed in police uniforms stormed another police academy in Manawan, a suburb of Lahore.
Two detonated suicide explosives soon after entering the center, police officials said. Army commandos launched an assault about 30 minutes after the attack began, police officials said. By the time it was over, nine police officers and five militants lay dead.
The 10-day killing spree by the Taliban began with a suicide bombing of the World Food Program of the United Nations in the capital 10 days ago. Then, militants attacked a busy bazaar in Peshawar, the provincial capital of the North-West Frontier Province. After the siege at the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, militants hit an army convoy at a crowded market in Shangla, on the edge of the Swat Valley.
The army announced its intention to launch a ground offensive against the Taliban nerve center in South Waziristan two months ago but so far has refrained from using ground troops, instead using airstrikes and throwing a cordon over the area.
The decision to delay the ground offensive will now come under scrutiny, said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of the North-West Frontier Province.
An army operation immediately after the death of Baitullah Mehsud would have made it much more difficult for the militants to stage Thursday’s attacks, Mr. Aziz said. Instead, the militants had been allowed to launch pre-emptive attacks before the army moved against them, he said.
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