I learned a really FUN new word today...

[libbygurl]

...it's not a 'false' statement (a lie), it's 'COUNTERFACTUAL'!

Don't you just love the obfuscating bureaucratese of it?

(spoken on today's ATC on NPR by John Pike of globalsecurity.org, while defending the use of the not-a-chemical-weapon, but merely an 'incendiary device', white phosphorus, in Fallujeh.)

[orpupilofnature57]

1. How about CASUISTRIES making light of immoral behavior, as if trite

Shrub learned them from Ronnie Ray-Gun and Poppy , Kkkarl taught him how to use them.

[Elidor]

2. Orwell would be jealous of these guys

[libbygurl]

11. Amazing & spooky how BushCo seems to use '1984' as its playbook! n/t

[DrDebug]

3. LIE just three letters and it says it all n/t

[Critters2]

4. I heard it, too!!

I thought, "What a Republican word! They've got their own language! Now if we only could find 'em a country of their own!

[wildeyed]

5. 'counterfactual'

:rofl:

How 'bout we call it what it is, a lie?

[CantGetFooledAgain]

6. Uncanny.

I heard that too, and asked myself, "wait-is that really a word?"

Then I wondered if Mr. Counterfactual isn't on propaganda detail for the department of defense, aided by a compromised shill on NPR who conveniently didn't ask any tough questions about this weapon or its use.

Then I wondered if anyone on DU would pick up on this insanity. Thanks libbygurl!

[libbygurl]

8. I was furious with NPR for not putting on another guest who would

respond to the inanities of Mr John 'Counterfactual' Pike, who is definitely a GOP/Rummy guy. How could NPR let this slide like that? And I was so happy to hear their coverage of John Murtha's actual words yesterday. Oh, well. "Fair and balanced" - hah!

[Solon]

7. Not a new word, and seems especially appropriate to attribute...

to the GOP. It is usually used by those who read or write for the genre of "Alternate History", stories where the South wins the Civil War, etc. To differentiate this type of FICTIONAL writing from kooks who write things like the Holocaust didn't happen, stupid shit like that, many have used Counterfactual History to describe the genre.

[libbygurl]

10. Positively Orwellian term, all the same. Thanks for the info. n/t

[Marr]

9. It's doubleplus ungood to question goodthink, you know.