UPDATED - ColdType

EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
ANOTHER WAR OF WORDS
THE Terror Era has not only radicalized our domestic
politics and foreign policies, but it has infected
our language. Our vocabulary has undergone a
paradigm shift along with government policies.
Academics call it “social construction.”
Conversations are now peppered with terms we
rarely heard or thought much about before 9/11.
(Before 9/11, no one even marked dates that way.
Sure there was 24/7 but that’s not the same.) Few
of our “new” words are new – but the frequency of
usage certainly is. Words are weapons or their
extensions and often used as such. Many are the
lethal offspring of an alphabet of anguish, a lexicon
of slanted war speak. Orwell would have been right
at home, but for the rest of us, it is often uncomfortable
finding these terms bubbling up almost
involuntarily from within. “News language” has a
way of fusing with our own language in the same
way that babies absorb the lingo, accents and
phrasing of their parents. What we hear again and
again in the media embeds itself in the inner voice.
We recycle what is repeated. Pavlov understood
this more than Orwell, but never mind.
So here is an armchair linguist and news dissector’s
A-Z in progress. Help me fill in the blanks.
A – Allah, Axis, Assets, Alert; ABC-Atomic Biological
Chemical, Anthrax, Aluminum Tubes, Al
Samud Missiles; Al-Jazeera, AAR (after action
report), amphetamines, (supplied to exhausted
pilots who bomb Canadian allies in friendly fire
incidents in Afghanistan).
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B – Breaking News, Bio-Terror, Baghdad, Basra,
“Black Hawk Down,” Box Cutter, Botchilinum,
Burka, Ba’ath Party, Bush “Doctrine”.
C – Caves, Condoleeza, cells (of the sleeper and
awake varieties), CC (Central Command); Centriguges,
Clash of Civilizations, Crusade, CNNeffect,
Collateral Language (or damage, collateral),
Combatants, illegal, Chicken Hawk, C2 -
command and control, Civil Liberties (Huh?).
D – Duct Tape, Desert Spring, Delta Force,
Detainees, Dirty Bomb, Democracy (in Iraq, not
the U.S.), Drones, Daisy Cutters, (not be confused
with the country called Cutter but spelled Qatar),
Dead or Alive, Disarmament (them, not us).
E – Embed, Embedded, Evil, Evildoer, Evil, Axis
of, E-bomb.
F – Fundamentalism, Foreign Fighters, Friendlies
(the soldiers we like), Fights Back (as in
America), Franks (Tommy), Food for Oil, Freedom
Fries (in lieu of French fries).
G – Ground Zero, Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay,
Geneva Conventions (now irrelevant), Geraldo
(see force of nature).
H – Homeland, Homicide Bombers, Hamas,
Hizbollah, Holy War, House to House, HinduKush,
Hazmats, Haj, Halliburton (rarely mentioned),
Human Rights (no longer relevant).
I – Infidel, Inspections, IAEA, IO (Information
Operations as in “Information is the Currency of
Victory”), IDF, Imam, Interrogate, Interrogation,
Islamabad, ISI ( Pakistan Intelligence), Intifada
(again), Infant Mortality, Imperialism (word not