Robert Fisk 34

'Robert Fisk: Blair's lies and linguistic manipulations

My Dad used to call people like Blair a 'twerp'. But I fear he is a vicious little man
By great good fortune, I studied linguistics at Lancaster University. Indeed, I read the books of Noam Chomsky, many years before he became a good friend of mine; to be honest, when I read his work, I thought Chomsky was dead. What a pleasure, therefore, to discover that he shared my world - and my views on Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara.
But I have to admit a moment of regret this weekend. Lord Blair is going from us. His self-serving memoirs will, of course, remind us of his God-like view of himself (and, heaven spare me, we share the same publishers) but I doubt if Chomsky's "foregrounded elements" will save him. A "foregrounded element" was something unusual, a phrase placed in such a way that it warned us of a lie to come.
Take George Tenet, the CIA Ernest Borgnine lookalike who sat behind Colin Powell when the US Secretary of State was uttering all those lies about weapons of mass destruction in February of 2003. It now turns out that George is mightily upset with the White House. He didn't refer to evidence of WMD as a "slam dunk", he says - a basketball phrase which I don't need to explain. He was talking about the ability of the US government to persuade the American people to go to war based on these lies. In other words, he wasn't lying to the American president. He was only lying to the American people.'

Lees verder: http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2559969.ece