Spit Take

I was lucky not to cover the counter with liquid when I heard this clip of Bush's comment about Amnesty International on the kitchen radio.

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.

Yes, he really said "disassemble", paused, and then went on to condescendingly define the word he meant to use, "dissemble", as if to show that, though he uses them high-falutin' Ivy-League-type words, he wants "plain folks" to know what he's saying.

I'm glad he clarified it, since I was picturing former detainees taking off their arms and other body parts and putting them in boxes, or something. That new meaning of "disassemble" comes as a surprise, though.

To their credit, the official White House website transcript has written it as spoken. The 'radio' link above will take you to the NPR story with the audio. If it won't be the same without his smirky face, you'll have to sit through the full video from the White House.

So, I'm sure I'm not the only blog out there ridiculing W on this. But, how many of them are breaking the news that "dissemble" was Dictionary.com's Word of the Day that day? Is W. trying to do a little vocab enhancement exercise? I guess he really wasn't paying attention at Yale and Harvard.

We'll leave it to the SNOOTs and logicians out there to wonder why it should be surprising that allegations of abusive treatment of those being detained should come from those who have been detained, and in what way that would undermine, rather than enhance, their credibility.

And we'll leave it to others to wonder why Amnesty International was so reliable when it talked about Saddam, but "just is" absurd when talking about Gitmo.

Just because W. can't speak, one shouldn't forget his mastery of rhetorical kitae.