Is There A "Mr. Orwell" In The House?

Brig. General Janis Karpinski is in charge of the 4,400 "security detainees" (her phrase) "scooped up" (Donald H. Rumsfeld's phrase) in Iraq.

"It's not that they don't have rights," explains Karpinski, but because these detainees "have fewer rights" than prisoners of war, this new classification (which Rumsfeld "can't explain") gives the military the "a right to interview them" that it doesn't have with prisoners of war.

This semantic switcheroo, which we'll recall has also been used to deprive "illegal combatants" of the rights of prisoners of war, should come in handy in future as well.

Watch for something like the following to soon be uttered to by His Holiness, John Ashcroft, for example: "We've scooped up all the niggers and reclassified them as 'Security Detainees'. Never fear, they still have rights. But the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not among these rights. So, into the fucking ovens they go."

Posted by Eddie Tews at September 24, 2003 03:21 PM