Cospeak is nothing less than Doublespeak

April 14, 2008 by PraetorOne · 4 Comments 

COSPEAK IS NOTHING LESS THAN DOUBLESPEAK
The Convoluted Language of Crocker and Petreus
By PraetorOne and ReasonOne

I don’t know about you, but I am constantly amazed by our corporate, right wing media as they continue to misrepresent the relationship between Army General David Petreus and George W. Bush. It seems as if you can’t turn on our TV, read a paper, or open a website but what you’re told that General Petreus is offering an opinion as to what President Bush should do in Iraq. This of course is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. General Petreus is hardly offering an objective opinion based on a critical observation of the facts. Instead, he is doing what he has been hired to do. He is serving as an obedient mouth piece for the administration which selected him to offer a biased opinion in the first place.

Equally obnoxious is Ambassador Crocker, a semi-literate lout who can barely express himself without tripping over and “uh”, an “and-ah,” or an “ahhhmmm.” Both Petreus and Crocker are dangerous, but if Crocker is an embarrassment who can hardly put together a simple sentence, Petreus is the more dangerous of the two because he not only understands the English language, he also knows how to use the English language to mislead and prevaricate.

In a recent article by Dick Cavett (Memo to Petreus and Crocker: More Laughs Please) Cavett points out that Petreus doesn’t use English as much as he does Cospeak, a bastardization of the English Language which substitutes complicated language with big words in an attempt to make the unacceptable sound acceptable. You just have to give Petreus credit. Not only is he a spokesperson for the Administration, a propaganda tool for the Bush Administration, he also knows how to tell the truth in language so that the average Joe won’t know what he’s talking about. According to Cavett:

Petraeus uses “challenge” for a rich variety of things. It covers ominous developments, threats, defeats on the battlefield and unfound solutions to ghastly happenings. And of course there’s that biggest of challenges, that slapstick band of silent-movie comics called, flatteringly, the Iraqi “fighting forces.” (A perilous one letter away from “fighting farces.”) The ones who are supposed to allow us to bring troops home but never do.
Petraeus’s verbal road is full of all kinds of bumps and lurches and awkward oddities. How about “ongoing processes of substantial increases in personnel”?
Try talking English, General. You mean more soldiers

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