Take the Quiz on the Bush Administration's War of the Words

By Tom Engelhardt and Nicholas Turse, Tomdispatch.com. Posted June 18, 2007.

From "mission accomplished" through those endless "turning points" and "tipping points" up to the "brink" of "the abyss" and "the precipice," and back again, American officials, military and civilian, in Baghdad and Washington, have never spared the images or the analogies. (Do you remember when our President and Secretary of Defense, for instance, were eagerly talking about taking those "training wheels" off the Iraqi "bicycle" and letting the Iraqi child pedal on his own into Democracy-land?) Reality be damned, they've had a remarkable way, over the last four years, of turning phrases and pretzeling language to suit their needs and the needs of a war that existed largely in their imaginations rather than on the ground. In recent months, backs against the verbal wall, these spinmeisters have begun spinning ever more wildly -- mixing metaphors, grasping at rhetorical straws, and stretching credulity at every turn, if not turning point.

In an effort to analyze this latest surge of sophistry -- a war of words always fought with the "home front" in mind -- we've come up with a short quiz that places genuine quotes from actual military commanders and Washington officials alongside quotes we've spun from our own questionable brains. We challenge you to pick the real ones. Did an American general in Iraq liken the situation there to a pogo stick, a teeter-totter, a slinky, or a jungle gym? It's your choice. Did George Tenet's "slam dunk" line inspire current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to use basketball analogies, when speaking of "security" in the Middle East, or did he flee to the football field of life?

Take this TomDispatch quiz and see if you can guess which quotes are too wild, or not wild enough, for the battling bureaucrats of the Bush administration. Let's start with a warm-up round:

1. At his January confirmation hearings, General David Petraeus, readying himself to command the President's "troop surge" in Baghdad and al-Anbar Province, promised to offer Congress periodic reports on how the plan was proceeding. No dates were offered. Within months, however, this vague promise had morphed into a specific September report to Congress and has now become a focus of endless, near-obsessional media attention and questions.

Is this September report regularly referred to as:

A. A Disaster Report

B. A Regress Report

C. A Baghdad Report

D. A Progress Report

The answer, of course, is D. And now that "victory" -- a word the President once used 15 times in a single speech -- has left the administration's fighting language, think of "progress" as the second team of words. No matter how badly things are going, "progress" (or its lack) remains the frame of reference for U.S. officials -- and for reporters asking questions. Typically, in a May 31st press briefing, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, Petraeus's second-in-command in Baghdad, and the reporters questioning him, managed to use the word no less than 23 times. ("We've made some very clear progress.... Anbar's economic and political progress.... But progress has been made.... Every day we are making progress…")

Now, let's make the questions just a tad harder.

2. Spokesman for the American military command in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, was recently asked about "progress" in the "Baghdad security situation." He responded:

A. "Progress will not be like flipping a light switch -- it will be gradual, it will be nuanced, it will be subtle."

B. "Progress is going to seem like a balky jeep. It will stall, it will kick, but sooner or later it will lurch forward."

C. "Progress isn't like a faucet. You can't just turn it on and get hot water."

D. "Progress will not be like a cruise missile. You can't just fire and forget."

The answer is A -- and, by the way, General Bergner, the last one out of Baghdad, please turn off the lights. (Oh, sorry, we never got them on in the first place.)

See more stories tagged with: iraq, bush administration, language, quiz

Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture. Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for TomDispatch.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from War on Iraq! Sign up now »