The Bush years have brought us many execrable things. Conspicuous among these has been the absolute abuse of the English language beyond comprehension. I’m not talking about our favorite Bushims (like, “You work hard to put food on your family!”); I’m talking about the systematic suppression of rational thought through linguistic devices.

Essayist David Bromwich spells it all out in Euphemism and American Violence:

A group of men who think what they want to think and pay little attention to evidence have been running things; and they are guided not by experience but by words that were constructed for the purpose of deception.