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Thanks again to Rick Rozoff - Stop NATO. there really is no end to the man's talents, from crusades to crawfish he has such a way with words ... I am told crawfish scurry about their business backwards - welcome to Planet Washington. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-404738,00.html The Times (London) September 5, 2002 Bush has a word for it, even if the dictionary doesn't >From Roland Watson in Washington FOR a man untroubled by the need for linguistic purity, President Bush surpassed even himself yesterday as he sought to portray President Saddam Hussein as a scheming and evasive dictator. Declaring that Saddam had ìcrawfishedî out of previous agreements with the United Nations, Mr Bush accused him of ìstiffing the worldî. In doing so, Mr Bush appeared to have invented a word. The verb ìto crawfishî is unknown even to slang dictionaries, although it must derive from the crawfish, or crayfish, a freshwater crustacean. According to linguistics experts, such evocative use of the word as a verb has grown in recent years in the US to describe someone who backs out of a position. Asked about the Presidentís use of the word, Ari Fleischer, his spokesman, referred to broken Iraqi commitments to disarm, adding: ìThis is what Saddam Hussein has tried his best to slither out of, as the President put it, ëto crawfish out ofí.î Mr Bush went on to say that he would use an address to the United Nations General Assembly next week ìto call upon the world to recognise that he is stiffing the worldî. In this context, the President meant cheating or duping the world. An American who has been short-changed would complain in the vernacular of being ìstiffedî. But it may be wise for Mr Bush to rethink his choice of words before he addresses the United Nations in New York on September 12. Apart from threatening to plunge the simultaneous translators into meltdown, such language feeds the image overseas of Mr Bush as a hopelessly inarticulate, trigger-happy cowboy, one that Tony Blair was at pains to say this week he regards as a parody. But it is not the first time that Mr Bush has raised eyebrows with his homespun choice of words to articulate pivotal moments in his presidency. In the days after September 11, Mr Bush referred to the 19 hijackers as ìthose folksî. When talking of al-Qaeda, he promised to ìsmoke íem outî. And in his most famous lapse into folksy rhetoric, he demanded Osama bin Laden ìdead or aliveî. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk