U.S. uses ‘diplospeak’ to evade tough truths on Ukraine, other crises -McClatchey DC
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/09/223866/us-uses-diplospeak-to-evade-tough.html
Excerpt:
The U.S. brand of diplomatic doublespeak has come under scrutiny recently because revelations by anti-secrecy groups and high-profile leakers have shown the world how the United States spies and eavesdrops on even its close partners and uses highly unflattering language to describe allies, as well as foes, in in-house reports and on telephone calls.
“The WikiLeaks revelations have thrown some diplospeak statements into sharp relief when they have allowed comparison between diplomats’ classified communications to Washington with what they have said in public. But those who listen carefully to the public utterances of diplomats can usually interpret what is intended behind the words,” former Ambassador William Rugh, a 30-year Foreign Service officer who served in six Arab countries, wrote in an essay about the use of U.S. diplomatic language in reference to the Arab Spring uprisings of recent years.
The most notorious diplospeak case of those transitions involved the Egyptian military’s ouster last summer of the country’s first democratically elected president. U.S. officials took such pains to avoid calling it a coup that Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” called it “going Kama Sutra on the English language, bending words into all kinds of exciting, exotic positions before reaching a climax of meaninglessness.”
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