Reply #105: Isn't Safire supposed to be a linguistic stickler?

[stickdog]

What a hypocrite.

He knows perfectly well that the words "in general" taken together with the quote's context most certainly DO remove the quoted sentence from an answer to the specific question about killing Saddam's sons.

Look at the context of Dean's quote:

`It's a victory for the Iraqi people . . . but it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war,' Dean said. `I think in general the ends do not justify the means.'

Certainly the educated linguist Safire must know that Dean was not talking about Saddam's sons -- as McCain disingenuously contended -- but the Iraqi War in general when he said that "in general, the ends do not justify the mean."

So what the hell is Mr. Safire's issue again -- other than the fact that he is a raging hypocrite and that the next time he writes a boring throwaway about one of his linguistic pet peeves that we should toss it into the garbage?