Bristol Hypnotherapy, NLP & EFT

As both a public service and an exercise in spotting deception, I am presenting the following examples of politicians' spin.  They will be updated as and when I spot (and am incensed by) them.

I found out recently that I'm not the only person reporting on political spin.  Spinsanity.org looks like a great site.

Blair in reference to his anti-terror Commons defeat

"Weakness is not the way to defeat [terrorism]"

This is masterful. What he has actually said is perfectly true and reasonable...
... unlike what he deliberately implies: that the Tories are weak on terror, the country is weakened and that the terrorists now see us as a soft target.

President George W Bush on authorisation of prisoner torture

"The authorization I issued was that anything we did would conform to U.S. law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations,"

"The authorization"?  Which?  All this describes is one of the authorisations Bush might have issued.

'CNN obtained a copy of the March 6, 2003, report, which said that in detaining al Qaeda and Taliban members, the United States was not bound by prohibitions against torture in the Geneva Conventions. Asked whether he has seen the memos, Bush replied,

"I can't remember if I've seen the memo or not."'

Ahh, the old favourite.  See below.

 

Condoleeza Rice, 9/11 commission testimonial

The fact that Rice was initially avoiding testifying gives us a strong hint that she has something to hide.  Her job in this interview is to reveal as little as possible that is damaging to her or her government.  If she is found out to have lied, her political career will be over.

"The fact is that this August 6th PDB was in response to the president's questions about whether or not something might happen or something might be planned by al Qaeda inside the United States. He asked because all of the threat reporting or the threat reporting that was actionable was about the threats abroad, not about the United States."

"...in response to..." means that anybody involved with the memo was partly responding to Bush's questions. "...all of the threat reporting or the threat reporting that was actionable..." - the repetition was presumably correcting a lie.  What does actionable mean?

Condoleeza Rice: "I don't remember the al Qaeda cells being something that we were told we needed to do something about," "To the best of my knowledge this kind of analysis ... actually was never briefed to us."

Qualifiers such as "I don't remember" and "To the best of my knowledge" obviously prevent the speaker from being caught in a lie.  They are almost meaningless.

Condoleeza Rice: no one "pushed anybody to twist the facts."

Embellishment.  Had she said "no-one asked anybody to mislead the public about Iraq" then we might have a meanlingless statement.

 

Ex-US President Bill Clinton: "I did not have sex with that woman... Monica Lewinsky."

It is rare that people will outright lie.  They will embellish, be honest about something else and/or distract.

Here is an embellishment. "I did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky" would have been more direct.  It's possible Clinton was being honest and talking about a different woman too. The issue about whether sex includes blow jobs is a side issue.

Political Spin