UK Guardian: Like Jeeves, this Butler's first language is Euphemism

[dw]

Subtitle: Translate his report into English, and it is devastating for Blair

by Matthew Norman
Published, Saturday July 17, 2004 in the UK Guardian

...snip

When Jeeves told Bertie Wooster that the white smoking jacket he bought in Monte Carlo was "perhaps a trifle bold for London, sir", he meant that it was an abomination that would cauterise the retina at 20 paces. And when he advised Bertie that a brainwave to rescue Bingo Little's latest romance was "perhaps a touch ill-advised", this translates to "total bloody lunacy".

Thanks to his own long career in service, English is now Lord Butler's second tongue. His first is the heavily inflected Whitehall dialect known as Euphemism, and in this he is devastating. When he says, for instance, that intelligence about WMD was "fading" as war approached, he accuses the PM of suppressing the gravest doubts as savagely as his exquisite politesse permits. When he says that "more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear", he means that Mr Blair and his gang of flamsters conflated weak hearsay evidence to a disgraceful degree. And when he accepts that Mr Blair was influenced by George Bush rather than the intelligence, he accuses him of abrogating his duties to this country to ingratiate himself with another.

Forget the conclusions that on a literal reading absolve everyone of an iota of blame. Or rather, don't forget them, but imagine the mischievous grin on Lord Butler's face as he wrote them, anticipating how easily they would be translated by those with even an A-level in Euphemism. For so far from being a whitewash, this was a more lacerating assault on Tony Blair than anyone could have anticipated.

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[Miss Authoritiva]

1. Yes, Tony fell in with some ruffians.

He should have told Bush and his fellow wankers to sod off, and now he's getting blamed for Bush's big cockup. Twit.