Losing the War on Terror, Mr. Bush?

[AlpineK]

Losing the war on

[gotterdamerung]

The war you are calling a war on terrorism is evolving into the de facto 4th World War (I am hearing more and more the Cold War referred to as the 3rd conflict). Iran and Syria are directly responsible for the growing insurgency in Iraq, for provocative attacks on Israel, and attempting to further destabilize the middle eastern region. The Soviet Union is courting Iran on many levels. Europe, most notably France and Germany, are doing everything they can to insure the failure of regime change in Iraq. Everything you know or think you know should begin to become an understanding that the United States is becoming one of the most isolated countries in the world. Being devisive, putting the US down, or following some of the current liberal thought processes only strengthens the resolve of our enemies. If anything, 9/11 and the Iraq war, have shown the wolves in sheeps clothing who's sole purpose is to dethrone the one remaining superpower in the world. Lofty morals and ideals will crumble once you begin to realize that the world has changed 100% in the last 3 years and we are now in a fight for our position in the world. Back your soldiers, call your leaders to task for their actions, educate yourselves with more than news sources. Don't assume that a pullback will guarantee anything right now. Rather it will excerbate the problems we face. Look for books written by non aligned intelligence assets regarding the real reasons behind what is going on. Stop bashing Israel mindlessly, and realize that their fate is closely tied to yours. Look for the causes rather than the responses of their actions. They are more often than not provoked by Iranian, Syrian, and many well financed terrorists. They are under the threat of hundreds of long range ballistic conventional munitions and surrounded on all sides by fanatical corrupt regimes.

 

Face the fact that although Saddam and Iraq did not play a direct role in the 9/11 attacks that they did indeed play a major role in international terrorism. There are other organizations besides Al Qaeda. Face the fact that the whole WMD question has become politicized and that inside the intelligence community it is well known that most of the WMD assets were shifted inside Syria prior to the war beginning. That issue has been quelled and we have taken it up the ass because of the wranglings of our so called European allies.

 

I am deeply troubled by the lack of understanding of the average American regarding the current situation at hand. When I return home I become aware of the arrogance and isolation that most Americans exude. The world is rapidly changing and for most of you at home, it is still not visible. It is a far away problem shared by only a small few in a large population. More and more when I come home though I find the war affecting families who's sons, daughters, fiances, husbands, fathers, mothers have gone overseas to answer the call to duty. A noble calling which fell into disrepair during an unpopular war in another far away country. This era however is much different. The bombs are already falling in the US, and for most that was already an event that occurred on a far shore. There will be more attacks. Wake up now.

[jjd]

http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=irregardless

 

"usage Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead. "

 

Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irregardless

irregardless

 

adverb US NOT STANDARD

 

http://www.freesearch.co.uk/dictionary/irregardless

 

[Q] From Randall E Larson in Tuscon: “I have more than once seen the corruption irregardless used in some standard writings and with a straight face. Has it become acceptable?”

[A] The word is thoroughly and consistently condemned in all American references I can find. But it’s also surprisingly common. It’s formed from regardless by adding the negative prefix ir-; as regardless is already negative, the word is considered a logical absurdity.

It’s been around a while: the Oxford English Dictionary quotes a citation from Indiana that appeared in Harold Wentworth’s American Dialect Dictionary of 1912. And it turns up even in the better newspapers from time to time: as here from the New York Times of 8 February 1993: “Irregardless of the benefit to children from what he calls his ‘crusade to rescue American education,’ his own political miscalculations and sometimes deliberate artlessness have greatly contributed to his present difficulties”.

But, as I say, it’s still generally regarded by people with an informed opinion on the matter as unacceptable. The Third Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary states firmly that “the label ‘nonstandard’ does not begin to do justice to the status of this word” and “it has no legitimate antecedents in either standard or nonstandard varieties of English”. Some writers even try to turn it into a non-word, virtually denying its existence, which is pretty hard to do in the face of the evidence. The level of abuse hurled at the poor thing is astonishingly high, almost as great as that once directed at hopefully. It seems to have become something of a linguistic shibboleth.

That’s strange because, as Professor Laurence Horn of Yale University points out, the duplication of negative affixes is actually quite common in English. Few users query words such as debone and unravel because they are so familiar. In earlier times there were even more such words, many recorded from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: unboundless, undauntless, uneffectless, unfathomless and many others.

Grammarians of the eighteenth century and after—who had a greater sense of logic than feel for the language—did much to stamp them out. They argued that, in language as in mathematics, two negatives make a positive: putting two negatives together cancels them out. This has been the basis for condemnation of statements like “I never said nothing to nobody”, which aren’t standard British or American English. But in many other languages—and in some local or dialectal forms of English both today and in earlier times—multiple negatives are intensifiers, adding emphasis.

Irregardless has a fine flow about it, with a stronger negative feel than regardless that some people obviously find attractive. Indeed, the stress pattern of the word probably influenced the addition of the prefix, as the stress in regardless is on gar, which makes it sound insufficiently negative, despite the -less suffix.

So the precedents are all on the side of irregardless and—despite the opinions of the experts—I suspect that the word will become even more popular in the US in the future. For the moment, though, it is best avoided in formal writing.

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2004.

All rights reserved. Contact the author for reproduction requests.

Comments and feedback are always welcome.

Page created 24 July 1999; last updated 14 August 1999.

 

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-irr1.htm

 

Irregardless is still not a word (unless you want to sound ign'ant).

[Skeezix]

There's all sorts of nonstandard speech tics that annoy. The usage that's been bugging me lately has to do with the difference between COUNT and AMOUNT. On CBC Radio today, a med school student was talking on the topic of the shortage of M.D.'s going into family practice. He spoke of the workload in terms of "...the large amount of patients doctors see each day." --See the problem with that construction? And that's the way it usually goes wrong: the speaker uses "amount" when he should use "number". Drives me crazy.

[Dru]

The English language is an amazing evolving thing and that's why we don't prithee and thou like in ye olden days. Thou base cowards that wouldst hide thine heads in ye sand and pretend newly coined verbiage or sesquipedalian malapropisms are somehow of ruder stock are elitist prigs methinks. And y'all can't represent like l33t haxxors. Dig?

[willstrickland]

There's all sorts of nonstandard speech tics that annoy....He spoke of the workload in terms of "...the large amount of patients doctors see each day." --See the problem with that construction? And that's the way it usually goes wrong: the speaker uses "amount" when he should use "number".

 

Hey, maybe he really meant "amount" of patients, we do have an obesity problem in this country.

[Skeezix]

I don't have a problem with the evolving nature of the language ...or the fact that correctness is determined by popular usage. My example had to do with the confusion of COUNT and AMOUNT. Doesn't this sentence sound odd even to thine open-mindedness: "There was a large amount of climbers milling around at the base of the climb."

[gotterdamerung]

You guys should do the world a favor and simply blow your brains out.

[Skeezix]

Or how 'bout "I could care less."

[Skeezix]

You guys should do the world a favor and simply blow your brains out.

I don't own a gun.

[Dru]

I don't have a problem with the evolving nature of the language ...or the fact that correctness is determined by popular usage. My example had to do with the confusion of COUNT and AMOUNT. Doesn't this sentence sound odd even to thine open-mindedness: "There was a large amount of climbers milling around at the base of the climb."

 

Yes it does sound odd cause You should preferably say "There WERE a large amount of climbers etc etc." The conceit that a collective noun itself is singular is soo 20th c. No if you will excuse me I have to dethaw a turkey

[gotterdamerung]

You guys should do the world a favor and simply blow your brains out.

I don't own a gun.

 

Choke yourself.

[sailBOI]

REGARDING THIS ORIGIONAL THREAD , LOOK HERE FOR CLARIFICATION ON GWB :

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/366828/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1

[Skeezix]

You guys should do the world a favor and simply blow your brains out.

I don't own a gun.

Choke yourself.

Can't. I'm left-handed.

[Dru]

you can't choke yourself. your grip slackens when you fall unconscious.

 

you can always bite thru your tongue and die from the blood loss though!

[murraysovereign]

The usage that's been bugging me lately has to do with the difference between COUNT and AMOUNT. On CBC Radio today, a med school student was talking on the topic of the shortage of M.D.'s going into family practice. He spoke of the workload in terms of "...the large amount of patients doctors see each day."

 

Hmmm... you sure it was the CBC? From what I've always been told, if he was Canadian he'd have said "the large amoont of patients doctors see each day."

 

Maybe they were interviewing some foreigner with a funny accent?

[sailBOI]

 

OK, he seems to not be too bright, but he is smart enough to DRIVE THE LIBERALS CRAZY !

 

"New York Post columnist John Podhoretz has equal amounts of love for George W. Bush and scorn for Bush's prominent liberal critics. In this energetic defense of the president, he paints a picture of Bush as being much cagier and politically clever than some of the more well-known voices on the left give him credit for."

 

http://hallnonfiction.com/store/books_0312324723_Bush-Country--How-Dubya-Became-a-Great-President-While-Driving-Liberals-Insane.html

[slothrop]

Cross-posting is for losers.

[sailBOI]

Cross-posting is for losers.

 

How are you going to ride you bike to the movie tonight if your foot is hurt ?

Please put honesty first prior to calling others losers