Word: pentagonal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Nouri al-Maliki has maintained a studied silence; Ali al-Dabbagh, his official spokesman, told TIME the government has no comment on the latest accusations. But an official in the Prime Minister's office questioned the credibility of U.S. intelligence, pointing to recent reports of evidence-fudging at the Pentagon in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. "They need a scapegoat, so they conveniently point to their old enemy, Iran," said the official, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to talk to the media. "But these days American intelligence is a discredited commodity...
...been a magnificent season for gaffes. Consider just the past couple of weeks: Barbara Boxer ostensibly dissed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for not having an "immediate family." A hapless Pentagon official named Charles Stimson called on American corporations to fire any law firm that represented terrorist suspects. An actor on Grey's Anatomy used the word faggot at the Golden Globe awards in the course of denying that he had used this word about another member of the cast in October. French President Jacques Chirac said it wouldn't be so bad if Iran got a nuclear bomb...
...apology is almost inevitable. These are the varieties. Stimson of the Pentagon took the false-impression route: he is so sorry that some people might have inexplicably got the impression that he meant what he obviously did mean when he said what he said. The Grey's Anatomy actor, Isaiah Washington, chose the therapeutic option. He can neither "defend nor explain" what he said, and "there are issues I obviously need to examine within my own soul," and on and on. "Can I stop now?" you can almost hear him pleading to his bosses at ABC. "No!" they reply with...
...gaffology is getting out of hand. An obviously unintended misstatement is significant only if you think the speaker has accidentally revealed something true about himself or herself. It ought to reinforce some pre-existing suspicion: Bush's Pentagon doesn't care about civil liberties, or Chirac is losing his marbles. One TV commentator, trying to explain his ginned-up outrage over Boxer, accused her of thinking that a black woman can't be Secretary of State without children--a form of prejudice so convoluted that I doubt anyone actually suffers from...
...move to outsource government, begun under Ronald Reagan and accelerated during the Clinton years, has been a spectacular boon to northern Virginia. The once green region offered land, few restrictions on business and a transport hub in Dulles International Airport. The presence of the Pentagon, that greatest of cash-spewing economic-development engines, was the clincher...