Quote:
Originally posted by Ramona_A_Stone
There's not one single solitary scrap of an intent to blame anyone for any event in the known world in my above post. I even rather implicitly suggested that I do not blame George for a failure to act on this document. The fact that you could read it and think, "oh, Ramona's blaming George for 911," seems completely absurd to me.
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Since much of your post was directed at my comments, I though I'd make it clear that I didn't think you were blaming George for 911. The fact that you could read my post and think that seems completely
absurd to me
Perhaps it wasn't directed at me but since we're on the subject of semantics I though I'd at least try to be clear on that
That was one thing I
did say about the point you're making...that it's just semantics. And I really think this post has everything to do with semantics.
seˇmanˇtics: The meaning or the interpretation of a word, sentence, or other language form.
The operative words are "indication" and "threat" and their interpretation. George says there was no new information. He already knew that stuff in the memo. If he already knew, how could the memo possibly be the
indicator of a threat? It wasn't. It didn't indicate anything to old George. Not if he already knew that stuff.
It is clear that the memo warned of a terrorist threat. Yet George says "The memo was no indication of a terrorist threat". I can accept that, particularly with his qualification and use of the word 'indication'. It's not a great choice of words and it could be clearer, but his intended meaning is clear enough. And when intended meaning is clear enough, the rest is just semantics.