a way to justify continued military spending in the face of every war profiteer's nightmare — peace. They replaced the War Department with the Department of Defense. No matter how many countries we have invaded over the past 60 years, an ever-expanding percentage of the federal budget is devoted to "military preparedness" in order to "maintain peace."

Perhaps the most salient example of Orwellian Newspeak entails the phrase "war on terror." Despite the fact that the concept of "war" is ordinarily reserved to armed conflicts between nation states, on Sept. 12, 2001, President Bush informed the nation that 9/11 was not merely an act of terrorism, but an act of "war." This was followed by a Sept. 27, 2001, Don Rumsfeld commentary in The New York Times that asserted this would be a "war" like no other and we should not even begin to think of an "exit strategy."

While a nation whose psyche was badly damaged with each successive, televised replay of the collapse of the twin towers blindly accepted this initial assertion, its validity was questioned by an unlikely source. The confirmation hearings of Justice Samuel Alito, author of the radically subversive "Unitary Executive" theory, produced the following colloquy:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R.S.C.: "Do you believe the attacks on 9/11 against our nation were a crime or an act of war?"

Judge Alito: "That's a hard question to answer"

Graham cut him off: "Do you doubt that our nation has been in an armed conflict with a terrorist organization since 9/11, that we have been in an undeclared state of war?"

Judge Alito: "In a lay sense, certainly we have been in a conflict with a terrorist organization. I am just concerned that, in the law, all these phrases can have particular meaning."

As a practical matter, the phrase "war on terror" borders upon a meaningless oxymoron. As noted by retired Gen. William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency: "Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war."

As a propaganda device, "war on terror" provides an especially powerful piece of Orwellian Newspeak. In "The Bush Agenda," Antonia Juhasz notes the phrase envisions a perpetual war with a "phantom menace" involving "shadowy networks of individuals": a threat that must be met "anywhere at any time, or everywhere all the time."

For more than five years, most Americans, including the so-called "leaders" of the Democratic opposition, have shown themselves incapable of questioning this basic premise. The idea that 9/11 was merely a crime — an especially heinous crime, but a crime nonetheless — has simply not entered their thought processes. Because "war" impacts the scope of executive power, an endless "war on terror" has served as a cover for massive military expenditures and an attempted permanent restructuring of our federal government so as to eliminate checks and balances in favor of dictatorial executive powers.

Long before 9/11, a neoconservative cabal — the Project for the New American Century — decided to force regime change in Iraq so as to secure a permanent American hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East. By fixing the facts and intelligence around the policy, the neoconservatives convinced America the Iraq invasion was a necessary component of the "war on terror," falsely linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida and 9/11.

They have kept Iraq within the "war on terror" frame by labeling any Iraqi who dared to take up arms to resist this illegal occupation as a "terrorist." And, in an ultimate twist, these Orwellian sociopaths have enhanced their ability to keep in harm's way the American soldiers their lies betrayed through another Orwellian phrase, "Support the troops."

— Ernest A. Canning lives in Thousand Oaks.