The letters we've published in the LRB in the past weeks trying to reclaim the strong sense of the word 'bullshit' were timely, now that we're having to shield our eyes and ears from a sandstorm of official cant: the cant first of all that kept revising the motives supposedly justifying the present reprise of the Gulf War, which to no one's surprise turned out to be more and more of a humanitarian kind the nearer we came to the actual bombing and shooting; and the cant that goes with the reporting of the war, which is being waged, we're assured, with 'depravity' on one side - e.g. Mr Blair's false claim that two British soldiers had been 'executed', rather than killed in action - and with every humane consideration by the cap-à-pie armoured proponents of Shock and Awe.

LRB 17 April 2003 | PDF Download