Synonyms mean the same thing!

Lately, I have begun to notice a distressing trend in the use of synonyms in circumventing basic human rights in The United States. One really sticks in my head and it comes from the Military Commissions Act signed into law late last year. The phrase is "enemy combatant".

Before I go on, this is the definition of synonym according to the Freesearch British English Dictionary.

a word or phrase which has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or phrase in the same language

The basic gist is that anyone deemed to be an enemy combatant can be incarcerated indefinitely, without trial, without legal representation, without the opportunity to face their accuser and on here say alone! And let's not forget torture... I mean discomfiture tactics.

By exchanging prisoner with enemy combatant, the US is able to bypass both their own constitution as well as The Geneva Convention. Nobody, it seems, has called the current administration on what seems to be an obvious point.

Another case in point, earlier this year when Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was being grilled on the possible surge of troops in Iraq, she refused to call it a "troop surge" but instead, insisted on calling it a "troop augmentation"

Are elected officials getting dumber and dumber? Instead of arguing the facts, they were arguing the word, not realising that word meant the same damn thing!