I dissemble that remark, or yet another example of Bush being a buffoon.

I have tried unsuccessfully to find some clever way to approach this post. Instead, I found that I cannot mask my contempt, so I am going to start with this: George W. Bush is an arrogant embarrassment. I am so damn tired of having a President who continually misuses and abuses the English language. It is not cute. It is not charming. It is also not an occasional event. He makes blatantly stupid errors at a regular rate.

Let's look at an example from Bush's press conference of May 31, 2005. Bush was asked about the highly critical Amnesty International report on Guantanamo Bay, and he had this to say:

In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is.

(emphasis added). I did not know that "disassemble" means "not tell the truth." And there's a good reason for that. According to Dictionary.com, "disassemble" has three meanings: "to take apart, to come apart, and to break up in random fashion." According to Merriam-Webster Online, "disassemble" means "to come apart" or "disperse and scatter." None of those meanings are remotely close to "not tell the truth." Perhaps the word Bush was trying to use was "dissemble." Dictionary.com also has three definitions of "dissemble:" "1. To disguise or conceal behind a false appearance; 2. To make a false show of; feign;" and "3. To disguise or conceal one's real nature, motives, or feelings behind a false appearance." Merriam-Webster says that the term means "to hide under a false appearance" or "to put on the appearance of," and gives examples of intransitive senses: "to put on a false appearance; conceal facts, intentions, or feelings under some pretense." Thus, while "dissemble" is not exactly the same as "not tell the truth," it certainly is much closer to that meaning than "disassemble."

In any event, there is no way that "disassemble" in any way means "not tell the truth." And yet ol' George stopped down the whole proceeding to explain that "disassemble" does have that meaning. Take a look at video (available via the link for the press conference), and notice that Bush's tone was "I know some of you might not know what this term means, so I will take the time to do you a service and explain it."

Back in 1983, SMU played Houston in the Mirage Bowl in Tokyo, and, of course, the Mustang Band was there. The night before the game, the Mitsubishi Corporation threw a huge, formal dinner for the delegations from both schools. The U of H chancellor gave a speech which was really dignified and gracious. After that, the SMU president gave a speech, during which he thanked the party's hosts by attempting to say the Japanese word for "Thank you," arigato. Instead, he left out the "g" and said "ariato." In spite of the facts that every table came stocked with practically an entire bar of free adult beverages and most of us had by that time sampled practically every such adult beverage, when we heard our president mispronounce that word, we all cringed. It was a really embarrassing moment. However, at least he made a mistake with a foreign language, he was the president of only one university, and the audience was limited to several hundred people.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, is the freakin' President of the United States. He cannot even properly use words in his own language, and then he has the gall to incorrectly define words in his own language.

What an embarrassment...