What a difference an ass makes!

A friend wrote,

Did you catch George Bush's latest attempt to use big words?

I wouldn't make fun of him — I don't think fancy words are a big deal and I butcher plenty myself — except he went out of his way to say that he thought Amnesty International gets its reports from people who "disassemble … pause pause pause … and that means not tell the truth" — defining it for everybody.

Except, of course, disassemble means to take apart (as in what he has done to transatlantic coalitions, the Geneva conventions) and is not dissemble which is what he did about weapons of mass destruction.

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Here's the story from the Asia Times Online

Stung by Amnesty International's condemnation of US detention facilities in Iraq and elsewhere overseas, the administration of President George W Bush is reacting with indignation and even suggestions that terrorists are using the world's largest human-rights organization.

The latest denunciation came from Bush himself during a White House press conference on Tuesday. 'I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world,' he said, and added that Washington had 'investigated every single complaint against [sic] the detainees.'

'It seemed like [Amnesty] based some of their decisions on the word and allegations by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people [who] had been trained in some instances to disassemble [sic] - that means not tell the truth,' Bush went on. 'And so it was an absurd report. It just is.'

At issue is an Amnesty report released last Thursday that assailed US detention practices. Since its release, a succession of top US administration officials and their right-wing backers in the major media has denounced the London-based group in what appears increasingly like an orchestrated effort to discredit independent human-rights critics. A similar campaign appeared to target Newsweek magazine earlier this month.

'It looks like a campaign,' Human Rights Watch (HRW) advocacy chief Reed Brody said on Tuesday. 'There's been a real drumbeat since Amnesty published the report. It seems like there's an attempt to silence critics.'

And here is a list of other sources.