In a recent article in The Pilot, I indicated deep concern about the Bush administration's use of Orwellian newspeak and doublethink (i.e., the invention of a word or the changing of languages as a form of mind control).

In that article, I gave as an example the word Islamo-Fascist which is a contradiction and is meaningless. Another would be "activist judge." We are supposed to dislike them, but what judge isn't active.

An English word being displaced is torture. In its place is "alternative interrogation techniques." How benign is that?

This last week, the Bush group outdid themselves. The Agriculture Department issued a statement that the 11 million Americans who live in poverty do not suffer from hunger. They just have "very low food security." Imagine that, hunger wiped out with the stroke of a pen.

If hunger can disappear like that, what is next -- death? I can see it now: At a White House press conference, Bush announces there are no dead in America. We have residents who merely suffer from a severely restricted mobility syndrome.

H. Adrian Osborne

Pinehurst