Language ambiguity

The military spin doctor is of much the same stripe the world over. Enter Britain's armed forces minister John Spellar trying to put the best gloss on a Ministry of Defense report about RAF accuracy rates in the Kosovo campaign. "Unaccounted for", he says "does not mean that we did not hit. What it means is we cannot say with absolute assurance that we did".

A moment, please. What that also means is we cannot say with "absolute assurance that we did not hit".

Leaving aside what these figures tell us about the likes of NATO's egregious spokesman Jamie Shea, whose breathless belligerence seemed to be everywhere at the time, it is sickening to find New Labor using language no different from the Pentagon.

DAVID JARDINE

Jakarta