What was going through Condoleezza Rice's mind, in addition to the, "I hate you", look on her face and the, "how dare you, again, try to impugn my integrity," question mark plastered 'round her forehead, as Senator Barbara Boxer pressed ahead in her questioning of Rice during Thursday's, January 11, 2006, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing? Señorita Rice kept repeating, emphasizing in the steel blade mode look of her eyes, in blowing the smoke of impatience off her stack that the word is not, "escalation", it is not, "surge". The word is, "Augmentation", she said, with seemingly double urgency in her voice.
I wonder how Señorita Rice interprets the word, "augmentation". I know how I interpret it.
"Augmentation", to me, means an increase. It means an increase in numbers, an increase in size, an increase in pounds, an increase in.... whatever. Plain and simple. No two questions about it in my mind. But, to be sure that I was interpreting the word correctly, I went to my faithful, Webster's II, New Riverside University Dictionary, wherein I found several meanings for the words Augment and Augmentation as follows:
Augment v.-mented, menting, ments. To increase. An increase. 1. To make greater, as in size, extent or quantity: INCREASE: 2. To add and augment to – To become greater.
Augmentation: 1. a. The act or process of augmenting. b. The condition of being augmented. 2. Something that augments. 3. The repetition of a theme in notes of usually double time value.
I wondered then, and again now, why Senator Boxer did not ask Condoleezza Rice what she meant by, "Senator, it is not an Escalation. It is an Augmentation." Because it seems to be very clear to me that the word refers to an increase, and an increase refers to an escalation.
But perhaps Señorita Rice was referring to the third definition of the word, which states, The repetition of a theme in notes of usually double time value, which leads me to pose the question, was Condoleezza Rice speaking in musical terms at The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on January 11, 2006.
Was she, in her mind, blowing Barbara Boxer off the screen? Was that a Cantinflismo a/k/a Bushism that she was up to? "What on earth?!" I wondered.
Was she escaping the pressure Boxer was putting on her to explain just how this escalation was going to change matters in Iraq, by leaping into the world music just like Poppy leaps into a rage, or tears, when pressure is put on him to listen to how the world views and dislikes his son and his son's policies; did she think that by leaping into the world of music neither Boxer nor the rest of the audience could follow her? Was she, like the Bushes, mocking Senator Boxer and the Public?
Barbara Boxer kept emphasizing that the request for this surge, this escalation for more troops in Iraq was more of the same bad planning, bad judgment, bad policy which had not worked before, and she wanted to know just how it was going to work this time, who would benefit from it, and who would pay the price for it.
How ironic, that applied to Bush's request (more like his demanding tantrum) for more troops in Iraq, the definition of Augmentation, as used in musical terms, "repetition of a theme in notes of usually double time value", describes a repetition of Bush's previous theme in what has turned out to be a failure in his Occupation of Iraq, with an added note of urgency, this time, reflected even Señorita Rice's voice, connoting, at once, the refusal of the Bush administration to withdraw from their failure of Occupation and the value they place on governing those who clearly do not want to be governed by America or by The Bush Administration.
Augmentation, as it may have been used by Rice ... even seems to corroborate Boxer's augmented urgency that the need in Iraq is to withdraw troops, save lives and let the Iraqis govern themselves.
Teresa Simon-Noble is a computer activist for peace. She is a former mental health clinician. A poet and a freelance writer. Her work has been published in several online publications.
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