i heard a piece on the bbc this morning about general atomics...industry leader in drone manufacturing whose pr people do not like te moniker "drone"...it is redolent of male bees who have a reputation as mindless drudges ( a concept pertaining to males that seems to be readily applied across species by some...but we verge on political incorrectness here..back to the lead-lined personal journal with that )and so implying that the targeting done by said drones is somewhat less than fail-safe at best ( one would need to ask a pakistani in the tribal area bout the efficacy of targeting...and one wonders what the federal response would be to say chinese drones in u s airspace...but, once again, we venture into waters bound to be offensive to some )...so general atomics wants us to call them something like "remotely operated aircraft" so the name can pass into the realm of bureaucratic euphemism and obfuscation and the "special vocabulary" that dulls the discourse...control the language and you frame the debate...goebbles understood this and so do his heirs..of course general atomics calls their drones "the predator' and "the reaper" which immediately calls the entire project into serious question...obamaland called them drones in his state of the union message...if it is good enough for the commander-in-chief then who am i to question it? drones it is.
