I wouldn't put anything past the administrations ability to mislead through herculean attempts to abuse semantics.
From Newsday Myers denies systemic abuse of prisoners
"I would say that categorically. There is no, no evidence of systematic abuse in this system at all," Myers said on ABC's "This Week." "Torture is not one of the methods that we're allowed to use and that we use."
Later in the same article...
On CBS' "Face the Nation" Myers responded to a question about whether the abuse was a
systemic problem with an equivocal,
"I'm not sure of it. I mean, I'm not sure."
Myers said the Joint Chiefs were looking theater-wide in the Middle East, specifically at Afghanistan and Iraq where the military has detainee operations, to make sure it's not systemic.
"If we find out it is, we've got to take actions there," Myers said.
From today's gaggle...
Question: But this report says that it's more widespread --
Answer: Yeah, and that's why the Pentagon has taken a -- has a number of investigations going on right now, looking into these issues. And they are pursuing charges against individuals who may be responsible for what occurred and the president -- and they're also taking a comprehensive look at the entire prison system to make sure there's no systematic problem.
- systemic - Of or relating to systems or a system.
- systematic - Carried on using step-by-step procedures.
So if there weren't a set of written instructions on how to torture and humiliate prisoners you could say that "there is no systematic abuse" a generous parsing of this phrase would technically not be false.
If this administration hadn't already committed so much truthslaughter I wouldn't even have paid any attention to this slip-up, but this seems more than accidental to me.