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• Saturday, April 26, 2008 10:47 AM

  War is Peace the hunt for Emmanuel Goldstein

  Report: CIA Shutters Unit Leading Hunt for bin Laden

  Tuesday, July 04, 2006

  NEW YORK — The CIA says efforts to hunt down Usama bin Laden are as strong as ever, despite a report that the agency has shut down a unit that hunted for the Al Qaeda leader and his top lieutenants...

  The recent book "Ghost Wars" says some in the CIA were uncomfortable with the unit, saying its zeal for capturing bin Laden took on a cult-like atmosphere.

  ***

  "The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city.. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival."

  "It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist."

  "In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world."

  EXTRACTS FROM THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM by Emmanuel Goldstein

  "I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." - George W. Bush, June 18, 2002

  —Bill Owen Read Bill Owen's other letters
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