Alibaba10100's Journal: I'll show you the "strongest terms"

The latest non-action taken by a world leader on Zimbabwe is by far the most useless. Condoleezza Rice has now explained that the US condemns Mugabe's government "in the strongest terms". In other words, not only can she not be bothered to do anything, she can't even bother to actually say anything. Instead, Condi is notifying you that if she did say something, she'd use some really strong terms. Well, Mugabe should consider himself condemned. She's going to condemn him so bad he'll have to lock himself in his room and cry for a couple hours just to get over it. What is this "in the strongest terms" bullshit? I did a little web research trying to find if I got it wrong, if that actually does mean something. If, perhaps it uses some other definition of "term". I found nothing but a bunch of worthless organizations trying to express their distaste for something without even saying anything. Here's another great bit from that story. Zimbabwe's election commission chair defended the elections saying "Some people can also describe an election held in Iraq as free and fair depending on how you evaluate". Talk about playing up the crowd! Robert Mugabe may be a terrible, murderous bastard but hey, at least he's not George Bush. The worst thing is imagining someone nodding in agreement as they read that. Disgusting.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062300484.html?nav=rss_email/components