Upon hearing the news that the U.S. may soon sit down with representatives from Syria and Iran to talk through our issues, it struck me that the phrase Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice used to describe this initiative, a "diplomatic offensive," may well be the stupidest oxymoron I've heard out of Washington since congressional deliberation. Rice didn't come up with it first, of course, it was recently used prominently by the Iraq Study Group in their love letter of realpolitik advice for President Bush.

Washington, of course, thrives on oxymorons, almost as if someone read 1984 ("War is peace;" "Freedom is slavery") and thought, That George Orwell, he really knows how to put a positive spin on things. And so we have the Internal Revenue Service (when's the last time you interacted with them and felt like you were getting a service?), and the Central Intelligence Agency (the people who didn't know squat about the Soviet Union, don't know squat about Iraq, and likely are even now burying themselves in ignorance about the next threat to world peace), and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

Oxymorons.info is a great place to find more of these little beasts. It never hurts, in wartime, to have mastered the delicate killing lingo, with phrases like friendly fire and partial cease-fire. Some would add Middle East peace process to that list.

Unfortunately, Washington is the opposite of Las Vegas, in that what happens there reverberates throughout the rest of the country. Thus doublespeak has penetrated the business world (home office, business casual, limited lifetime guarantee, and equal opportunity), as well as sports (amateur college athletics, spectator sport, and my favorite, The Fighting Quakers).

Even schools (required elective, study break) have succumbed. And let's not leave out religion, not with holy war, faith worker, and Christian Scientists.

Now that we have perfected the art of fine-tuned polling, so that experts are able to isolate specific words and phrases that seem to resonate with listeners, we can expect more oxymorons to infest the lexicon. The typical political speech these days seems little more than clusters of noble-sounding words strung together by courageous verbs. How long, really, before we hear a speech like this from a candidate:

"My fellow Americans, it is time to stand, as we run towards the goal of continued victory, with proud humility, and peacefully fight as individuals together, teaching by learning, in order to create a better tomorrow, today."

You know, I'd like to point out — proudly, yet in all humility — that I seem to have a knack for this. Perhaps I could work for the State Department.