The New York Times' William Safire, not so very long ago, seemed more or less able to straddle his two designated tasks for the paper (serving both as its conservative conscience and its premiere linguist) while keeping a bit of respectable distance between the two roles.

Until he decided to take down Howard Dean, that is. Using the Democratic presidential candidate's words against him, of course. How ironic!

This prospect should have left any self-respecting Freeper shivering with excitement...Ann Coulter crossed with the Master Orator! Finally, conservativism balanced with level, accurate reasoning!

Nah.

Instead, we're treated to the deconstruction-that-never-was, wherein Safire mentions an incident where Howard Dean took issue with another Times reporter's usage of an "inaccurate" quote that John McCain had attributed to him in a prior story. "Inaccurate," as we all know, often means "decontextualized" in these instances.

What horrendous McCain smear was quoted in my colleague's story? Here's the passage in The Times, coming after McCain said that Dean's national security positions "are way out of the mainstream":

"For instance, Mr. McCain cited Dr. Dean's remark that `the ends do not justify the means,' in reference to the death of Saddam Hussein's sons. `I was astounded,' the senator said. `The ends were to get rid of two murdering rapist thugs and the means was the use of American military intelligence.' "

It turns out, of course, Dean's actual quote was a bit different in its intended attribution:

"Questioned about the deaths of Saddam's sons, Odai and Qusai, in Iraq, Dean dismissed suggestions that it was a victory for the Bush administration. `It's a victory for the Iraqi people...but it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war,' Dean said. `I think in general the ends do not justify the means.' "

Safire refuses to budge, however, and (flying in the face of the Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter school of attack) appears to use his tools of linguistic analysis to make his point, namely:

Dean spinmeisters will abandon their candidate's untenable "never said any such thing" and argue that the words "in general" remove the quoted sentence from an answer to the specific question about killing Saddam's sons. They will blow smoke about Dean offering a philosophical observation entirely detached from the rapists who were the subject of the question. Some partisans would buy that.

But it is not Dean's way to explain "what I meant was..." His eagerness to expunge from the record his snap judgment about the killing of Saddam's sons � to claim falsely "I never said any such thing," to suggest it is a McCain concoction, an "urban legend" � tells us that he is a man who treats a toothache by biting down on it hard.

The fact remains, however, Howard Dean's quoted language, and more particularly, the placement of clauses, indicated one thing, and one thing only: In regards to the war in Iraq (and not the death of Saddam's two sons), the ends did not justify the means. It's all right there in the initial quote: pure, simple, and very much unadulterated.

Language, after all, ultimately relies on our faith in "meaning" and "context". And when William Safire butchers that meaning and context, he doesn't do a dissection of language. He does a hatchet job.