Make no mistak (II)

Make no mistake. Make no mistake. This phrase is of common usage in George Bush's speeches, was used by Paul Martin, and has become pervasive in polemic speech. I have no doubt that it is sometimes useful in speeches. But the use of "make no mistake" in written articles (such as Jim Travers article in the Star) is pure bunk. Those guys get paid by the word. I expect better than "make no mistake".

Rest assured, I am not in the habit of making mistakes. What some people call mistakes, I call unforeseen innovations. The construction "make no mistake" is a space filler. It is the equivalent of putting three exclamation marks in a row to get the reader's attention.

Writers who use this construction had better not be paid by the word, because those words are not worth anything.

Do readers read "make no mistake", and say to themselves; "oh, whew, I almost made a mistake there.... Good thing he warned me not to make a mistake." I don't think so. "Make no mistake" is another George Bush speech writer construction that the world can do without.

You could probably replace the phrase with "Make no Iraq".