Christopher Hitchens is the latest pundit to try to undercut the significance of the Downing Street Minutes by suggesting (as others have) that “fix” means something different in British English than we Americans are interpreting, as in:

“C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Of course, many Brits (a few I’ve spoken to personally) have confirmed that in this context, “fixed” means exactly what we Americans think it means, like to “fix” a fight or “fix” an election. Bush was manipulating the facts and intelligence to get the conjunction of terrorism and WMD with Iraq that just wasn’t there.

However, Hitchens and others keep trying to tell us that in Britain, “fix” really just means “to organize” or to “to attach”. Meaning that Bush was merely getting his ducks in a row about the intelligence and facts, organizing and attaching that conjunction of terrorism and WMD to his case.

Ah, funny I should mention “conjunction”. As a child of the 70’s, I grew up on Schoolhouse Rock and I remember the beloved song, “Conjunction Junction, what’s your function? Hookin’ up words and phrases and clauses…” and one of those conjunctions is the word “but”.

“But” is a conjunction that means “contrary to expectations”, even in British English. When used to tie two phrases or clauses together, it signifies that the second part exists contrary to the expectations set out by the first part.

In other words, if “fix” just means “organize”, you don’t need the “But”. Like so:

“C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But The intelligence and facts were being fixed organized around the policy.”

If there were strong intelligence and facts related to terrorism and WMD, then organizing the intelligence and facts in the case for war would be a logical expectation.

However, the use of the “But” indicates that the intelligence and facts were somehow contrary to the goals of the administration. They had to be “fixed” in order to justify the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. “Fixed” like a boxer taking a dive to guarantee a pre-ordained outcome to a fight. “Fixed” like a black box voting machine to guarantee a pre-ordained outcome to an election.

If you ask me, “fixed” was spot-on. America needs plenty of petrol for its lorries and artics, eh wot, gov’nor? T’is a fair cop. The Yanks, mean with words, would have taken a rubber to that phrase if they could and then Bob’s your uncle. All this rubbish about “fixed” seems a little belts and braces, eh? These blokes better have good barristers, else there’s no brolly big enough to cover their arses this time! And Hitchens, why he’s a right Charlie, ain’t he? Puts me in a two and eight, he does.