Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the ugliest phrase to enter the English language last year was "extraordinary rendition". To those of us who love words, this phrase's brutalisation of meaning is an infallible signal of its intent to deceive....
Language, too, has laws, and those laws tell us this new American usage is improper — a crime against the word. Every so often the habitual newspeak of politics throws up a term whose calculated blandness makes us shiver with fear — yes, and loathing.
—Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British novelist and essayist, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 10, 2006
