He said that "extraordinary care" is taken to ensure they conform to the "law of war principles" — a phrase human rights groups say is notable in that it does not claim to actually adhere to international law.
These weren't tricky policy details - they were her supposed core principles, a phrase echoed by Keith Olbermann in his excellent Countdown segment on the gaffe.
But behind the shiny façade is a less than lustrous business: luring starry-eyed art students into taking on massive amounts of debt based on the "revolutionary principle" (Stephens' phrase) that anyone can make a career as a professional artist.
(This formulation replaced the more liberal phrase, "principles of Islam," in last- minute politicking at the loya jirga, Afghanistan's constitutional convention).
"Sources and methods are dangerous grounds"—he offered assurance that successful interrogation can and should be carried out while adhering to fundamental principles of justice a phrase that needs no air quotes.
I spoke with him on the phone from his North Carolina home, and while he danced around certain subjects—"I can't comment on the agency's approaches to things... Sources and methods are dangerous grounds"—he offered assurance that successful interrogation can and should be carried out while adhering to fundamental principles of justice a phrase that needs no air quotes.
Like many, if not all, phrases and principles related to A.A., these may sound simplistic, even silly, to people who know, without effort, how to live by them.
On the center-field scoreboard is the phrase, "Without principles, nothing can be done".
But then others pointed out that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had previously written the phrase "first principles," another term which appears in the op-ed.
What Americans did was more important than invent new principles; in the telling phrase of John Adams, "they realized the theories of the wisest writers".
