A Better Place To Live In - A web project

[Celso Alvarez Cáccamo]

(Please excuse cross-postings).

Dear all,

I am requesting contributions for a simple, collaborative web project.

US President Bush and other high officials have repeatedly stated after the 
ousting of Saddam Hussein that "The world is now a better place to live 
in", or other variants ("...without Saddam Hussein"). This was partially 
echoed, for example, by Spain's ex-president Aznar ("El mundo está mejor 
sin Saddam Hussein"), and, I believe, by the defeated Popular Party 
candidate Mariano Rajoy during the elections campaign.

I was intrigued by the meaning (?) of Bush's statement, and wrote a short 
pseudo-pragmatic-ideological-political commentary of it, basically for 
myself. But then I thought I'd like to understand the meaning of Bush's 
words much better.

I wonder if anyone has made any analysis on the statement, either on paper 
or in their minds. I would like to invite anyone to write a 
text/interpretation/analysis/commentary on the statement(s) as heard by 
public figures, in any language, for a web site where we could place them 
and check for common interpretations to see whether we are all crazy, 
whether we think too much about language, or whether the various brands and 
practitioners of discourse analysis can independently arrive at reasonably 
shared interpretations of a simple statement (these "whether"s are not 
mutually exclusive ;-) ) .

This is not a grandiose project, and the texts don't need to be finished 
pieces of (high) academic discourse: any approach, any language, any length 
(my text is only 2 and a half single-spaced pages, in English). All texts 
received will be uploaded to the web site. The only requirement is for the 
texts to somehow discuss the various elements of the statement as it was 
produced (or its variants): the world as a better place (to live in) (now) 
(without Saddam), etc. My main role will be that of setting up the web 
pages and keep you posted.

Those of you who wish to contribute, please email the text directly to me, 
and as soon as I have a couple of analyses-commentaries I'll set up the web 
page. If there are enough of them, who knows what can be done with them 
later. And if anyone finds any such analysis on the Internet, please let me 
know.

I hope at least a few people like the project. If we're only two or three, 
well, we can exchange these texts among ourselves and go on to something else.

Thank you!,

-celso
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo
lxalvarz at udc.es
http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac