Sanum Ghafour lifts the lid on how the language of war uses clean words to cover up atrocious deeds. "If I had a pound for every time Tony Blair used the term 'regime change' ", she says, "I could probably afford to buy a weapon of mass destruction."

"The frightening thing about the use of euphemisms is their power to efface the memory of actual cruelties. Behind the façade of a history falsified by language, the painful particulars of war are lost." -David Bromwich