Alberto Gonzales has added softspeak, a modification of newspeak, to the Orwellian lexicon, although Sen. Joe Biden had another term for it: "Pure malarkey!" That's how Biden, fed up with Gonzalez's lack of candor, characterized the Attorney General nominee's testimony in this morning's Senate hearing. (A big tip of the hat, too, to Sen. Ted Kennedy for not pussyfooting around.)

Here's how softspeak works: Asked by Sen. Pat Leahy whether he believes in holding policy makers accountable for their decisions — in this case military and civilian leaders who condoned torture — Gonzalez replied: "If there's an allegation that we've done something wrong, we investigate it." He then listed a handful of investigations into the torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other military detention camps. What Gonzalez failed to say was that, of the "requisite half-dozen investigations, none [were] empowered to touch those who devised the policies," as Mark Danner writes this morning in "We Are All Torturers."

Newspeak, you may recall, is the official language of Oceania and is commonly defined as ambiguous and contradictory language that deliberately misleads and manipulates the public. Thus softspeak may be defined as direct and unambiguous language that nonetheless deliberately misleads and manipulates the public to draw a false conclusion — in this case, that he and the Bush regime believe in accountability.

Postscript: Now that I've checked the CNN account of the hearing and The New York Times account (as of 2:15 p.m. ET), I see that both ignore Biden's great piece of plainspeak, which just happened to be the most galvanizing moment of the morning session. Both reports read like softspeak press releases.