You're free to have your preference, but as pertains to clarity of agency neither of those is any better than the other. In fact as agency goes, it was not bom

You're free to have your preference, but as pertains to clarity of agency neither of those is any better than the other. In fact as agency goes, it was not bombed "by an F18", it was bombed by a person using an F18, probably on orders (or by mistake when attempting to follow different orders) given by other people. I've certainly enjoyed Orwell's writing, but his recommendations mostly aren't very well thought out (and he doesn't follow them very closely himself, or probably his writing would be worse). See also: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992