Oops! "Surge" is purged

This article by Adam Green traces the short history of a current military term.

The Administration keeps trying to put one over on the public and test-drives words to see if we bite. Surge sucks, it turns out. So will we now accept Rice's "augmentation?" Probably not, since it will be as effective as some of the other products in that category.

Hear ye, hear ye!

Let word go out far and wide -"surge" has been purged from the lexicon of the Iraq war debate.

A term that once promised to join the ranks of "personal accounts," "clear skies," "healthy forests" and other Bush Propaganda All Starsmet a quick demise Wednesday when the president decided he could not credibly use the term to describe his Iraq escalation policy.

As you may know, "surge" was a recently invented term - leaked by Bush Administration officials to the press after the November elections that existed nowhere in Department of Defense's official Dictionary of Military Terms. By contrast, "escalation" is an official military term and has been used historically to describe troop increases (see Vietnam).

But for months, proponents of escalating the Iraq war have insisted
on using the term "surge" and the media have gone right along. Did you ever wonder why this word was pushed so hard?

A recent CBS poll lends a clue. Only 18% of Americans support putting more troops in Iraq. But when the question is framed as a "short-term" troop increase, support jumped to 45% (still a minority, but more substantial). And as CNN analyst Bill Schneider points out, "surge sounds temporary."

Some excellent research by Nico Pitney at Think Progress bolsters this theory. Between November 19 and November 22, there was a series of leaks by "senior officials" to the press - linking a possible "surge" to the concept of "short-term."

"Short-term surge," reported the New York Times and MSNBC. "Short period," reported the Washington Post. "Temporary surge," reported the Christian Science Monitor. ABC's Jonathan Karl even reported a "temporary surge of no more than 60 days."

We could win Iraq in 60 days, wow! The media was primed. The public was primed. There was just one small thing standing in the way - the truth.

That truth started coming out a month later - on December 27.

Rest of article from Huffington Post