Iraq Steps Back Onto the Regional Stage

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=iraq%20steps%20back%20onto%20the%20middle&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 4:29 PM
Subject: re: Iraq Steps Back Onto the Regional Stage
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     In the hands of a State Department spokesman, the English language is a powerful, subtle and flexible tool of the trade. It cannot however be bent infinitely without breaking. To call a force of 16,000 "embassy staff" in Baghdad doesn't pass the giggle test.  The Union army at the start of our Civil War was only 17,000.  The State Department may call them "contractors" or "military advisers" or "kittens", but the world will call them an occupying army.

Barry Haskell Levine