http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021805888.html?hpid=topnewsAdministration recasts Iraq war with new name
By Greg Jaffe
Washington Post staff writer
The Obama adminstration has decided to give the war in Iraq a new name -- "Operation New Dawn" -- to reflect the reduced role U.S. troops will play in securing the country this year as troop levels fall, according to a memo from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
Since U.S. forces charged across the Kuwaiti border toward Baghdad in 2003, the war has been known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. The new name is scheduled to take effect in September, when U.S. troop levels are supposed to drop to about 50,000. The name change was first reported by ABC News, which posted the memo on its Web site. In the Feb. 17 memo, Gates wrote that the name change seeks to "recognize our evolving relationship with the Government of Iraq."
Military Families United, a Washington-based advocacy group that has opposed Obama administration policies such as moving prisoners from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the U.S., rapped the name change as empty "public relations tactics."
"You cannot end a war simply by changing its name," said Brian Wise, the group's executive director, in an e-mailed statement to the Associated Press. "Despite the administration's efforts to spin realities on the ground, their efforts do not change the situation at hand in Iraq."...
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Putting new lipstick on a pig...