By Andy Jones
In a bold move, the Bush administration announced that it was once again renaming the proposed American troop increase in Iraq this past Tuesday. According to Press Secretary Tony Snow, the plan to add 20,000 troops to the 240,000 already serving in Iraq, now being called Operation Drop in the Bucket, should allay fears that the administration has been using semantics for political purposes. “See,” he said, “that’s exactly what it is: a drop in the bucket. No ambiguity, no room for misinterpretation, no falsely comforting connotations. When this plan goes through, people will look back and everyone will agree that this plan did exactly what it said it was going to do: hardly anything.”
The plan, which has been called anywhere from “insufficient” to “counterproductive” by news analysts and military strategists, has been called even more things by the administration itself.
“You see,” said President Bush, “we thought `surge’ was good, conveyed a sense of strength ...gave hope to the American people ... evoked memories of a heavily caffeinated soft drink … caffeine gives you energy … makes you perform well under stress … just like our troops… but we got sick of saying `surge’ all the time … hard word to say after a while … a lot of Frenchy soft consonants … French are cowards ... So we kicked around `escalation’ for a while … no good either … reminded people of Vietnam … nothing like the situation in Iraq … So then we tried `augmentation’ … I liked it … Cheney didn’t … said, `sounds too much like breast augmentation’ … thought `damn’ … can’t have that … makes America think `surgery’ … surgery means blood … shedding American blood on foreign soil … so then Condi said `what about `drop in the bucket’?’ … thought `yea’ … that’s good … it’s like … won’t make a difference one way or the other … not a big deal … nothing to worry about ... everything’s going to be fine.”
He added: “Heh heh.”
The military also gave the new handle a thumbs up. “Wow,” said Lt. General Green, stationed in Sadr City, “what an uncharacteristically candid move. Really hits the nail on the head. How could increasing the number of troops by less than a tenth achieve any kind of significant change? If they had really wanted to win this war, they would have just sent 500,000 troops there in the first place and been done with it. This is really nothing more than a drop in the bucket. God, that is so perfect.”
Linguists have also expressed pleasure with the new appellation. “The military has a long history of perverting words and phrases of the English language into meaning something completely different and considerably more sinister,’ commented Robert Fuentes, a professor at Princeton University. “For example, the phrase `rub out’ was used exclusively to mean `masturbate,’ until the military began using it to mean `kill’ in the 1950s. The Bush Administration itself changed the meaning of the word `rendition’ from a noun meaning `version’ or `reproduction’ to a verb meaning `to export someone to a secret prison in another country to be tortured.’ However, the newly manufactured nomenclature is a pleasant departure from such perversion and represents a positive trend toward the Department of Defense having respect for our language. No doubt, after this operation has been undertaken, `drop in the bucket’ will still mean `drop in the bucket.’