A-Day, D-Day, S-Day enter into Iraq war lingo

10.40am

WASHINGTON - Every military conflict has its lingo and this Iraqi war is no different, with phrases and acronyms such as MOPP, embedded, A-day, S-Day and other alphabet days.

Gulf War vocabulary included "smart bombs," "dumb bombs" and Saddam Hussein's claim the 1991 war would be "the mother of all battles." This time, a front-runner for catchy phrases is "shock and awe," a phrase for the massive air campaign launched on Thursday in Iraq.

Then there is the 9,450 kg MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Blast, which can take out a whole unit and leaves a mushroom cloud above the desert. The MOAB has been nicknamed the "mother of all bombs."

Just as they did in World War II when "D-Day" described the moment allied forces invaded at Normandy, military planners are again adopting letters of the alphabet for phases of the campaign.

US Army Commander General Tommy Franks took time in his first news conference on Saturday since the war began to explain to the world terms that are now as familiar to him as apple pie.

"The initiation of combat operations, we refer to that as D-Day; the introduction of special operations forces, we refer to that as S-Day; the introduction of ground forces, G-Day; and the introduction of shock air forces, A-Day," said Franks.

The risk of chemical and biological weapons has also added its own vocabulary such as MOPP1, MOPP2, MOPP3 and MOPP4, the four levels of protection needed in case of attack by WMDs, the acronym for weapons of mass destruction.

In longhand, MOPP stands for Mission Oriented Protection Structure, with MOPP4 the highest level of alert.

"Let's go now to one of our embeds," is a common lead-in by television anchors when turning to their battlefield reporters.

Meaning to be "fixed firmly," the word "embedded" was adopted by the military to label the 500 or so reporters attached to US military units involved in the war.

This special Iraq lingo extends to buzzwords used by the US administration, starting with the US president's reference to Iraq as being part of the "axis of evil" along with Iran and North Korea, to labeling allies in the military campaign as belonging to a "coalition of the willing."

Iraq is referred to as the "doomed regime" while the administration talks regularly of "liberating" Iraq.

Baghdad, on the other hand, has referred to America as the "invaders" and used derogatory terms such as "little Bush" to describe President Bush, whose father was in charge during the 1991 Gulf War

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq