TagIraq

augmentee

augmentee  n.— «The transferred personnel are called “augmentees” in Pentagonese. According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, the Navy is putting about 10,000 personnel—from enlisted through officer ranks up to...

three-block war

three-block war  n.— «Because counterinsurgencies are about winning hearts and minds, officers must be able to juggle what’s called the “three-block war,” fighting insurgents in one block, tending to wounded locals in another...

T-wall

T-wall  n.— «Developed by the Israelis in order to put up a physical barrier between themselves and the Palestinians, the Iraq version of these segmented walls is constructed out of thousands of portable, twelve-foot-high slabs of steel...

Bremer wall

Bremer wall  n.— «Developed by the Israelis in order to put up a physical barrier between themselves and the Palestinians, the Iraq version of these segmented walls is constructed out of thousands of portable, twelve-foot-high slabs of...

SVBIED

SVBIED  n.— «When you see what we call an SVBIED, a suicide vehicle born improvised explosive device, also known as a car bomb,…then you start thinking al-Qaeda in Iraq.» —“Flagging morale among coalition forces as Iraq war...

down range

down range  adv.— «The Landstuhl facility, the largest American military hospital outside the United States, sits atop a small mountain overlooking the town of the same name.…A quarter of its multinational patients arrive with hard...