"These are theological disputes," said S. Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. The dust-up over the word "surge" seemed to some a metaphor for the passions unleashed by the war itself. Lichter compared the debate to the struggle "for every inch, like Stalingrad."
The controversy has not been diminished by the fact that Bush and senior White House officials have steered clear of "surge" themselves.
The Wall Street Journal, on its website, declared as early as Dec. 25 that there was a "new war of words brewing over the Iraq War."
Although critics blame pro-war spinmeisters, some military officials say "surge" has long been used in the armed forces to indicate a quick, not necessarily short-term, increase.
Army Chief of Staff Peter J. Schoomaker, for example, used the term in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in 2003, saying, "Now there is no question that there's parts of Iraq that we need to surge troops into."
In 2004, Gen. John P. Abizaid was quoted by Army Times as saying to a group of senior U.S. commanders, "So you have this notion of using surge forces to deal with specific military problems.... The combination of base forces plus surge forces ... is pretty important."
None of that has mollified critics. Complaining about the use of the word in The Times on Sunday, an e-mailer identified as Carlileb said, "What's with the uncritical use of the euphemism 'surge?' ... You know, this kind of thing makes the LAT look like a propaganda flack for the Bush administration, even if that wasn't the intent."
And some bloggers claimed a measure of success with their attacks. Initially, some Democratic members of Congress had suggested they might support Bush on a "surge," but by the end of last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco described the plan as an escalation, as did Democrats making appearances on the Sunday talk shows.
Ironically, Frederick Kagan of conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, who is widely credited with helping sell the increase proposal to the White House, was quoted on the blog Media Nation as complaining that reporters were misrepresenting his ideas when they used the word "surge" to imply a short-term commitment.
"The media has been using the term 'surge' very loosely," Kagan was quoted as saying. "And I think that's actually a bit of a problem, because there have been various ideas floated for very short-term troop surges of relatively small numbers of troops. And I think that that would be a big mistake, and it's not what we're calling for."
What Kagan wants is at least 25,000 additional troops, and not for a short time.
If all that seemed a bit confusing, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow had a solution Tuesday. Braced on "surge" versus "escalation," Snow said it was up to the reporters:
"You guys do words for a living," he said. "Rather than trying to ask Democratic or even Republican lawmakers what the proper descriptive term is, you figure it out."
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johanna.neuman@latimes.com
