I was in Iraq recently with the Secretary of Defense for the change of command ceremony and what struck me beyond the pomp and pageantry was how much things had changed. In a way, the U.S. military bases now look like much of Baghdad – stripped down and abandoned.  All that equipment moved out from when a record 170,000 troops were stationed there. What remains are 50,000 U.S. troops charged primarily with training their Iraqi counterparts. They patrol the streets of Iraqi cities that are too often are filled with empty homes, left behind by more than 2 million exiles and thousands killed.

The military didn’t just change its mission.  It added a whole new collection of acronyms to the Iraq war lexicon. I was only in Iraq overnight and here are the ones I came across.

ISF—Iraqi security forces, an oldie but now a staple of any acronym-filled conversation.  The U.S. military, mostly the USA (U.S. Army) is there to work….

BTW—by, with and through the Iraqis. Because, you see, there are no longer U.S. combat forces in Iraq. They are….

AAB—Advise and Assist brigades. And they are now in charge now that the United States has completed its….

RDOF—Responsible Drawdown of Forces.

I guess it would not feel like a new mission in Iraq without new terms to describe it.