The U.S. military closed down its press desk in Iraq on Wednesday and sent out an email to Beltway journalists announcing so. Washington Post blog:
“Due to our reposture efforts the press desk function will no longer provide releases or responses,” said the brief e-mail that landed in journalists’ in-boxes on Wednesday morning.
Col. Barry Johnson, a senior spokesman who will remain in Iraq until the troops have departed by the end of the year, explained that “reposture efforts” is the phrase the military has determined most appropriate to describe what news outlets are calling a “withdrawal.”
“The reposture is how we refer to moving our troops to other locations outside the country,” he said. “The decision was made last year to talk about this as reposturing.”
Of course, he’s right. It isn’t a withdrawal, it’s a shifting.
