Getting this off my chest

The largest single operation planned in U.S. military history, the invasion of the Kwanto Plain to capture Tokyo was code-named "Coronet", not "Kill Jap Dagger".

It was "Market-Garden", not "Death from Above" or "Ripcord Slammer".

The landings at Inchon in Korea were code-named "Chromite".

In Vietnam we had operations with code names like "Cedar Falls", "Bright Light" and "Phoenix". Normal, sensible, every-day kinds of names.

But the invasion of some crappy little Caribbean island is code-named "Urgent Fury"?
(This is young Doc Chief and his buddy Doc Clyde doing some emergency splinter surgery during a lull in the fighting during "Operation Urgent Fury")

Bitch-slapping the PDF is called "Just Cause"? Doing the Taliban is "Enduring Freedom"? Invading Iraq is called - wait for it - "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (cunning, guys - those Ba'athists'll never guess what THAT code-name is hiding). And now the latest spectacles brought to you by Bushco: Operation "Arrowhead Ripper" and "Phantom Thunder"?

"Arrowhead Ripper"???

WTF is wrong with us lately?


IMO this is all part and parcel with the "selling war as fun for the whole family" thing. It's bullshit, it's being sold to the press and the public as bullshit, and if I was the Magic SecDef I'd download a list of about 20,000 one-word codenames into the server at the Five-Sided Funny Farm and force my service chiefs to use them in alphabetical order.
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OK, they could petition me to avoid stuff like, say, "Operation Stupid" or "Operation Smegma" as they worked through the S's. But otherwise: that's the end of "Operation I'm Ready For My Closeup" operation names.
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"Arrowhead Ripper"
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Sounds like some 19-year-old private thought that up after a night of sitting up drinking vodka and Red Bull and playing "Worlds of Warcraft". "Whoa, dude, Arrowhead Ripper, that's fuckin' sick, dude!" But this is our multi-billion dollar Department of Defense?
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Now that's fuckin' sick, dude.