THE GULF WAR : No Surrender, No Retreat

Two words that apparently are not part of the Pentagon’s vocabulary: RETREAT AND SURRENDER. At least, no such listings can be found in the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Official Dictionary of Military Terms. However, the book does contain “WITHDRAWAL OPERATION,” which is defined as “a planned operation in which a force in contact disengages from an enemy force.” When asked about the missing words, a Pentagon spokesman replied, “Up until this point, those two terms have not been defined in our dictionary because their standard English definitions were considered sufficient.” But he pointed out that they may be included in future editions.