- KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -
The latest mission to pursue al Qaeda and Taliban fighters is drawing chuckles
from American forces -- not for its objective, nor for its methods, but
for its name. In a tiny case of cultures clashing, "Operation Snipe,"
a name chosen by Britain, fails to take into account the existence of a
more jocular American tradition: the "snipe hunt."
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- What exactly is a snipe hunt? It depends on where you
come from -- or which dictionary you're reading. Webster's defines the
snipe as "any of various usually slender-billed birds" -- the
accepted British meaning. But The Dictionary of American Slang calls it
"a nonexistent animal," and says a snipe hunt is sending out
someone on a wild-goose chase. The quest to clear up the confusion led
a reporter on what at times appeared to be a snipe hunt of his own Friday.
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- It began with the British peacekeepers in Kabul, who
were oblivious to the linguistic gaffe involved in the new operation's
moniker. "It's a game bird, a bit like pheasant," said Lt. Col.
Neil Peckham of Wiltshire, England. "It would be a bird that is hunted
as part of an organized shoot."
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- And in the United States? Capt. Bill Peoples of the U.S.
Army, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, stood silent for a few moments,
then exploded."You have got to be kidding!" he bellowed, angrily
waving his arm. "I'm not going to answer that question." He
said a few other things, too -- less polite things -- but asked that they
not be published. Then he kicked the reporter off his base.
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- Britain, Peoples said once he calmed down, "is a
coalition partner of ours, and I don't think it's right for us to make
fun of what they name their operations."Fair enough, but the question
remained.
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- Joe Crowley, an aid worker from Morgan Hill, California,
had a clue: "I think it means maybe to search for something that doesn't
exist?" Maj. Steve Daugherty of Clarksville, Tennessee, was more confident."
You just send somebody to find something that doesn't exist so you can
have some fun at their expense," he said.
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- The American Dictionary of Slang says that in a snipe
hunt, "an uninitiated person is left to watch for a 'snipe' ... while
his supposed hunting companions, the hoaxers, leave him to discover the
joke." That's the meaning Col. Wayland Parker learned the hard way
at his Jacksonville, Florida, high school." They took all the new
guys out to the beach on a snipe hunt," he said. "Of course,
not a single snipe showed up and we were left there to figure it out on
our own. I waited there for a couple of hours." Then he leaned closer."
Believe it or not, they actually have snipes here in Afghanistan,"
he confided. "If you go out to the stadium, we'll herd them in to
you."
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- http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/central/05/03/operation.snipe.ap/index.htm
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