Just watch as a gaggle of confused foreign tourists puzzle out how to buy subway tickets from a vending machine while they hold up a line of impatient New Yorkers. The “enter 5-digit ZIP code” request stumps’em every time. Psst, hey, security “experts,” not everyone in the world has a 5-digit ZIP code.
Um, WTF, LinkedIn?
How the name came about, via the Washington Post:
AFRICOM [U.S. Africa Command] is assigned words that start with JS–JZ, NS–NZ and OA–OS, according to [AFRICOM spokesman Eric Elliott]. A recent headquarters exercise was called “Judicious Response” while another recent operation used the NS–NZ range, leaving OA–OS as the only option, he said.
“The goal is to create a name that has absolutely nothing to do with the activity of the region, so you could walk down the street in Washington during the planning stages and ensure that nobody knows it’s about Libya,” Elliott said….
So how did commanders select “Odyssey Dawn?” A group of lieutenant colonels and majors met several weeks ago in the early planning stages of the operation and agreed that “Odyssey” was the only usable word in the OA–OS range. Then, “they sat around and brainstormed for a random word that went well with it,” Elliott said.
So the name is supposed to be meaningless, but c’mon, did it occur to no one involved that outsiders may assign unfavorable interpretations to this particular combination of words? Maybe the Pentagon should scrape up some loose change from its vast budget and buy a dictionary or two.
