Baquba … Abu-Ghraib … Takrit … Al-Qaeda … Bint-Jubail … Fallaujah … Hamidi … Samarra … Hamed Al-Suaidi … Al-Zarqawi … Bin Ladin … Ahmadinejad!!!
During the half-decade since 9/11 in New York City, this generation of reporters has quickly mastered the pronunciation of such previously unfamiliar place names and surnames as the above. And many of these have practically become household words — words which now roll off the tongues of reporters as smoothly as if they were born to it.
The new normal
It’s all a part of what is termed the ‘new normal’. In essence, we have a new reality and a new vocabulary — a vocabulary of terror. We have mastered this new vocabulary as well as the necessary related geography of their lands, lands about which we never dreamed we would need to know, at least not to this level of detail.
