from AP News

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq and the U.S. are near an agreement on all American combat troops leaving Iraq by October 2010, with the last soldiers out three years after that...

Throughout the conflict, President Bush steadfastly refused to accept any timetable for bringing U.S. troops home. Last month, however, Bush and al-Maliki agreed to set a ‘‘general time horizon’’ for ending the U.S. mission.

You may have seen this news item. While it seems pretty obvious that it is a significant event, you might wonder why I'm quoting it here on a blog for English language students. I cite it here because there's an interesting word play. Bush is now supporting a time horizon but not a timetable.

As you may know President Bush has always said it would be wrong to set a specific date for removing troops from Iraq. He has resisted calls from the people, from Congress, from generals and from soldiers to set an end to the US presence. Setting a timetable for troop withdrawals, he says, will mean defeat in Iraq by imposing arbitrary conditions on a serious and difficult situation. Bush has very steadfastly held this view.

Suddenly a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister of Iraq announced that he would like to see US troops leaving by 2010! Now Bush has a problem because he has to respect the wishes of the leader of the sovereign nation of Iraq. So how can he agree to withdrawing troops by a specific date without appearing to contradict his early position?

By calling the new agreement a time horizon. Timetable is like a schedule. Times are written down very clearly and specifically and next to that time there is a task to do. It sounds fixed, inflexible, official. A time horizon on the other hand is kind of vague. The horizon is way over in the distance, not at a specific location. It's the sort of thing you can see, but never actually reach because the horizon always moves away from you.

It's a very clever move on the US' part because it sounds like the US is still resisting setting a specific date for troop withdrawals. It's just making some guidelines, a general idea of when the US might think about leaving.

So that's a little bit of wordplay in the news today.