George,

We're getting there [with the change from "Operation Infinite Justice" to "Operation Enduring Freedom]: it still impresses me that D-Day was neutral, simply efficient, but achieved poetry afterall. D for Death D for Deliverance. And lives on in the language as an expression for a no-turning back jumping off point. Its poetry comes from the significance of events.

This latter-day marketing bullshit tries to put the meaning in first. Desert Storm could be a cheap perfume. It freaks me out that these guys think it's necessary to sell it with such cheap tricks. Or that cheap tricks could sell it. Somehow when the media brandnames every significant event, exasperating as it is, one is no longer surprised. But why the military or the White House has to get into the act is beyond me.

Mary MacNeil (electronic mail, September 28, 2001).