By David Alexander WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - With President George W. Bush facing an American public opposed to the war and Democrats fearful of looking weak on national security, neither side likes to discuss its respective position on troop levels in Iraq in terms of escalation or retreat. Instead they have taken refuge in a linguistically confusing world where troop levels "surge" rather than increase, and soldiers generally are "redeployed" right back to their home bases rather than withdrawn. And the term "escalation," which gained a harsh connotation after the troop buildup in Vietnam, has become popular among opponents of an increase in Iraq. Bush, who is devising a new Iraq policy that he will unveil on Wednesday, is believed to favor sending more troops to Iraq. The move has been described by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and military strategists as a "surge," with the sense that the increase would be short-term. "It was clear to me that a decision has been made for a surge of, I suppose, 20,000 additional troops," Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican who is opposed to an increase, said after meeting Bush on Monday. Allan Metcalf, executive secretary of the American Dialect Society and author of a book on presidential speaking styles, said the debate on troop surges had popularized what is usually a neutral word, one that was a contender for his group's 2006 Word of the Year. "It's very hard to find neutral language, especially in politics," he said. "Surge is a curiously neutral term actually, because it doesn't automatically imply something better or something worse." As a matter of policy, many Democrats favor "redeployment," or withdrawal, over a "surge" or any other any sort of increase, following the lead of Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, a retired Marine colonel who outlined the plan back in 2005. "Staying the course in Iraq is not an option or a policy," he wrote. "I believe we must begin discussions for an immediate redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq." Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House of Representatives, backed that strategy, telling colleagues in her inaugural speech last week that Bush should produce an Iraq plan "that allows us to responsibly redeploy our troops." The linguistic muddle around the Iraq issue has provoked a counterattack by some politicians unafraid to deploy more muscular, albeit loaded, rhetoric. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, has not been averse to labeling withdrawal a "retreat" and joined a Senate colleague this week in warning Bush that "redeployment" would leave Iraq in shambles. On the other side, Sen. Edward Kennedy on Tuesday joined other Democrats who have taken to calling a troop increase an "escalation," and he proposed that Congress block funding for any troop increases that the body does not specifically approve. Metcalf said "redeployment" and "escalation" were more loaded words. "You use redeployment instead of retreat, which I guess would be the most negative, or withdrawal," he said. "Now escalation, especially when you think of the context of the Vietnam war, is a word that certainly has negative connotations," he added. Metcalf said "surge" lost as Word of the Year to "plutoed, meaning to be demoted, as in Pluto losing its status as a planet last year. But he didn't rule out "surge" as a contender for 2007. "Actually," he added, "since it's being used even more right now, it might well be a candidate for Word of the Year 2007, depending on how much of a surge we do or don't have."
