It's been five days since the U.S. and its NATO allies began imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, and the American public has plenty of questions. What's Obama's end game here? Why weren't congressional leaders consulted? And ... what exactly does "Odyssey Dawn" mean?
The official name of the Libyan mission is actually a product of the military's semi-randomized naming system, so it doesn't mean much at all. But to more than a few commentators, it sounds nothing like the name of a military operation and much more like:
- "a Carnival cruise ship" - Stephen Colbert
- "a Yes album" - Jon Stewart
- "a stripper" - David Letterman
- a Stephenie Meyer novel - tweet from @Eric_Alt
- "a Tom Clancy novel" - Roger Ebert
- a Philip K Dick novel - Eli Lake
- "a Cabbage Patch kid" - tweet from @gatewaygroupie
- The name of one of Frank Zappa's kids - Mark Thompson
- "a straight-to-video movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme" - Andy Borowitz
- "the name of a Seventies porn star, one of those spacier ones ... I can almost hear it now, the voice of coming attractions announcing: 'Odyssey Dawn in Harold Lime's Hot Dog Girls II'" - James Wolcott
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