Headed Down East

For those of you following along, you have seen my previous post about the website Watching America.  As I was reading from that site today I came across an article in the “Europe” section that was originally printed in a British newspaper called the Independent.  The article is titled “Thanksgiving Day Massacre Highlights Waning U.S. Power,” which I’m sure many of you have read about by now, but perhaps have not seen put in such terms.  The title alone indicates the different perspective of writing coming out of the U.K.  Read the article and identify some phrases or expressions that indicate how the British perspective of the war differs from the American one.

One of the phrases that struck me was the following:

Now the Pentagon and the Baker commission are deciding whether to send an extra 20,000 or 30,000 US troops to Iraq, and, in particular, to Baghdad, in a last-ditch effort to get a grip on the violence. (Cornwell)

I don’t believe an American news source has ever characterized the debated option of a US troop increase as a “last-ditch effort.”  Such phrasing adds a sense of desperation that is not articulated in the American media.