Associated Press Issues "Style" Edict on Obama Admin's "End of Combat"

Anyone who's ever toiled at any desk on any newspaper anywhere in the country, and possibly in the whole world, knows what the AP (Associated Press) Stylebook is: the wire-bound gospel of newspaper/reportorial usage; the 'last word' on what it was and was not acceptable to call, name, or describe anyone and anything; the unarguable authority on punctuation, abbreviation, anagrams, and citations. For journalists for the last 75 years, at least, the AP Style Book was The LAW!

So, when AP issued a whole, quite long and extensive "Stylebook note," amending the Stylebook to account for certain awkwardnesses, inconsistencies, and dubious claims in discourse surrounding the much ballyhooed withdrawal, last week, of the "last of the US combat troops from Iraq, it is significant. Via Huffpost:

At some point in the last two weeks, you may have been told by someone in the news that combat operations in Iraq were over, and that the last combat troop had left the country. Well, the Associated Press is not having any of it, and in a memo from their standards editor, Tom Kent, the law in this regard has been laid down, in no uncertain terms: "To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials."

The rest is highly instructive.