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Modern Iraqi Manners

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from: Timothy Noah

Posted Monday, July 17, 2006, at 5:59 PM ET

For the last two and a half years, the Marine Corps has been equipping troops with a sort of abbreviated Emily Post-style guide to etiquette in Iraq. The laminated "Iraq Culture Smart Card" consists of 16 panels and can fold down into something you can slip into your breast pocket. "It seems late in the day for such niceties," observed Steven Aftergood in Secrecy News, a Web log maintained by the Federation of American Scientists, which posted the Smart Card online. That may be so. But if one is going to occupy a country, surely we'd rather that soldiers had some sort of primer than not about local sensitivities, and how to avoid setting them aflame.

To read the footnotes below and on the following seven pages, roll your mouse over the portion highlighted in yellow. If you'd like to read the document in its entirety (warning: It's a very big file), click here.

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The Iraq Culture Smart Card has been through several editions since it was first published in 2004. This is the latest version.

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from: Timothy Noah

Posted Monday, July 17, 2006, at 5:59 PM ET
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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
Photograph of George W. Bush on Slate's home page by Getty.
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