A Word A Day With George W Bush

linguistic experts have deciphered George W Bush’s latest verbal contortions on halting the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

The US President said earlier that, on the advice of senior US commander General David Petraeus, he was still pursuing a “limited drawdown” from 20 brigades to 15 by the end of July, but freezing further withdrawals.

Many ordinary English speakers were puzzled by the term ‘drawdown’. However, we can now clear up the President’s terminology. In economic terms, it seems that drawdown is the measure of the decline from a historical peak in a given variable, typically the cumulative profit of a financial trading strategy.

Basically, if X(t) is a random process [X(0) = 0, t≥0], then the drawdown at any time, T, denoted D(T), is defined as

D(T) = Max [0, Max {Tε (0, T)} X(t) - X(T)].

And if you’re having trouble with that concept and how it relates to the occupation of Iraq, just imagine what George Bush makes of it.