Since this is the season for Word of the Year nominations, like quid pro quo and CBD, let me propose a late entry and long-shot (whoops, bad word choice): contractor. As in this report on the backstory to the assault by Iraqis on the grandiose, irritating U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad: "The U.S. carried out military strikes in Iraq and Syria targeting an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia blamed for a rocket attack that killed an American contractor."

Contractor? Was this person renovating a basement suite in Fallujah or reshingling a roof in Mosul? Nope. Though details aren't given, this is almost certainly what was earlier known as a defence contractor and before that, by the perfectly adequate word, mercenary. They've existed since the dawn of warfare and came into major use with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. It has taken since then to get "defence" dropped from the term but it was worth the effort.

The omission makes "contractor" a high-value obfuscator in a league with "collateral damage" for innocent victims, "enhanced interrogation" for torture, "extraordinary rendition" for kidnapping, etc. It's a creative area.

The UN has a "convention" prohibiting mercenaries that was initiated, perhaps prophetically, in 2001, at the start of the endless, U.S.-incited wars in the Mideast. (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen). UN conventions are fairly easy to create but fade after that, since they must be signed, ratified, declared etc. Only 35 nations signed this one, not including the U.S., U.K. and Israel, the big providers of mercs. Canada signed but didn't ratify.

Before the post-millennium invasions, the U.S. miltary-to-merc ratio was about 50-1. It has since dropped to 10-1. They often contract through the CIA and take up about half its payrolls. (The Tom Cruise film, "American Made," gives a good and, in the Hollywood way, deeply unaffecting, portrayal of this travesty.)

By 2006, there were about 100,000 "contractors" in Iraq, most of them ex-U. S. military, trained on the taxpayers' dime. They were actors in horrors like Abu Ghraib and Fallujah. When you hear about the U.S. removing its last 5,000 troops there (unlikely at best since, in fact, they're adding forces), you should know there are still 7,000 contractors who aren't going anywhere.

I've gone on too long here since trying to clean up corruptions of language by those in power is sheer whack-a-mole. But obsessions are obsessions and contractor is such a despicable fraud it makes me nostalgic for mercenary.

Coda: By luck and political instinct, Canada managed to mostly avoid the Iraq mire. Not so Afghanistan, where we were, by 2006, energetically involved, mostly in Kandahar.

What do the Maple Leafs do on the road? Video games, naps and eating wherever Tavares picks a place for dinner

There was a Canadian earnestness to Afghanistan that was different, I think, from the U.S., who get into so many wars. You could feel it in the emotional tributes to soldiers at Leafs games, or in solemn processions on the so-called Highway of Heroes bringing the remains of casualties home. There was special pride in helping Afghan girls and women to a better life.

The secret Afghanistan papers published in the Washington Post last month dashed all those ambitions. They showed the total failure of 20 years of warmaking. The peace deal the U.S. is now striking with the Taliban was available before they went in. Any "successes" were pure PR.

We should've known it in 2011, when our troops left Kandahar to be replaced by the U.S., who basically ignored the fact we'd ever been there. They would now put the province right, as if no one else had even tried. Each nation to its own delusions and its own PR, as a pointless war stretched on.

Rick Salutin is a freelance contributing columnist for Torstar. He is based in Toronto. Reach him on email: ricksalutin@ca.inter.net