Serial Acronyms

While season two of Serial is fantastic, and swinging for the fences as far as big journalism goes, it's also a bit more difficult than the first season; this is partly caused by acronym overload, so here's a key to ten of them:

1. DUSTWUN . . . duty status whereabouts unknown;

2. OP . . . observation post;

3. FOB . . . forward operating base;

4. TCP . . . traffic control point;

5. IED . . . improvised explosive device;

6. GI . . . gastrointestinal;

7. MRE . . . meals ready to eat;

8. MRAP . . . mine resistant, ambush protected vehicle;

9. CIA . . . Central Intelligence Agency;

10. PL . . . platoon leader;

and so while you're listening, you have to be prepared for dialogue like this: Bergdahl wanted to get from OP Mest to FOB Sharana, while causing a DUSTWUN, so that his PL would have to contact the FOB, but some of his fellow soldiers, who were already dazed from suffering GI infections because they couldn't wash their hands properly before eating the MRE, thought that he might have been a mole in the CIA, but Bergdahl was hardly that, and though he had a plan to pinpoint where Taliban had planted an IED near the TCP, so that the specialists could drive an MRAP and defuse the IED, he actually just caused a huge SNAFU.