Key Issues

Do you really want that question answered?

:-P

d'ye-ah!

I shoulda known it'd get to you too. Come on. Tell me how to pronounce it. You know you want to.

Ea ROK. It's where those fuzzy puppets in Return of the Jedi hail from.

The British pronounce it Ea RAK, I believe, as soft a's are too froggy for them.

It bugs me too. I say "Eye Rack."

BTW, I say ee-raq-ee when I'm talking about the helpless children there. I say Eye-rack-ee when discussing the dead, or soon to be dead, shitheels. But that's just me.

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i notice some Americans pronounce Iraq as EYE-RAK... making them sound more ignorant than a Georgia redneck with a speech impediment...on crack

I worked 5 years in the Gulf area and studied some Arabic. Iraq is an Arabic name. If you wish to pronounce it somewhat similarly to how the Iraqis do, then pronounce the "i" something like the "i" in the English word "it". The typical "eyerak" pronunciation is totally a foreign, i.e. American (?) invention.

it is ee rack

Having lived in the Middle East for six-plus years and been an Ottoman and Middle Eastern Studies graduate student to boot, I can assure you it is pronounced ear-ROCK, not eye-RACK, ear-RACK, or any other way. Listen to Cheney say it, with the emphasis on the RACK, and you know he is deliberately mispronouncing it just to be the prick we all know he is.