The Americans' reasons for not wanting to go after this group now, Kurdish officials say, appear to include an unwillingness to offer Mr. Hussein a pretext for attacking the Kurds before a potential American invasion, and a reluctance to provoke nearby Iran.
Or is it merely because the Nazis offer an "objective" pretext for dismissal to those who subjectively disapprove of Orff's music for other reasons: reasons having to do, could it be, with prudery?
"If you look at data closely, there are also signs the economy will probably be bottoming out, so the data could simply offer the government a pretext to use its stimulus plan to support the recovery," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.
The ISIS onslaught has offered a new pretext, as the Kurdistan regional government deployed Peshmerga militia along its border.
The refusal of King John II Casimir Vasa, the successor and brother of Władysław IV, to give up his claims to the Swedish crown offered a good pretext for resuming hostilities with the Commonwealth.
One individual, for example, ascribed the shift to a desire to give a chance to the much-touted Belghazi, suggesting that poor Wana results offered a convenient pretext for change.
Only the remilitarization of the Rhineland offered a clear pretext for British and French intervention, and we now know that the token German force in the Rhineland had been ordered to retreat if such intervention occurred.
Democracy beckons to a beautiful condition, but it also offers a wicked pretext.
You can't exempt nice Christians who dislike homosexuality without exempting un-nice racists, anti-Semites, and anyone else who offers a religious pretext for an odious practice.
