GRAPEVINE, Tex., Aug. 3 - President Bush publicly overruled some of his top advisers on Wednesday in a debate about what to call the conflict with Islamic extremists, saying, "Make no mistake about it, we are at war."
In a speech here, Mr. Bush used the phrase "war on terror" no less than five times. Not once did he refer to the "global struggle against violent extremism," the wording consciously adopted by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other officials in recent weeks after internal deliberations about the best way to communicate how the United States views the challenge it is facing.
In recent public appearances, Mr. Rumsfeld and senior military officers have avoided formulations using the word "war," and some of Mr. Bush's top advisers have suggested that the administration wanted to jettison what had been its semiofficial wording of choice, "the global war on terror."
The Times characterizes this as Commander Codpiece overrulling his underlings, but I doubt that. I think Bush gets an phrase that covers a topic in his head, and repeats it every time the topic is raised. Repeat after me: freedom, lessons of 9/11, after 9/11, we had to look at the world differently, I believe in a culture of life, Saddam Hussein was a grave threat, the world is better off without him in power, I recognize that taking Saddam Hussein out was unpopular, I made the decision because I thought it was in the right interests of our security, if you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist, we've got a great country, I love our values, the best way to defend America is to stay on the offense, we got to be right 100 percent of the time here at home, and they got to be right once, I am not going to shortchange our troops in harm's way, I'm not going to run up taxes, which will cost this economy jobs.
The Chimp knows his lines, and he's sticking to 'em! (Most of these phrases are taken from the second Presidential Debate last October.)
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