It's My War And I'll Call It What I Want

Yipes! Who says government is slow? Faster than you can say The Stugglatory Movement Against The Religiosity of Exteremifacation, the president has returned the country to the GWOT, or as it's more informally known, "Them A Rabs want to wreck social security and are against John Roberts."

President Bush overruled his top advisers in a debate about what to call the conflict with Islamic extremists, saying, "There's too many words in your sloganationing."

In a speech Mr. Bush used the phrase "war on terror" no less than five times. Three of them in a row until Laura slapped him on the back. Not once did he refer to the "global struggle against brown people," the wording consciously adopted by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

It is not clear whether the new language embraced by other administration officials was adopted without Mr. Bush's approval. "He was down in the basement playing with his trains when we decided to change the slogan," Secretary Rumsfeld said at a press conference. "He probably just didn't read the memo, or maybe he spilled his chocolate milk on it. Again."

Mr. Bush made a nod to the criticism that "war on terror" was a misleading phrase in the sense that the enemy is not terrorism. "Laura told me the other night that 'terrorism' isn't even a person. Heck, I thought it was Osama's brother in law or something the way everybody talked about stopping 'terrorism' and defeating 'terrorism.' I'm always the last to know."

"Some ask, are we still engaged in a war on terror?" Mr. Rumsfeld said. "How the hell should I know? It's a war, and a lot of people are terrified, particularly the folks over here at the Pentagon when they think about who their commander in chief is."

In introducing the new language, administration officials had suggested that the change reflected an evolution in the president's thinking. "Then he told us he didn't believe in evolution, so we had to go back to the old term," said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.