Fiddling while Rome burns

While George W. Nero (that's his insane leader moniker for today) takes his 49th vacation in five years (because preznitting is hard work), American soldiers continue to die in Iraq -- 14 of them yesterday.

But because downgrading his misbegotten "war" to a nebulous "struggle" might mean people would question why we're still there, and why he's still feeding American kids into a meatgrinder, Captain Codpiece returned the moniker "War on Terror" to his Iraq adventure yesterday:

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."

In an interview last week about the new wording, Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said that the conflict was "more than just a military war on terror" and that the United States needed to counter "the gloomy vision" of the extremists and "offer a positive alternative."

But administration officials became concerned when some news reports linked the change in language to signals of a shift in policy. At the same time, Mr. Bush, by some accounts, told aides that he was not happy with the new phrasing, a change of tone from the wording he had consistently used since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It is not clear whether the new language embraced by other administration officials was adopted without Mr. Bush's approval or whether he reversed himself after the change was made. Either way, he planted himself on Wednesday firmly on the side of framing the conflict primarily in military terms and appeared intent on emphasizing that there had been no change in American policy.

"We're at war with an enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001," Mr. Bush said in his address here, to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of state legislators. "We're at war against an enemy that, since that day, has continued to kill."

Yes, they have, Mr. Preznit. So why did you invade Iraq? Or are you still saying that Iraq had something to do with 9/11?

Yes, there is now Al Qaeda in Iraq, Mr. Preznit. YOU allowed them in there. YOU put them there because of your incompetence and your need to prove that your dick is bigger than Poppy's. But don't come to me now and say we went to Iraq because Al Qaeda is there.

Maybe your knee-jerk moonies are willing to believe whatever horseshit comes out of your mouth on any given day. But here at B@B, we are still capable of using our cognitive abilities.