Bush Puts 'War On
Terror' Back In Vocabulary
By Alec Russell in Washington
The Telegraph - UK
8-5-5

President George W Bush has firmly rebuffed an attempt by some of his most senior aides to phase out the use of his signature phrase, the "war on terror".

Senior officials in the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House have for the past week been pushing the alternative "global struggle against violent extremism". It was seen by allies as a belated recognition that America could not beat terrorism by military means alone.

But amid outrage on the Right that it diminished the gravity of the terrorist threat, and rampant media speculation that this was a major turn-around, Mr Bush has made it clear that the "war" is still on.

"Make no mistake about it, we are at war," he told a group of Texan legislators in a speech that used the phrase "war on terror" five times. "We're at war with an enemy that attacked us on September 11, 2001. We're at war against an enemy that since that day has continued to kill."

Three of Mr Bush's most trusted aides, Gen Richard Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, have all recently suggested that the word "war" was an over-simplification.

But on Monday, at a frosty White House meeting, Mr Bush made it clear he was unhappy with the change and that he had no intention of jettisoning the defining rhetorical phrase of his presidency.

The following day, in a rare change of tack, Mr Rumsfeld said in a speech: "Some ask are we still engaged in a war on terror? Let there be no mistake about it. It's a war."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.

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