Is the administration disavowing the term "Global War on Terror"? A report by Al Kamen yesterday suggested maybe. The question arises because of an email Dave Riedel of the Office of Security Review sent to Pentagon staffers informing them that "OMB says: 'This Administration prefers to avoid using the term "Long War" or "Global War on Terror" [GWOT]. Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.'"

As luck would have it, though, OMB director Peter Orszag held a conference call with reporters this morning to answer questions about the budget, and fielded a question about this very issue.

"I sometimes am amused by the things I read in the press," Orszag said. "I'm not aware of any communication I've had on that issue. It was a communication by a mid-level career civil service."

So GWOT it is. That doesn't mean the Riedel email didn't go out, though, and some (me, for instance) wonder if some at the Pentagon might stick with the supposedly new moniker (Overseas Contingency Operation) leading to amusing confusion on the Hill.

This has been a problem for the government for some time, and to such an extent that even George Bush was willing to admit error. "We actually misnamed the war on terror," Bush said in August 2004. "It ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world." Touche.