Last week I facetiously congratulated Rudy Giuliani for realizing that the most important thing about fighting terrorism is the catch-phrase we use to describe it. Remember, last year during his failed presidential campaign, Rudy got so obsessed with phraseology that at one point he even rebelled against “war on terror”, spending the latter part of the campaign obsessing about the need to call it “The Terrorists War on Us.”
So today, with Attorney General Holder heading to the Hill and on-going controversy about the administration’s decision to try the 9/11 plotters in New York City, one of the main things Rudy focused on in his conference call with reporters was his relief that Holder used the word “war” about al Qaeda and challenged the White House to show the fortitude to keep using “war” and “terror” in the same sentence.