We missed this yesterday, but the Washington Post blogs about a Pentagon email that went out Monday asking its staff and speechwriters to officially stop using the phrase “Global War on Terror.” The new name: “Overseas Contingency Operation.” Uhh, come again? Here’s the Post:

"Recently, in a LtGen [John] Bergman, USMC, statement for the 25 March [congressional] hearing, OMB required that the following change be made before going to the Hill," Dave Riedel, of the Office of Security Review, wrote in an e-mail.

"OMB says: 'This Administration prefers to avoid using the term "Long War" or "Global War on Terror" [GWOT]. Please use "Overseas Contingency Operation.'"

Riedel asked recipients to "Please pass on to your speech writers and try to catch this change before the statements make it to OMB."

This isn’t first time Washington has tried to lose the “war” label. Two years ago, George W. Bush and his aides tried to change the “Global War on Terror” to the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism.” And we all know how that caught on. More recently, we’ve noticed that Barack Obama and his aides have barely used "war on terror" at all, in favor of more broad terms like the "ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism." But let’s face it: “Overseas Contingency Operation" does not exactly roll off the tongue. Just as “The artist formerly known as Prince” was always still “Prince," the "war" will probably always be the "war."