WHEN EVOLUTION IS NOT EVOLUTION

Oh, I’m sorry. President Bush can evolve. Why, according to The New York Times today, the “war on terrorism” has become “a global struggle against violent extremism.”

The Times’ Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker say what’s behind this semantic shift:

Administration and Pentagon officials say the revamped campaign has grown out of meetings of President Bush’s senior national security advisers that began in January, and it reflects the evolution in Mr. Bush’s own thinking nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Fine. At least it’s fine until a few paragraphs later, when Schmitt and Shanker, after discussion of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, say:

Lawrence Di Rita, Mr. Rumsfeld’s spokesman, said the shift in language “is not a shift in thinking, but a continuation of the immediate post-9/11 approach.”