Vance won't call the six-month war a war, hours before Trump vows its 'biggest attack of them all'

…(cont) In fairness to him, he did offer a number. He said major combat only lasted about six weeks. I wrote that down — six weeks — because I have a feeling I'll need it again before I'm done here, and I apologize for that in advance.

Now, the institution I actually trust to keep a straight face. In July, the Pentagon sent an email — CBS obtained a copy — telling the people fighting this war to stop calling it Operation Epic Fury. The Pentagon says the operation officially ended back on May 5th. The operation ended in May. The instructions on what not to call it went out in July. Is an ended operation still the kind of thing that needs new instructions?

Then there's the wedding. Tuesday night, a strike hit a home in southern Iran; the reporting puts the dead at five or more, a six-year-old among them, nearly seventy wounded. Asked about it, Mr. Vance said he was "extremely skeptical" that a U.S. strike hit a wedding party at all. Is "extremely skeptical" a description of the missile, or a description of the man talking about it?

I bring my car into it because it's the only other place I get promises about timelines from a professional. When the fan belt goes, my mechanic tells me what's broken and how long the fix will take, and if it runs long, he tells me that too. He hasn't once handed me the old belt back and told me he wouldn't call it a repair.

Iran says this week it hit U.S. forces in Kuwait and the U.A.E. The Pentagon says those strikes didn't reach the facilities. President Trump, on Truth Social rather than at a podium, promised that if Iran hits back again, they'll get what he called the "biggest attack of them all." Is that a promise from the same government that, two days later, stood at a podium and wouldn't use the word war?

My wife says I should let this one go — that a name is just a name, that a missile lands the same whether we call it a war, a situation, or an operation. Maybe she's right about that. I'm not the expert. That's why I called.

Oh — one more thing, before you go. Six weeks, Mr. Vance said, back at the top of all this. The paper today puts it at the seventh month. Which of those two numbers is the length of the war?