Pentagon retires the name Operation Epic Fury, then its VP retires the word war too.

…(cont) On May 5, the Pentagon says that operation officially ended. I take them at their word on that one. Wars end, operations end — that part isn't my department.

Then in July — sometime in July, the email doesn't carry a day — the Pentagon told military personnel to stop calling it Operation Epic Fury. Not "stand down." Not "mission complete." Stop using the name. Some weeks after it had already ended, on paper, somebody still needed to be told what not to call it.

I asked the man on the phone: if it ended in May, why the notice in July? He said he'd get back to me.

On September 1st, the U.S. struck targets near the Strait of Hormuz. The President called them large and powerful. Iran said it would retaliate. Nobody at the Pentagon called any of it Operation anything, because by then there wasn't supposed to be a name left to use.

Two days later, Vice President Vance held his first press briefing since the press secretary left, and a reporter asked whether this — whatever it's being called this month — would be settled by the time voters go to the polls in November. Vance said, "I wouldn't call it a war." He said, "Right now, there's no active shooting." Then, in the same breath, he said, "I recognize there have been places where this has flared up," but that "major combat operations only lasted about six weeks."

That same week, he was also asked about a strike Tuesday night on a home in southern Iran — a strike Common Dreams reported killed at least five civilians, including a six-year-old, and wounded nearly seventy. Thursday, Vance said he was "extremely skeptical" it hit a wedding. The next day, asked again, he was extremely skeptical again.

Separately — and I want to be careful here, because I only know what the wire says — Iran claimed new strikes against American forces in Kuwait and the UAE, which it described as a response to a warning from President Trump. Not to the strike near the Strait. Not to the wedding. To a warning. That's what the wire says, so that's as far as I'll go with it.

Here's my math, and somebody correct me if I've got it wrong. This started February 28th. That's over six months ago now, by the paper's own count. Subtract what Vance credited to major combat operations, and there's still better than four months left over. Four-plus months of whatever this is — not major combat, and, in his word, not a war.

I don't have a name for that part. Neither, it seems, does anyone I've been able to reach.

Excuse me — before you go, one more thing. That major combat window Vance mentioned — does it fall before or after July, when they were still telling people what not to call it? Counted forward from February 28th, it lands you in the middle of April. The notice went out in July. What was happening in between? I called to ask about that too. He said he'd get back to me. I'm still waiting on those six weeks.