Mr Bush's titanic war on terror will eventually sink beneath the waves

First it was to be a crusade. Then it became the "War for Civilisation". Then the "War without End". Then the "War against Terror". And now – believe it or not – President Bush is promising us a "Titanic War on Terror". This gets weirder and weirder. What can come next? Given the latest Bush projections last week – "we know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us" – he must surely have an even more gargantuan cliché up his sleeve.

Well, he must have known about the would-be Chicago "dirty" bomber – another little secret he didn't tell the American people about for a month. Until, of course, it served a purpose. We shall hear more about this strange episode – and I'll hazard a guess the story will change in the next few days and weeks. But what could be more titanic than the new and ominously named "Department for Homeland Security", with its 170,000 future employees and its $37.5bn (£26.6bn) budget? It will not, mark you, incorporate the rival CIA and FBI – already at each other's throats over the failure to prevent the crimes against humanity of 11 September – and will thus ensure that the intelligence battle will be triangular: between the CIA, the FBI and the boys from "Homeland Security". This, I suspect, will be the real titanic war.