“I have always viewed the expression, ‘War on Terror,’ as a useful rhetorical device used to capture the sense of urgency around the issue and identify those whom we are fighting without having to go through a list of every group that wishes us ill,” said David Cid, a former FBI counterterrorism official who is now executive director of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City next to the national memorial erected on the grounds where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building stood.

“This is not a bad thing, and it does serve a useful purpose,” Cid said, adding, “even at the UN, there is heated debate about rejecting terrorism as a tool and much discussion about ‘rejecting terrorism,’ ‘condemning terrorism,’ and so on.”

“The notion that jihad has a meaning within the context of peaceful Islam is correct. As you know, one may speak of the Inner jihad (the struggle we all engage in to be better people) and the Outer Jihad, which has its worst expression in terrorism, but to deny that terrorism is considered a part of jihad by many is folly,” Cid told HSToday.us.

“I think to call the language of their predecessors ‘inflammatory and narrow’ is unfair. If we think back to how we all reacted on 9/11 and how we all felt on 9/12, the language used at the time seems restrained more than inflammatory,” Cid continued. “Nuance aside, we must keep hitting the adversary and keep him off his game, otherwise we will be hit again.”

Charles Faddis, a former career CIA counterterrorist in the Middle East and head of the NCTC’s WMD terrorism branch when he retired last year, told HSToday.us that “as with most things, I think the real test will be in what the administration actually does versus what it says. Describing this struggle as one that is being waged against Al Qaeda and not against ‘terror’ probably makes sense and comes much closer to encapsulating the real essence of the conflict. I also think that everyone who has worked counterterrorism over the last many years would applaud the acknowledgement that we need to combat this threat on many levels including political, economic and cultural.

“What would bother me,” Faddis said, “ is if this turned out to be the first step in a return to Bill Clinton's approach, which was to try to handle this threat exclusively through law enforcement channels. I don't have any problem with indicting and trying Al Qaeda members when we have the means to do so, but, the scope of this threat is such that we are going to have to continue to employ armed forces for many years to come. In short, we can debate the characterization of the threat and exactly what tools we should be using, but at the end of the day we are still at war.”

Several seasoned active duty Intelligence Community counterterrorists who've focused on Islamic jihadists who frequently talk to HSToday.us on background, said they do not agree with the Obama administration’s new policy on how to characterize America’s battle against Muslim jihadists as outlined by Brennan. They noted in interviews this week that they objected to the strategy when it was first broached by the Bush administration.

The counterterrorists said they agree with Hamid, Phares and other Islamic experts’ explanations about why the new “terminology” policy is off the mark and misses the point with regard to the inherent nature and religious ideology of Muslim jihadists.