Six thousand words and the words “terror,” “terrorist,” or “terrorism” do not appear even once.

Yes, the issue was so thoroughly dodged that the president brought up “the attacks of September 11th, 2001″ in the … third paragraph of the speech. Is Pleszczynski’s gripe that the president called the attackers “violent extremists” instead of “terrorists”? Many of the conservative responses to the speech have been disappointingly shallow and trite.