Operation fill-in-the-blank: Pentagon weighs what to call war against ISIS

After nearly two months of conducting airstrikes over Iraq and Syria, the Pentagon is being pressured to answer a basic question: What are they calling this war?

Every U.S. military intervention since the invasion of Panama in 1989, code-named Operation Just Cause, has had a name. And there are reasons for that -- as the name clears up a number of areas of potential confusion.

Among them:

What does the Pentagon put on the subject line when its accountants submit billions of dollars in military receipts to Congress?

Or, what service medal will these men and women fighting overseas be earning? It can't be the Global War on Terror ribbon. The Pentagon only designated those medals for missions in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, in Afghanistan, which is distinct from the mission in Iraq and Syria.

The debate over what to call this war follows a debate over whether to call the airstrikes a war at all. Secretary of State John Kerry initially was reluctant to do so, but U.S. officials eventually conceded that it is a "war" in the same way the U.S. has been at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

Now, the absence of any name for the mission is becoming just as perplexing

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Operation fill-in-the-blank: Pentagon weighs what to call war against ISIS