>>>>> In any event, I hope your “big red rant” is not with me. <<<<<
Nope, not one iota.
The media took extreme liberties with the terminology just as you say, and “undermine” is the perfect term although IMO they had some obscure journo agenda (being sissies) of not being “too judgmental” about the validity of terrorism (they are “objective journalists” after all) and so the ambiguous, redundant, and meaningless term “enemy combatant” served their multiple obtuse purposes ideally.
Angkor,
That might be an interesting article to write.
What one would need would be to show that it was the MEDIA or liberals who coined the term “enemy combatant” rather than the Bush admin, and that (a MUCH easier task, I imagine) the media then used the term “enemy combatant” in a pejorative rather than historically accurate sense.
I think Democrats are truly dangerous. But the media is even worse.
If the shoe were on the other foot, and it was conservatives who were benefiting from all the media propaganda, I imagine conservatives would be happy with it and use it. So the fact that “Democrats are using the media to their own advantage” isn’t the thing that burns my butt.
What DOES burn it - and scorchingly so - is that the media is dishonest, biased, and corrupt. And that they continually advance a blatant ideological agenda all the while claiming to be “objective.”
No democracy can long survive such a media. People cannot vote intelligently when they are continually denied the truth.