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.
This is the perfect job for someone with access to Lexis/Nexis to do an Ann Coulter-ish analysis of the timelines and article-counts on "unlawful combatant" vs. "enemy combatant".
My memory may be a little off in terms of the dates - it may have been a full year after 9/11 when the transition in the media occurred - but I'm certain that it did occur and I'm certain that I was perplexed by it at the time. "What the heck does 'enemy combatant' mean?"
In any case there is currently a small leftie movement underway to formally and legally "redefine" or perhaps better-stated to "undefine" the term "unlawful combatant" such that it does not include people such as those terrorists who have been detained and housed at Gitmo.
But let's be clear that the ONLY outcome (and IMO the actual intent) of this would be to legitimize terrorists and jihadis under some perverse incarnation of the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war.
Thus do Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mohammad Atta, Ramzi Yousef, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Ziad Jarrah all become "Prisoners Of War" and legitimate "soldiers" under the Geneva Conventions.
Which in turn also makes innocent civilians legitimate "military" targets.
That's why this terminology is so deadly.