Terry Jones in the Guardian about semantics

[No2W2004]

Then there's the problem of what the Americans are going to call the Iraqis - especially the ones that they kill. You can call people who are defending their own homes from rockets and missiles launched from helicopters and tanks "fanatics and terrorists" only for so long. Eventually even newspaper readers will smell a rat.

Similarly it's fiendishly difficult to get people to accept the label "rebels" for those Iraqis killed by American snipers when - as in Falluja - they turn out to be pregnant women, 13-year-old boys and old men standing by their front gates.

It also sounds a bit lame to call ambulance drivers "fighters" - when they've been shot through the windscreen in the act of driving the wounded to hospital - and yet what other word can you use without making them sound like illegitimate targets?

I hope you're beginning to see the problem.

The key thing, I suppose, is to try to call US mercenaries "civilians" or "civilian contractors", while calling Iraqi civilians "fighters" or "insurgents".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1206738,00.html

[Another Bill C.]

1. He's overestimated the American public.

"You can call people who are defending their own homes from rockets and missiles launched from helicopters and tanks 'fanatics and terrorists' only for so long. Eventually even newspaper readers will smell a rat." (emphasis mine.)

[SemperEadem]

2. Terry Jones from Monty Python fame?

I know he does historical docs these days..

[No2W2004]

3. yep

he's been writing articles for this web site.