Don't We At Least Owe Them Honesty In Death?

The military said today that seven more U.S. troops were killed in Iraq.

Releasing details to the media, the military said that six of those killed---all Marine reservists from the same Ohio-based unit---"were engaged by terrorists and killed by small-arms fire."

No. Unless the military has specific information that this exact group of enemy fighters had been targeting and killing civilians, they were not terrorists. They were insurgents, guerrillas, rebels, or "violent extremists." But they were not terrorists. They did not use an IED or a car bomb. They engaged and killed our troops in a stand-up firefight using conventional arms.

This is yet another example of why we are destined to lose ever-increasing amounts of blood and treasure for years to come in Iraq. What gave you the idea that we would ever withdraw as long as we're fighting "terrorists"? This is not just a question of semantics; repeated often enough, language can create its own reality. President Bush knows this, which is why he said the following earlier this year: "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

It's one thing to play word games with domestic policy. It's quite another to do so with the lives of American soldiers during wartime. But just as we saw with the death of Pat Tillman, this administration and the Pentagon have no qualms about using the ultimate sacrifice of our troops for political purposes.