Newspeak

[tangaroa]

George W. Bush invested the phrase "enemy combatants" to deny that captured al-Qaeda soldiers are prisoners of war, and to prefatorily convict certain captured persons as combatants when the evidence may have been thin on that point.

The New York Times and Washington Post have invented the phrase "armed civilians" to prefatorialy deny that persons are either al-Qaeda or soldiers regardless of whatever later evidence may come in.