I also notice that the Intrepid NYT War Correspondent drops the "Al" in his terse dispatches from the Front-- the front of the press lounge, that is, closest to the latte dispenser. So it's no longer "Al" Qaeda-- the latest personification of Middle East terrorism, like "Johnny Reb" or "GI Joe"-- it's the whole damn Qaeda family! Shucks, and here I'd come to picture "Al" as a grizzled old terrorist, a caricature resembling an amalgamation of the late Arafat and the presumably alive, if unwell, Osama.

Yes, I'm being silly, but I think that such minuscule stylistic flourishes contribute to a faux-urgency or intrepidness that's an essential component of the 21st-Century Embedded Reporter shtick. It's like a reporter on the police beat using police codes for crimes ("possible 547 on Bleeker!") to give added cachet to the story.

As far as the devil's advocate comments wondering whether there isn't a redeeming method to the seeming madness of purposely conflating and distorting the nature of those shooting at us in Iraq: nice try. Even if there were some political agenda or propaganda program in place to deliberately blur the identity of the hostiles, one would have to have faith that the government/military warmongers are ultimately trustworthy and are pursuing a valid and ethical strategy to de-escalate US military involvement in the Middle East. Not likely.

On the latter point, I often recall with a shudder the attitude of a co-worker on the day of the Iraq invasion. This is a decent and pleasant man, from a Quaker family no less; but he is not much of a critical thinker. As we drove in to work together, he mildly observed that surely the president and his advisors have much more information on the situation in Iraq than ordinary citizens do-- shouldn't citizens support the leaders and the military operation, trusting that the president was doing the right thing for the benefit of the USA?

(He's such a nice man, and was so painfully earnest, that I became doubly-depressed and unwilling to argue.)

To conclude this meander on the naming of parts, the issue Glenn appropriately raises relates to the broader issue of how corporate media defines and organizes concepts to, well, manufacture consensus. Before reading Glenn's comment this morning, I happened to turn on the local teevee news. Now, this Philadelphia station offers a "local news lite" on Saturday morning, usually focusing on features glurge like pet adoption or fund-raising events. But they do spend a moment on actual news.

I winced for the millionth time at a standard report about a local resident being killed in Iraq. But I noticed that the report, which incidentally mentioned recent developments in Iraq, used the standard war report terminology: war, enemy, insurgent, etc. Defining "the enemy" as all "Qaeda" all the time is just a refinement of characterizing anyone shooting at US invader/occupiers as "the enemy". It coats a multitude of imperialist sins and atrocities with the whitewash of legitimacy and respectability.