A lot of silly email pouring in regarding that Agence France Press post. Here, is an expletive-free — and to be fair, less crazy – example:

What do you find so interesting about that phrasing? Do you find it objectionable that the massacre at Haditha is characterized by the AFP as terrorism? It is bush and his apologists who have been most promiscuous about the term, characterizing insurgent attacks on occupying forces as “terrorist” in nature. If attacks on military targets are terrorist in nature, are not military attacks on civilians such as those carried out by certain U.S. troops in Haditha? Or have you finally achieved that state of wingnut grace in which words mean whatever you’d like them to mean?

Note: I said the AFP’s phrasing was “interesting.” It is interesting. It’s quite editorial. Assuming the Marines in question are found guilty, and some of them have admitted as much, I really don’t have a problem with saying what they did was “terror” or “terroristic.” But I don’t see any evidence of “wingnut grace” on my part to point out something as interesting phrasing when it is in fact interesting phrasing. Moreover, don’t people think that there’s a difference between two groups when group A prosecutes its members for murder when they commit terrorist attacks and group B gives them a medal? Michael’s basic point is absolutely correct, “the Marines” didn’t “sow their own brand of terror.” And the reason we know this is that the authorities are charging the allegedly guilty parties with murder. Keep in mind, many of the wire services still use all sorts of weasel words when describing al Qaeda — “so-called terrorists” “a group the US says committed the 9/11 attacks” etc, etc. This just struck me as a fairly loaded way of using the word terror against the US. And, horror of horrors, I called it “interesting.” I shall be less brutal in my media criticism in the future.