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“Terrorists” or “Insurgents?”

Is Iraq in a ‘civil war?’

Are we engaged in a ‘surge’ or an ‘escalation?’

Are Islamists “suicide bombers” or “homicide bombers?”

Words shape our views on various political issues, and therefore make for many linguistic turf battles. If you don’t believe me, ask George Lakoff or Frank Luntz – two leading experts on different sides of the political aisle who study this phenomenon. (Luntz looks more at terminology; Lakoff at underlying themes, or ‘frames.’)

So it was very interesting to read Sunday's New York Times, where it was reported that England – which awhile back gave up the ghost on the terminology of the “Global War on Terror,” opting for “The Long War” – is now making it their official practice to not refer to Islamic extremists with bombs and plots and violent plans as “terrorists.” Rather, they’re now common ‘criminals.’:

When terrorists tried to blow up civilians in London and Glasgow, Gordon Brown, the new British prime minister, responded in his own distinctive way. What had just been narrowly averted, he said, was not a new jihadist act of war but instead a criminal act. As if to underscore the point, Brown instructed his ministers that the phrase “war on terror” was no longer to be used and, indeed, that officials were no longer even to employ the word “Muslim” in connection with the terrorism crisis. In remarks to reporters, Brown’s new home secretary, Jacqui Smith, articulated the basic message. “Let us be clear,” she said, “terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religions.”

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On Friday, CBSNews.com ran a story by London-based producer Tucker Reals suggesting that the London bomb plot might have been foretold on the Web.

"Hours before London explosives technicians dismantled a large car bomb in the heart of the British capital's tourist-rich theater district," the story said, "a message appeared on one of the most widely used jihadist Internet forums, saying: 'Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed.'"

I asked Reals how CBS found the posting, which was in the "al Hesbah" chat room.

"We have a team who very closely monitors jihadi web forums for us," he said, noting that news networks like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are also monitored. "[The team] sends out messages daily, such as, 'here's video of a hummer being blown up in Iraq, posted on this forum.' The message they sent out Friday morning caught my eye."

Some media organizations, including CNN, have questioned the CBSNews.com report. On Friday, correspondent Octavia Nasr said "we cannot find this claim anywhere. It is not on the Islamic website…Now [Hesbah] is a major, major website. So we entered that website. There is nothing to that effect. Now some times people post things that the administrator goes back and takes out. So there is that chance that something like this happened. But that, by itself, is indication that the posting was not credible."

As it turned out, the posting was removed, according to the CBS journalist – a member of the team mentioned above – who first found it. (This did not happen until Sunday, however.) Because his job entails infiltrating jihadi Web sites for a Western news organization – an occupation that would not endear him to some of the more militant members of those forums – I am not using the journalist's name here.

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The theatrical release of "A Mighty Heart" – the story of Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and murder – has called to mind many Americans' first encounter with the grainy terrorist videos from non-descript locations that have become a grim, regular reminder of current affairs. But we're kidding ourselves if we think that the stereotype of low-tech tools and old school propaganda is the reality in Iraq and elsewhere. A new study from Radio Free Europe/RadioLiberty today makes clear that we're not merely dealing with an occasional fuzzy hostage video:

Iraq's Sunni insurgency has developed a sophisticated media campaign to deliver its message over the Internet through daily press releases, weekly and monthly magazines, books, video clips, full-length films, countless websites, and even television stations. Part of the target audience for insurgent media projects are mainstream Arabic-language media, which often amplify the insurgent message to a mass audience.

The study is harrowing in its details. According to the Washington Post's coverage of the study:

"Top 20," produced by Ansar al-Sunnah, is a compilation video of attacks on U.S. forces, presented as a greatest-hits competition among "insurgent brigades" for footage of the most spectacular attack. It is made with the express intention to encourage "healthy" rivalry among cells of fighters.

"It is very fast-paced and clearly aimed at the video game generation," says [study author Harold] Kimmage, who is an Arabist and a regional analyst for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which broadcasts into Iraq.

From this pop culture-esque highlight show to more traditional media, it looks as if the Al Qaeda and other terrorist factions are have all the media niches covered. The battle for hearts and minds has gone online and multimedia – and the more the rest of us know this, the better.

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A few weeks ago, we brought you the story behind the "60 Minutes" story about Robert Jenkins, an army deserter who was not allowed to leave North Korea for nearly 40 years. Now we bring you the story behind this Sunday's piece on eco-terrorists – specifically, the tale of two producers, a correspondent, and a pair of environmental activists so desperate to remain anonymous that they engaged in tactics more reminiscent of spy movies than the workaday world of journalism.



"60 Minutes" producer Graham Messick, along with associate producer Michael Karzis and correspondent Ed Bradley, began working on the story in June. By September, the heavy lifting was almost finished – the team had just one interview left to do, with the FBI assistant director in charge of eco-terrorism. (The story grew out of the fact that the FBI has said eco-terrorism now represents the nation's top domestic terrorist threat.) At the time, Messick was also preparing a story about the Valerie Plame case. Towards the end of the day on Friday, Sept. 30th, he got a phone call. He heard a male voice, barely audible, and was unable to make out what the person was talking about. He asked if the call was regarding the eco-terrorist story or the Plame story. The caller "said, 'well, you may call them eco-terrorists' – he was kind of pissed off," says Messick. "So then I realized, oh s*it, this might be what I've been looking for."



Messick asked if he could call back, because the connection was so bad, but the caller refused, since the call was being "routed" to make it impossible to trace. The man on the phone, who spoke in a deep, unidentifiable monotone, said he was very active in the animal liberation movement, and told Messick he had heard that Bradley had interviewed Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a trauma surgeon from Southern California who acts a spokesperson for several extreme animal rights organizations. Vlasak advocates assassinating animal researchers and others to slow down what he considers animal abuse, though he says he does not himself commit violent actions. The caller said his was a non-violent movement, and that Vlasak did not speak for him or his colleagues. He said he would consider doing an interview to say as much and discuss his tactics. It would be, he said, the first on-camera interview by someone from the group in more than 20 years.

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