With apologies to Shakespeare...

...a skunk by any other name stinks just as much.

Our Dear Leader has decided we will no longer use the term "enemy combatant" to refer to the enemies that attack our troops.

Why?

I have my suspicions. They all center around Guantanamo Bay, current treatment of captured terrorists, Obama's determination to cripple our military, and Obama's overall vision of how this country should be.

According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica,

"The third Geneva Convention of 1949 required what is called an organized resistance movement to possess four characteristics before its members could be treated as prisoners of war upon capture. These were: (1) being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates, (2) having a fixed and distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, (3) carrying arms openly, and (4) conducting operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war."

There's been further clarification of how a guerrilla can be defined as a legal combatant:

"...article 43 of the Protocol requires all combatants to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack. However, even if a combatant does not do this, he will still be entitled to treatment as a lawful combatant if he carries his arms openly during each military engagement and during such time as he is visible to the adversary while engaged in a military deployment preceding the launching of an attack in which he is to participate."

There's also been clarification of how a guerrilla fighter loses his definition as a legal combatant: "A member of the armed forces of a party to a conflict will lose his status as a prisoner of war upon capture if he commits an act of hostility while wearing civilian clothes."

Interestingly enough, no one really disagrees that al-Qaeda are illegal combatants. Nor does anyone disagree that any individual that commits an act of terrorism (e.g., Hamas [despite their election to the government of the Gaza Strip], or the Taliban) is an illegal combatant. No, the disagreement comes in with the punishment for such acts:

Traditionally, at least in theory, unlawful combatants could be killed out of hand, entitled to little more than a blindfold by way of procedure [23]. During World War II, unlawful combatants were often subject to summary disposition, and the war crimes tribunals established after the War acknowledged that their deaths would not justify later criminal charges against their executioners [24].

In other words, "enemy combatants" who do not report to a higher authority, and who hide in civilian populations to attack our troops are illegal combatants, who are entitled to nothing more than a bullet to the head.

However, our Dear Leader, and his bug-eyed secretary for Homeland [In]Security are redefining terrorists from "enemy combatants" to something as yet to be determined, and terrorism from "terrorism" to "man-caused disasters."

They do not want us to realize that those captured and held in the jihad against the United States are being treated as full prisoners of war in defiance of the Geneva Convention. They do not want us to realize that, by breaking the laws of war, those "enemy combatants" that they're trying to redefine are unlawful combatants, and as such, are subject to torture, to summary execution as soon as they're no longer useful. They are not subject to repatriation, nor even to humane treatment.

I believe that this is immediately prior to redefining the proper reaction to acts of terrorism from a Defense matter to a Criminal Justice matter, dumping Gitmo detainees (and all others in military custody) back into their home populations, and yanking our troops out of the Middle East entirely.

And I believe that that is immediately prior to an NBC attack on our soil.

And I believe that, if the attack hits us just right, or the response isn't strong enough, we are done as a free, democratic republic, with equal rights for all. The United States of America will become just another third-world Islamic shit-hole.

God help us all. Because I also believe that our Dear Leader isn't acting foolishly, but is doing exactly what he intends, and will be creating the result--a disenfranchised majority, ruled by a self-declared elite--that he intends.