Who's a terrorist?

We know what a terrorist is, right? Above all, a terrorist is someone who threatens a noncombatant to achieve a goal. Like those guys who have captured that American freelance journalist and threaten to kill her if a number of Iraqi women in U.S./Iraqi custody aren't released, right?


So what does this make the United States Army? The Army doesn't seem to dispute the report that we have been seizing Iraqi women, at least two of them, to get their husbands to surrender. The best we can say, apparently, is that they aren't being held in "long-term" detention. Still, this statement is pretty chilling:

''The 28-year-old woman had three young children at the house, one being as young as six months and still nursing,'' the intelligence officer wrote. She was held for two days and was released after he complained, he said.

I guess we've really figured out how to persuade the people of Iraq of the merits of the American system, haven't we?