Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, American media outlets dutifully trumpet in headlines that the dead were "militants" - even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed. They simply cite always-unnamed "officials" claiming that the dead were "militants."

It's the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it's true. This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they're killing.

I've written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of "militant" is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates....