NPR Check: If Our Side Kills Them They Must Be Militants

NPR Check brings up one of my pet peeves. The infamous pentagon/media "body count" made famous during Vietnam. Brought back bigger and better than ever by Bushco. You would think the "News" media would have learned by now. Learning is not really their job anymore is it? Actually a good facimile of our news media today can be found in a fictional film I saw over the weekend, "V For Vendetta" has a News team eerily similar to Faux News, CNN, ABC and yes NPR.
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I'm really sick of hearing how many "militants" are supposedly being killed by US, NATO, Israeli, coalition, and other allied armed forces. In the hourly news bulletin this afternoon NPR reported that 4 NATO soldiers were killed in Afghanistan along with two hundred miltants! Excuse me, but was there an independent source on the ground there to count the dead and notice if all of them were armed fighters or occupants of an armed bunker? Why is "our side's" word taken as fact when the past proves that "our side" often lies when it comes to killing lots of civilians. And why militant? Is someone militant when they are taking up arms to fight an army of invasion or occupation? Are Iraqi "militants" the same as Palestinian "militants"--or Afghan "militants" or Columbian "militants." I don't recall armed Israeli settlers or trigger happy Blackwater mercenaries being called "militants" (or for that matter the violence prone hawks in the Whitehouse or Pentagon!) NPR's use of the term reflects the simplistic "for us or against us" mentality of the entire "war on terror" as it's being run and it should find a more accurate term (armed fighter, armed supporter, guerilla, etc.) and use it only when they can confirm its veracity or qualify it as "alleged."