Did You Know...

The President is holding a news conference in the Rose Garden. Responding to questioning from Martha Raddatz about Iraq and Afghanistan, he talked about taking the fight to “jihadists.”

Red alert! Red alert! Summon the State Department language police!

He used one of the Forbidden Words:

Federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center, are telling their people not to describe Islamic extremists as “jihadists” or “mujahedeen,” according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. Lingo like “Islamo-fascism” is out, too.

The reason: Such words may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates.

Can’t be “causing offense to moderates” now, can we? Guess Bush didn’t get his own feckless State Department’s memo.

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Related must-read: Andy McCarthy, author of the terrific new book, Willful Blindess, which I can’t put down, has a link-rich “Don’t say the J-word” post here and spotlights “a group of not-so-friendly moderates in Brooklyn” who detained a writer for taking photos of one of the Blind Sheikh’s old haunts, a [censored] mosque and breeding ground for [censored.]