There are a number of areas in which the media are perverting the language to accommodate a conservative political agenda. One is the use of "death tax" for the more accurate and descriptive "inheritance tax". Another is acquiescing to "surrender" in place of "withdraw".

The one which is most offensive is the use of "contractor" to describe "mercenary". To my mind, "contractors" are people involved in rebuilding, advising, constructive things. Mercenaries, at least US mercenaries in the Middle East, are civilians able to kill, maim, and torture with no effective oversight except the odd "investigation". They wear no uniform, and a case could be made for shooting them immediately upon capture.

The "contractors" recently freed in South America are really mercenaries, used for military purposes where the military doesn't want to be seen going.

And it's worse. Blackwater has been used in the US by Homeland Security against Americans in places where the National Guard is more appropriate. (Unfortunately the National Guard is being used for other purposes unrelated to national security.) This is a bad omen, as giving Conservatives a private army on American soil can, and will, be used against the public.

The Press is complicit by not insisting upon accuracy in it's reporting. "Contractors" my butt! Why not call a mercenary a mercenary unless it would seem distasteful to most people.

Arf

Wikipedia as quoted here.

A mercenary is a person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national of a Party to the conflict and "is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party".[1][2]