January 3: From the New York Sun, novelist Nidra Poller interviews George Malbrunot, one of two French journalists captured by Iraqi Salafists on August 20 and released on December 22.

Poller: Would you call the people who were holding you insurgents or résistants?

Malbrunot: For us it is clear: People who combat an illegal occupation that results from an illegal war are résistants. Resistance is a sacred right, whether you are Islamist or nationalist, you are résistants. However, when you capture people from a country that has nothing to do with the situation, then your methods have nothing to do with the resistance...Taking hostages is a method of terrorism.

In other words, as long as paramilitary death-squads murder innocent Iraqis, they are "resistance fighters." But should they make the la grande erreur and kidnap a Frenchman, they become...terrorists...