In this case, I expect 'killed' means 'spirited away to Cuba'

How about "shot dead"? At least there's some attribution to effort since we share the sam e methodology of using IEDs to blow people up - unless they did have an IED-malfunction.

I would expect it would be more in the nature of "blowd up" as jets were used but that is a means to the end and the end - "killed" - is the euphamism, not how it took place.

Yes, rather odd. Maybe they mean the kills weren't officially confirmed.

I am inclined to agree with Alfons' interpretation. At any rate it is a very weird use of quotations; in the olden days it used to actually mean a literal quote, so perhaps they are old-fashioned quoting the PAO guy who made the announcement?

The way I would take it on an initial read would imply skepticism.

To me, it looks like they put the quotes around the words "killed" because they imply we should take the whole claim with a grain of salt.

Perhaps they killed them - perhaps its all a grand propoganda ploy and they are just claiming to have killed them.

Very weird indeed.

I want to know why they didn't put the quotes around the word "militants".

At any rate it is a very weird use of quotations; in the olden days it used to actually mean a literal quote,

I think this all changed because of the "famous" and "popular" "Austin Powers" "movies".

The quotation marks have nothing to do with euphemisms or expressing skepticism.

In the weird language of British headlines, the quote marks are a shorthand way of saying "somebody said this."

The same headline from a North American news source would be something like: 15 militants killed in Afghanistan, U.S. says.

Also, in North America, any word or words that appear in quotation marks in a headline pretty much have to be from a direct quote in the story, with a only a little leeway for tenses or brevity. No so in Britain, where it is considered acceptable to paraphrase rather freely between quotation marks in a headline.

Ahhh, the voice of the yellow press. that is a good explanation - but the use of the quotation marks does not add anything in this case, unless it is then highlighting that an interview took place. <p>And I see, by the way, no issue at all with militants and insurgents. Again, these are not <i>terrorists</i> in these valleys as they are local folk with a plan to push out foreign soldiers for a political end - regardless of what that political end is and if your disargee with it. Fighting a soldier on your own territory is not terror, it is militant insurgency.

They all look the same to you? Some guy from Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, or France shooting at Canadians and Americans an UKians -- as many of the Taliban are -- certainly don't count as "local folk".

You had better move back from the desk, David, with that jerking knee of yours. The Taliban are the reminants of a defeated government - that they have picked up a few idealists from elswhere is immaterial. Every bad person does not come from elsewhere and especially them. Your comment remind me of the Truro Neighbourhood watch in the 70s that posted all the signs at the entry routes to town. All bad is not one homogenous goo. They, like your belief that they all look the same, feared the <i>auslander</i> without noticing their own.

I'm not sure how you twisted what I said into "they all look the same". That's exactly the moral posture that you appear to have adopted. Unlike many progressives and most of the press, I believe that they're fully functioning human beings, not children or moral retards or a different species and should be judged for exactly what they are and how they behave. I feel no special need to apply euphemisms to mask that. The Taliban are not just Afghans but in fact derive much of their support in man power, weaponary, and ideology from Pakistan. A key tactict is to apply violence with little discrimination against the local population -- the "local folk" -- to force the others into line. I.e. they are a terrorist organization. The fact that they _also_ attack Americans, etc. doesn't excuse that; the fact that they aren't part of our culture, heritage, or religious background or skin color doesn't excuse it either.

You used the phrase so you must have known what you were using it for but I can't buy your (is this how the skin-toney stuff of yours fits in?) it's-all-Ben-Laden stuff and that they are all homogenized victims as there is and always has been Afghans for Afghanistanism in the Taliban.

The good folk in the valleys of the Afghan-Pakistan have their own agendas and loyalties and capabilities and battles for at least the 125 years since great-granddad was a British Sgt. Major in the area. And, sure, the Taliban was and is a homegrown radical militant conservative political movement that has tapped into and been tapped into the Saudi wing-nut radical militant conservative terrorist movement but the Taliban also predate mid-80s products Al Quada and Hezbollah for that matter as they morphed to a degree from our pals the <i>mujahideen</i>, the nasty sons of bitches who fought the Soviets on our behalf in around 1979-80. <p>That is why it is a militant insurgency but not a terrorist organization even if they use nasty tools of subjugation including the fear of future more severe violence - though I suspect that they rely far more upon present day severe violence. If every political movement gets to be labelled "terrorist organization" because it is unbelievably bastardly, the label becomes so generic as to be useless.