The Little Brown Reader

The ban was issued by Melissa McCoy, a Times assistant managing editor, who told the staff in an e-mail circulated on Monday night that the phrase conveyed unintended meaning and asked them to instead use the terms ``insurgents'' or ``guerrillas.''

McCoy told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that the memo followed a discussion among top editors at the paper and was not sparked by reader complaints. The memo first surfaced on the Web site L.A. Observed``(Times Managing Editor) Dean Baquet and I both individually had the same reaction when we saw the term used in the newspaper,'' McCoy said. ``Both of us felt the phrase evoked a certain feeling, that there was a certain romanticism or heroism to the resistance.''

McCoy said she considered ``resistance fighters'' an accurate description of Iraqis battling American troops, but it also evoked World War II -- specifically the French Resistance or Jews who fought against Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto.

"Really, it was something that just stopped us when we saw it, and it was really about the way most Americans have come to view the words,'' McCoy said.