When Civil War is a Matter of Semantics

I do think that many in The W, Rove and Co are clinically in denial about how things are going in Iraq - which, by the way, it is debatable as to whether we should have invaded in the first place. But, really, you are about to see the W, embark on another PR campaign to push his Iraq agenda. Be ready for the rhetorical arguments and semantic debates as to what we mean when we say "civil war." Not all civil wars are like our Civil War. Certainly, if it looks, smells, and tastes like civil war, it's all politics that shape the debate about if Iraq is genuinely immersed in it or not. Have a gander at this article that has some "expert" opinions on the matter:

Heavily armed private militias routinely clash; suicide bombers kill civilians every day; each side sets fire to the other's mosques, expels families from their homes, and slaughters each other; and the central government seems powerless to stop the violence.

The latest upsurge in Iraqi bloodshed, the conventional wisdom goes, has pushed the country to "the brink" of civil war. Testifying before Congress on Thursday, Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, said as much when he stated that "sectarian violence is a greater concern for us security-wise right now than the insurgency."

But to many analysts, Iraq is already immersed in a civil war. Some point to the hypothetical definition of a civil war recently offered by National Director of Intelligence John Negroponte as "a complete loss of central government security control, the disintegration or deterioration of the security forces of the country."

Indeed, there are those on the right who are finally starting to side with those who are right, rather than with those on the "Right." Points to this author for coming up with the most academic (read: arcane - but geeks like me enjoy such verbosity) sentence (which by the way, a one sentence paragraph is really grammatical tomfoolery). Have a gander:

A Republican pushback on Capitol Hill and smoldering conservative dissatisfaction have already killed not just the ports deal but key elements of Bush's domestic agenda, and threaten GOP control of Congress if unhappy conservatives sit out the November midterm elections.

The apostasy in some quarters runs to heretofore unthinkable depths.

"If I had a choice and Bush were running today against (Democratic President) Bill Clinton, I'd vote for Bill Clinton," said Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan administration Treasury Department official whose book, "Impostor: How George Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," is making the rounds of conservative think tanks and talk shows. "He was clearly a much better president in a great many ways that matter to me."