LAT op-ed: What else do you call a conflict in which Iraqis kill 3,000 of their own per month?

[DeepModem Mom]

The numbers prove it -- Iraq's a civil war
What else would you call a conflict in which Iraqis are killing more than 3,000 of their own per month?
By Barry Lando (BARRY LANDO, a former producer for CBS' "60 Minutes," is the author of the forthcoming book "Web of Deceit" about the role of the West in Iraq.)
November 29, 2006

SO IS IT A CIVIL WAR in Iraq or isn't it? By the straightforward definition — a war fought between factions or regions within a single nation — the answer seems clearly to be yes. That's why NBC and the Los Angeles Times recently decided to use the phrase to describe the ongoing sectarian conflict. It's a "fairly simple call," said the foreign editor of The Times.

But not everybody agrees. Official news releases, media reports, politicians and generals still talk of Iraq "on the brink" or "teetering on the edge." Full-scale civil war, according to these accounts, is "threatening" or "looming" or "menacing." It's a question of definitions, said a Pentagon reporter recently. According to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan: "We are almost there."

I would argue, however, that by one very basic measure — the number of Iraqis killing each other — we've been there for a while, and that there's no more defining left to be done. Simply compare the grisly statistics in Iraq with figures from other conflicts that already have been certified as genuine, full-scale civil wars. Then try to argue that this isn't one. It's a difficult case to make.

Of course, there's no way one can exactly measure one "civil war" against another. Each has unique ethnic, religious and political passions fueling the particular savagery. Nor is it easy to obtain accurate casualty figures, much less comparable ones, across the years and around the world.

A study published in the Lancet last month, for example, concluded that about 650,000 Iraqis had died by violence since March 2003. But that report has been widely criticized, so let's take instead the report just issued by the United Nations, which said that 3,709 Iraqis were killed in October....

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lando29nov29,0,5255900.story?coll=la-home-commentary

[Ezlivin]

1. Operation Iraqi Freedom

We're freeing them to go to Paradise, I guess.

Next thing you know they'll be calling it an uncivil war.