The Bush administration appears to be losing its fight to stop media branding the escalating violence in Iraq a civil war, after one of the main television networks formally announced it would break the taboo.

NBC News used one of its best-known presenters, Matt Lauer, to declare the network's semantic defiance of the White House.

"After careful consideration, NBC News has decided a change in terminology is warranted, that the situation in Iraq, with armed, militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas, can now be characterised as civil war," said Lauer, host of the Today show.

With rival sectarian militias fighting over Baghdad district by district, other US news organizations have said they were reconsidering their policies on the highly politicized issue, but the administration stuck to its position.

Speaking at the opening of the NATO summit in Latvia yesterday, President George W. Bush refused to accept the "civil war" label.

"There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of these attacks by al-Qaida, causing people to seek reprisals," he said.

His national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, was more explicit in countering the "civil war" terminology. "The Iraqis don't talk of it as a civil war, the unity government doesn't talk of it as a civil war," said Hadley.

But interviews printed in the US press suggest that many Iraqis believe a civil war is under way.

Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said in March: "We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

The death rate has since doubled and to many in Iraq the debate over words appears a grotesque quibble, but the choice of language has far-reaching significance in the United States, where public support for the war is dwindling.

"There is a good deal of research that shows the public generally doesn't like to get involved in what it sees as other countries' civil wars. That's why the administration is fighting this," said Christopher Gelpi, an expert on war and public opinion at Duke University, North Carolina.

"There's no question there is a civil war by any reasonable political science definition of what that means," he added.

Asked about the terminological debate by a Washington presenter on Monday, CNN's Baghdad correspondent, Michael Ware, gave an emotional response. "Anyone who still remains in doubt about whether this is civil war or not is suffering from the luxury of distance," he said.

"We have areas that people of one sect cannot enter for fear of immediate execution by another sect. You drive in a minibus on your way to work. Suddenly, there's a checkpoint. If you're of the wrong faith, you are dead. If that's not civil war... then honestly I don't know what is."

The Guardian

(China Daily 11/30/2006 page1)