This afternoon, my next-door office neighbor, the indefatigable Abu Aardvark, walks into my office and shows me this chart (click to enlarge):

     From this source (it leads to a PDF): "Is There A ‘Civil War’ in Iraq?" .

      It shows the depressing increase in violence in Iraq.  The bottom line:

The AOL short version of the Merriam Webster dictionary defines civil war as "a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country". The Webster’s New World Dictionary, 3rd College edition, defines it as "war between geographical or political factions of the same nation."

The level and sources of violence in Iraq has clearly reached the level where they clearly meet this definition.

 The author, Anthony Cordesman is an establishment foreign policy analyst at CSIS, an establishment foreign policy think tank.  Nothing radical here.  He is a sober and honest analyst.  Which means he will now be attacked as a crazed, soft-on-terror liberal of questionable patriotism by the still deep-in-denial Bush crowd.

     But Cordesman is a Confucian gentleman.  He is naming things appropriately.  And, with some luck, that will, eventually, allow the noble-minded to act.

UPDATE: As if right on cue, Cheney says that the Iraq war is going "remarkably well."  Incredible…