Iraqi civil war has already begun, U.S. troops say

From McClatchy Newspapers courtesy of AlterNet:

Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.

And

Political sensitivity has made some officers here hesitant to use the words "civil war," but they aren't shy about describing the situation that they and their men have found on their patrols.

"I hate to use the word `purify,' because it sounds very bad, but they are trying to force Shiites into Shiite areas and Sunnis into Sunni areas," said Lt. Col. Craig Osborne, who commands a 4th Infantry Division battalion on the western edge of Baghdad, a hotspot of sectarian violence.

Osborne, 39, of Decatur, Ill., compared Iraq to Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed in an orgy of inter-tribal violence in 1994. "That was without doubt a civil war - the same thing is happening here.

"But it's not called a civil war - there's such a negative connotation to that word and it suggests failure," he said.

Click here for the rest.

So, the bottom line here is that pretty much everyone who has any first hand experience with what's going on in Iraq thinks it's a civil war. The ground troops are frank about it. The officers, with one foot in reality and the other in Bush's weird bubble of fantasy, are forced to use euphemisms. Rumsfeld philosophizes about the definition of the term. But make no mistake about it: if Rwanda was a civil war, then this is, too. And it's looking pretty grim as far as prospects for Iraq staying together as a nation are concerned, as noted in the Raw Story article linked in the post below. Things have gone from pretty darned bad to worse, and our leaders are caught up in a vortex of damage control PR. That is, nothing is being done to actually address the problem that Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq apparently cannot coexist. Is this intentional US policy? Perpetual chaos for Iraq? Or are they really that stupid? Probably a combination of both.

Either way, we're fucked.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$