The Daily Background

Associated Press this week says the Pentagon has for the first time used the words “civil war” to describe the conflict in Iraq:

In its bleakest assessment of the war to date, a quarterly Pentagon report said that last October through December was the most violent three-month period since 2003. Attacks and casualties suffered by coalition and Iraqi forces and civilians were higher than any other similar time span, said the report.

Most of the data in the Pentagon’s 42-page report is before President Bush ordered an additional 21,500 troops and thousands of support personnel to Baghdad to deal with the escalating violence there. The report cautions that it should be considered “a baseline from which to measure future progress.”

Members of the Bush administration have been loath to say that the U.S. military is struggling to quell a civil war, and the report agreed that the term does not capture the complex situation there.

You can read a long list of news agencies, people, and organizations calling Iraq a “civil war” prepared by this website here. Here’s the actual report using the word “civil war” a single time on page 16:

Notice the footnote #6. In the index, footnote #6 is explained with the following: “National Intelligence Estimate, January 2007.” This was the document released that in January, which was highly classified and dozens of pages long. The declassified “key judgments” version, a scant three and a third pages long, given to the public said the following:

The NIE was produced by 16 intelligence agencies, and it seems the Pentagon is only following the rest of them in admitting the situation in Iraq is a “civil war.” Download the new Pentagon assessment here. Below are some more excerpts from the Pentagon’s new report in chart form. Here’s the average daily casualties from April 2004 to February 2007, with the last set of bars the most recent:

And here are the results of a poll about Iraqi attitudes towards the tension in their neighborhoods and country:

Filed under: Iraq Related, Z-TDB Blog