Opinion (Clarence Page): If this isn't a civil war in Iraq, words have no meaning

NBC is the first major network to call the war in Iraq a "civil war" instead of an insurgency. With that, a new front is opened in the war over what words best describe the war that Americans are most worried about.

A growing number of correspondents in Iraq have been describing the country as torn apart by "civil war" or, at least, rapidly spiraling into it. But the White House has rejected the C-word and most major broadcast news media have gone along with that, even if it has meant employing such hedge phrases as "approaching civil war" or "near civil war."

NBC's Matt Lauer announced on The Today Show Monday that his network, "after careful consideration," had decided that the situation in Iraq, "with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas, can now be characterized as civil war."

With that, in my view, NBC showed a keen grasp of the obvious. A civil war is a fight between factions or regions within the same culture, society or nationality for political power or control of an area. The situation in Iraq appears to have fit that description for much of the past two years.

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