Aired 12/01/06 What is it?

This week NBC became the first major media channel in the US to make an editorial decision to call the situation in Iraq a civil war. (Fox by comparison on Friday issued an official memo saying that they are to absolutely not call it a civil war.) You might think of this as simply a battle of semantics, of spinning the situation more positively or negatively. It is in fact more than that, and Bush will fight adopting the designation tooth and nail. The situation inn Lebanon under Reagan and in Somalia under Clinton (as in the movie Black Hawk Down) were both blamed on putting US forces in the middle of a civil war. Thus congress has questioned the Pentagon, and the Pentagon's top generals have agreed in testimony to congress, that US forces would not be put in the middle of a civil war in Iraq. So agree that it a civil war and you are also agreeing that the troops have to leave. That is why the term will be opposed so strongly.

Tags: Bush, Media, Bush, Civil War, Iraq, Politics, Podcast