I’m back, Curt! I’m going to try this again. I’ve got two things for you. First, I’d like to ask what you guys may consider to be a stupid question. What, in your opinion would constitute a civil war? From what I can gather, the media bases this civil war claim on the fact that there are different groups of people in a particular country killing each other on a daily basis. Do any of you who insist that there is no civil war have any idea how many Iraqis are killed every day by other Iraqis? It just makes me wonder what it would take for you guys to call it a civil war. You sound like the police man from South Park, saying “Move along, nothing to see here!”

Beyond that, what would be the purpose of calling it a civil war? I know, I know. You guys think that the media is “invested in defeat” and that’s a great Limbaugh sound byte, but let’s use our heads here. Let’s not start with a false assumption that those who oppose your views are anti-American. We’ll never accomplish anything that way. I will submit to you that it is entirely possible that the very people that you think despise America are actually just as patriotic as you are, if not even more so, but they have a very different idea about how best to protect our interests and improve our way of life. If we can go forward with this new assumption, we can actually argue about our methods as opposed to pointing fingers and demonizing each other. We need to start with the assumption that we both want what’s best for our country.

With this new assumption in mind, let’s go back to my question at the beginning of the previous paragraph. The purpose of knowing when Iraq is in a civil war is that we wouldn’t belong there anymore if that were the case. This is simply a case of the media calling like they see it (hmmm… a country in which the people are killing each other), and real American patriots wanting to get our soldiers out of a war in which they don’t belong.

My second point is in regards to an interesting quote I found from one of President Bush’s recent press conferences. I know you guys think we had every reason to invade Iraq because Iraq had something to do with 9/11, Iraq had WMDs, and that your unauthenticated “Saddam documents” prove anything about either of these claims. I’ve even heard about how the reason the President hasn’t mentioned all of this wealth of “proof” that Saddam had WMDs is that the President doesn’t “dwell in the past”, or some variation of that lame answer. Well, in this quote, the President himself shot these claims down:

THE PRESIDENT: Now, look, part of the reason we went into Iraq was — the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn’t, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction. But I also talked about the human suffering in Iraq, and I also talked the need to advance a freedom agenda. And so my question — my answer to your question is, is that, imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even more trouble in a part of the world that had so much resentment and so much hatred that people came and killed 3,000 of our citizens.

You know, I’ve heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of “we’re going to stir up the hornet’s nest” theory. It just doesn’t hold water, as far as I’m concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

Q What did Iraq have to do with that?

THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q The attack on the World Trade Center?

THE PRESIDENT: Nothing, except for it’s part of — and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case.

Now, here, the President is given the perfect opportunity to vindicate himself. He’s being specifically asked to. However, he doesn’t. It’s not just that he doesn’t vindicate himself, though. He doesn’t even just avoid the issue or spin it in another direction. He actually denies that Saddam had WMDs. Let me quote that again, just to be sure you get it:

THE PRESIDENT: Now, look, part of the reason we went into Iraq was — the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn’t…

The President doesn’t even believe in your conspiracy theories about how Saddam had WMDs!! He’s admitted that the intelligence was wrong. He’s admitted that Saddam didn’t have WMDs. He’s admitted that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, in spite of all of the insinuating and fear-mongering that his administration engaged in prior to the war. He was given an opportunity to tell us why we invaded Iraq in the first place, and all he says is something about 9/11 teaching us to preempt every threat before it develops. This, by the way, I also find interesting. He admits to being wrong about the WMDs that were used as evidence for going to war. Then, he claims that 9/11 taught him that we should preempt all threats before they materialize. Apparently, he doesn’t realize that he just proved the very problem that exists within his theory of preemption – when you attack prematurely, you run the risk of being wrong about the supposed threat, and thereby attacking unnecessarily. And here we are.

You think Iraq had WMDs. The President doesn’t. Are you not then fighting a lost cause?

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In this case, words, or terms, do matter. You are dead right that those who insist that Iraq is in a state of civil war do so because they want to demoralize the American people and thus force a withdrawal.

They do this because to most people, the term “civl war” conjures up the American Civil War, when you had two rival governments, each fielding a regular army.

Nothing of the sort is going on in Iraq. Now, the ethnic/sectarian violence is horrendous. We do stand a chance of losing the country to out-of-control warfare of the sort that occured in Yugoslavia. It is uncertain whether we will win the ongoing “battle for Baghdad”.

But it’s not a civil war no matter how hard the bloviators in the press huff and puff.

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Here in Canada, the CTV network frequently reports, “Iraq on the brink of Civil War.” What’s so pathetic about this headline is that they have used it for three years!!! Three years of being on the brink? That’s not on the brink, you lame leftists in the MSM.

God bless the American and Iraqi troops doing the work the world refuses to do!

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