From the Styx by Peggy Tibbetts

This month’s award is a definite no-brainer. The award goes to NBC for proclaiming Iraq a civil war.

It all started with this:

Bucking White House, NBC says Iraq in ‘civil war’
Usage increasing in news media
By Bryan Bender

WASHINGTON — NBC’s “Today Show” host Matt Lauer yesterday told millions of American television viewers, many sitting at their breakfast tables, that the network would buck the White House and from now on describe the Iraq war as a “civil war.”

The new policy, which NBC News said would cover all its news shows, could become a benchmark in public opinion about the war, according to media specialists.

Some media analysts compared it to CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite’s declaration in 1968 that the United States was losing the Vietnam War — a pronouncement now considered a turning point in public opinion — and Ted Koppel’s ABC updates on the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 and 1980 that infuriated Jimmy Carter’s White House.

“How you frame a problem frames what the public thinks is the right thing to do,” said James Steinberg , dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. “If Iraq is a democracy struggling against insurgents and you describe it that way, people might still support you. If it is a civil war, it is indisputably the case that Americans will say, ‘What are we doing in the middle of a civil war?’ “

Oh, maybe because “we” started it. But for some strange reason that seems to be beside the point now—which I find amazing. In fact over the weekend a bunch of congressmen complained on the TV that the Iraqi government has not done enough to quell the violence.

Get a load of their blatherings:

Lawmakers Lose Patience With Iraq Government
By Ben Feller

Washington - Congressional leaders displayed eroding patience in the Iraqi government on Sunday, adding pressure on President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to find a faster path to peace when they meet this week.

“It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq,” Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a potential presidential contender in 2008, said in urging for a planned withdrawal of U.S. troops.

“If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder - one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead,” Hagel wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post.

As the U.S. involvement in Iraq surpassed the length of America’s participation in World War II, lawmakers have dwindling confidence in the U.S.-supported Iraqi government. It was the deadliest week of sectarian fighting in Baghdad since the war began in March 2003.

“I think what we’ve got to do is go around the Maliki government in certain situations,” said Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, another possible presidential candidate. “Let’s work with other groups, and let’s get regional buy-in into this.”

“We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam,” said Hagel, a combat veteran of that war. “Honorable intentions are not policies and plans.”

Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, called Iraq the worst U.S. foreign policy decision since Vietnam. He said Democrats do not have a quick answer and any solution must be bipartisan.

“It is time to tell the Iraqis that unless they’re willing to disband the militias and the death squads, unless they’re willing to stand up and govern their country in a responsible fashion, America is not going to stay there indefinitely,” Durbin said.

That theme - pressuring al-Maliki and his government - seemed to unify Republicans and Democrats.

“I think we’re going to have to be very aggressive and specific with him,” said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the incoming No. 2 GOP leader. “And if he doesn’t show real leadership, doesn’t try to bring the situation under control - if, in fact, he becomes a part of the problem - we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.”

Yet Rep. Duncan Hunter, the outgoing chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the United States will win the conflict in the long run by supporting a free government in Iraq. Before any decisions are made on reducing U.S. troop levels, he said, more U.S.-trained Iraqi battalions should be moved into the heavy-fighting areas of Baghdad.

“Saddle those guys up,” Hunter said. “Move them into the fight.”

Oh yeah, like THAT’LL help. Let’s introduce even MORE violence into the chaos. That’ll make it all better.

So the US Congress—the same congress that voted to invade Iraq under false pretenses—now thinks all this violence is the Iraqis’ fault.

How about the US government gives the Iraqi people what they promised them—running water, electricity, their OIL—just for starters?

But that’s beside the point.

No the great NBC is thumbing it’s big fat nose at the Bush Administration and calling Iraq a civil war. So everyone clamored for their dictionaries to look up the definition.

civil war: war between opposing groups of citizens of one nation

While you’re at it, look up genocide.

genocide: the systematic extermination of a cultural or racial group

NBC’s declaration of civil war is newspeak because it serves two purposes. It panders to the majority of voters in the last election who told exit pollers they disapprove of the Iraq War and President Bush. Don’t fall for it. Calling Iraq a civil war is like re-writing history. It lets everyone off the hook for the US invasion of a civilized nation and the destruction of its culture and people—genocide. So if NBC (and the MSM) calls Iraq a civil war, then they don’t have to call it what it really is and we don’t have to face the truth.

The Iraq War is genocide.

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