'Iraq: the civil war,' is the logo used by the cable television news broadcaster MSNBC when it has news on the latest developments in Iraq three-and-a-half years after the US-led invasion.
White House spokesman Tony Snow is holding out, however, insisting that there should be no talk of civil war, as 'you have not yet had a situation where you have two clearly defined and opposing groups vying not only for power but for territory.'
Bush's secretary of state in his first term, Colin Powell, disagreed, coming out to say that Iraq had in fact 'sunk' into civil war.
Earlier, speaking at a NATO summit in Riga, Bush had avoided the issue, instead as so often in the past linking events in Iraq to international terrorism.
Referring to civil war in Iraq was 'all kinds of speculation,' Bush said. 'There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al-Qaeda causing people to seek reprisal.'
Whatever the right term for Iraq, a row has broken out in the US over the issue.
Not only Bush's most outspoken opponents, but also independent observers and military experts are starting to accuse the White House of a pointless debate about semantics that shows how distant the administration is from reality.
'If they can't characterize what's going on in Iraq in an honest fashion, we can't begin to address the problem,' said retired general Barry R McCaffrey, a commander during the 1991 Gulf War.
Now that NBC - perhaps as a result of the Democratic victory in the mid-term elections - has switched from 'sectarian violence' to 'civil war,' other media are following suit.
The New York Times has said that the term is no longer taboo, even if it notes that it has to be used with extreme care. The Washington Post is thought likely to do the same.
While the dictionary definition of 'civil war' may refer only to war within one country between political parties or separate regions, White House experts have laid down more stringent criteria.
They argue that organized military units have to be involved, fighting in the name of competing governments or would-be administrations and territories.
And this is not the case in Iraq, they say.
Critics have called this 'hairsplitting that would be laughable' if the situation in Iraq were not so desperate.
Analysts, however, see clear reasons for the nervousness over the term. The US population is far less likely to support troops involved in another country's civil war than in humanitarian deployments, says Christopher Gelpi of Duke University, citing surveys.
Terminological change does make a psychological difference, 'even if the facts on the ground remain the same.'
The US population regards the war of words as decided. Polls show a substantial majority describing the Iraq conflict as 'civil war.'
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