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Length: 3:55
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Violence at an all-time high. Does
the definition of civil war really matter? What could
a civil war in Iraq mean for U.S. troops? We've got a
roundtable this morning.
CNN's Michael Ware joins us from Baghdad. He's
covered Iraq for many years. John Pike is the
director of globalsecurity.org. He's in Washington
D.C., and CNN's senior political analyst Bill
Schneider is in L.A. for us.
Gentlemen, good morning. Nice to see all of you.
A quick rundown of what some people have been saying
about the definition of civil war, and the definition
of what's happening in Iraq. Condi Rice says it's not
a civil war. General Abizaid says it could move
toward civil war. Secretary Rumsfeld says it is not a
classic civil war. The former ambassador Peter
Galbraith says it is a civil war. And Chuck Hagel
says, well, maybe it's a civil war.
Bill Schneider, let's begin with you. Why does the
definition, civil war or not, matter.
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POL. ANALYST: Because when
Americans see the words "civil war," they read "can't
win." What it means to Americans is this is a war
between Shiites and Sunnis who are or murdering each
other. It's their fight. It doesn't involve the
United States. What's our interest in a fight between
Shia and Sunni, very different from an Islamic
radical insurgency they targets either the United
States or the Iraqi government. That's an internal
fight, one that the United States feels we have no
side in.
O'BRIEN: Michael Ware, you've been on the ground
there a long time. Does parsing the definition,
splitting hairs, make a difference on the ground
there?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, when people
are hunkered down in their suburbs, afraid to go to
an adjoining suburb because it's dominated by a
different religious sect, when they don't dare send
their kids to school because they have to cross the
sectarian lines, and when they're randomly finding
the bodies of their neighbors in the streets and they
live in fear of death squads from a U.S.- backed
government Ministry of Interior showing up at their
house in the middle of the night, I don't think
definitions really matter.
You ask any Iraqi here and they will tell you they
are mired in the blood of the civil war. And this
sectarian strife is the legacy of the al Qaeda in
Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He mapped it out in
2004 -- he said, "This is what I plan to do." And the
mere fact that Secretary Rice, President Bush,
Secretary Rumsfeld and General Abizaid now have this
term "civil war" on their lips shows you after their
previous reluctance to mention it just how dire this
has become.
O'BRIEN: They take a look at the number of displaced
people, Michael Ware, don't they, when they're really
calculating whether it's civil war.
WARE: Oh, absolutely. I mean, let's talked about the
disruption of the lives of ordinary Iraqi people;
35,500-plus families have been internally displaced,
now spread across 19 camps within the country,
because they can't live in their own street anymore,
because they've been driven out by a rival sect. I
mean, to these people this very much does feel like
civil war. I mean, you have these rival gangs, which
are fighting each other in the streets.
And I mean, let's look at the heart of U.S. military
intelligence. I mean, despite what the spokespeople
say, their tests used to be a few months ago whether
this kind of bloodletting between the sects has its
own self-sustaining momentum, or whether it's just
punctuated by Zarqawi's terrorist acts. You talk to
them today, and they say, "yeah, we've now found that
momentum. Our fear, though, is whether it spreads to
the broader body politic."
So the definitions keeps shifting because the
violence keeps reaching them as thousands and
thousands are dying every month.