Some Say Civil War Already Started

President Bush and his senior advisors Sunday sought to mark the third anniversary of the Iraq war with declarations of progress, but found themselves embroiled in renewed debate about whether the nation had fallen into civil war.

In statements to reporters, appearances on Sunday morning TV news shows and an op-ed article, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Army Gen. George W. Casey, the senior U.S. military commander in Iraq, declared that the United States was making progress toward stabilizing Iraq and defusing sectarian tensions.

But those upbeat assessments faced sharp skepticism from U.S. legislators from both parties and from a senior Iraqi political leader, former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who has been a staunch American ally. They contended that Iraq was now in the midst of a civil war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

The issue of whether Iraq’s sectarian fighting constitutes a civil war has taken on political significance. Polls have shown American support for the Iraq war dropping since the bombing last month of a Shiite shrine in Samarra led to widespread communal violence. Strategists in both parties have said that Bush will have a more difficult time sustaining support for the U.S. military presence in Iraq if the public believes that troops are caught in the middle of a civil war.

On a day of sweeping arguments from both sides, the most dramatic comments came from Allawi.

“It is unfortunate that we are in civil war,” the former prime minister told the British Broadcasting Corp. “We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.”

Allawi added: “Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet. But we are moving toward this point. We are in a terrible civil conflict now.”

In separate television interviews, both Cheney and Casey rejected Allawi’s characterization.

The vice president, speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” said that “terrorists” in Iraq wanted to provoke civil war, but added, “I don’t think they’ve been successful.”

“That’s been their strategy all along,” Cheney said, “but my view would be they’ve reached a stage of desperation from their standpoint.”

Appearing on CNN’s “Late Edition,” Casey contended that Iraq was still “a long way from civil war.”

But he portrayed overall conditions much more cautiously than the vice president had, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the situation in Iraq was “fragile.”

“Is the situation here fragile because of the increased ... sectarian tensions and increased levels of violence?” Casey said. “That’s absolutely right, and I don’t want ... to sugarcoat it. The situation here is fragile, and I suspect it will remain fragile until we get a new government, a government of national unity formed.”

In Baghdad, political leaders made their first measurable progress toward forming such a government, agreeing to create a council that would give each of the country’s major political factions a voice in making security and economic policies.

Bush, speaking briefly to reporters after returning from a weekend at Camp David, said he had spoken Sunday morning with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in Iraq about the government negotiations.

“I’m encouraged by the progress,” Bush said. “The ambassador was encouraged by it.”

But Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the United States needed to move more aggressively to resolve the long-running negotiations over a new government, perhaps by threatening to begin removing U.S. forces if the Iraqis could not agree on a consensus government.

“The only leverage we have is our troop presence,” Reed said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“And I think we have to make it clear to the Iraqi political leaders that if they’re not able or willing to come together ... that our presence can’t be indefinite there.”

The political effect of the continued fighting in Iraq can be seen clearly in recent polls. Since the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, support among Americans for both the war and Bush’s performance as president have fallen to some of the lowest levels of his tenure.

In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup national survey released last week, for instance, 55% of Americans said that chaos and civil war were the most likely outcomes in Iraq; 40% said they expected that a stable government would be formed.

Only 37% of those polled said they believed the war in Iraq had been worth the cost, down from 46% in January. Fully 60% of those surveyed said the war had not been worth the cost; that equaled the highest percentage Gallup has recorded on that question.

As administration officials sought to rebut the idea of a civil war, lawmakers, also speaking on the Sunday interview programs, supported Allawi’s conclusion.

“I think ... the former prime minister is correct,” Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on “This Week.”

“I think we have had a low-grade civil war going on in Iraq, certainly the last six months, maybe the last year. Our own generals have told me that privately.”

Rep. John P. Murtha, a traditionally hawkish Democrat from Pennsylvania who has urged Bush to remove American forces from Iraq, echoed Hagel. “Our troops are caught in a civil war,” Murtha said on “Meet the Press.”

Hagel, who has become a frequent critic of the war, said that the invasion had weakened America’s security position. “Are we better off than we were three years ago?” he asked. “Is the Middle East more stable than it was three years ago? Absolutely not. It’s more unstable.”

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also expressed concern about the direction of events in Iraq.

“Materially things have worsened ... for ordinary Iraqis,” he told “Late Edition.” “Certainly more Iraqi civilians are being killed, substantially more, and the government is not yet in operation.”

Both Bush and Cheney, in their comments, said trends in Iraq were much more positive than such assessments suggested. Cheney rejected charges that he had been too optimistic in earlier assessments of the war, such as his assertion in May 2005 that the insurgency was in its “last throes.”

Cheney said good news from Iraq had not been reported. Public disillusionment “has less to do with the statements we’ve made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there’s a constant sort of perception, if you will, that’s created because what’s newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad,” Cheney said. “It’s not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress toward rebuilding Iraq.”

In an op-ed article in the Washington Post, Rumsfeld declared that the “terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq” and that the U.S. must remain in the country long enough to ensure stability.

“Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis,” Rumsfeld wrote.