Alphabet soup

Cartoonists spilled ink, commentators spilled their guts, and soldiers and civilians spilled blood ... just another week of the “C-word,” to use M.E. Cohen’s PC shorthand for civil war.

Those who consider the Iraq conflict worthy of the C-word were condemned, contradicted, castigated and urged to keep a civil tongue by the WWW (West Wing of the White House), which clung to W-words -- winnable, if not WMD-related.

Still, John Trever creatively dropped the C-bomb. Tom Toles’ commander in chief contemplated the F-leaf. A bit further north, Pat Oliphant’s Pope Benedict XVI offered the O-branch to Turkish Muslims. Call things what you will, from conflagration central to the “clash of civilizations,” these pictures are worth a thousand C-words.