You're not in a civil war until we say so

Wow. Talk about balls. This from former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq:

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.

Now compare that with Vice President Dick Cheney's thoughts:

I think the assessment that we get from Gen. George Casey, who's our man commanding in Iraq, from Zal Khalilzad, the ambassador, from John Abizaid, who is the general in charge of Central Command, doesn't square with that.

To summarize: one man's civil war is another man's "sectarian violence." By that logic, would the senior leadership of the Bush administration be willing to revise our understaning of the American Civil War as merely sectarian violence? Just a thought.