The Wagging of the 'Civil' Tongues

Into this rhetorical minefield stepped an anxious Bush yesterday morning. "These aren't joyous times," he acknowledged as he probed the nation's strained psyche. He started with an opening statement about Lebanese reconstruction, but the Associated Press's Terry Hunt yanked him right into Iraq, reminding him about "the highest civilian monthly toll since the war began."

Hunt said nothing about civil war, but Bush raised the subject himself. "I've talked to a lot of people about it, and what I've found from my talks are that the Iraqis want a unified country," he reported.

ABC News's Martha Raddatz was not satisfied. "The violence has gotten worse in certain areas," she reminded him. "Is it not time for a new strategy?"

Bush acted as if Raddatz were Cindy Sheehan. "We're not leaving, so long as I'm the president," he vowed. "That would be a huge mistake. It would send an unbelievably terrible signal to reformers across the region. It would say we've abandoned our desire to change the conditions that create terror. It would give the terrorists a safe haven from which to launch attacks. It would embolden Iran. It would embolden extremists."

"Sir," Raddatz pointed out, "that's not really the question."

Bush shook his head in disbelief. "Sounded like the question to me," he said.

The president reached for the playful banter that served him well in past dealings with the press. Three times he paused to call attention to the seersucker suit on Cox News correspondent Ken Herman. "Just ridiculous-looking," the president teased.

But reporters were stuck in the humorless rut of internecine war. "It seems that al-Qaeda and foreign fighters are much less of a problem," said NBC's Kelly O'Donnell, "and that it really is Iraqi versus Iraqi."

Bush didn't like that formulation. "I would surmise that some of the more spectacular bombings are done by al-Qaeda suiciders," he said, only then adding: "No question there's sectarian violence as well."

No question. Things are so nasty in Baghdad that the Kurds have started a marketing campaign borrowing from the pork industry, calling their land "The Other Iraq." And at the nonpartisan Middle East Institute yesterday, the session's title presumed that the debate about Iraq's status was over: "Exit Strategies in a Civil War."

"You have a government that isn't a government, a nation that isn't a nation," said Galbraith, Clinton administration ambassador to Croatia. His answer: withdrawal.

"If we do what I recommend, there will be horrific sectarian cleansing in the mixed areas, particularly in Baghdad, and civil war," he said. "If we stay the course, there will be horrific sectarian cleansing in Baghdad, and civil war."

No wonder Bush preferred to talk about seersucker.