Monday, March 06, 2006 Expert on Iraq: 'We're In a Civil War' As we reach the 2300rd US military death this weekend. Pentagon generals offer optimistic assessments that the sectarian violence in Iraq has dissipated and deny that Iraq is now a civil war. But other military experts told ABC News that Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq already are engaged in a civil war, and that the Iraqi govt and US military had better accept that fact and adapt accordingly: "We're in a civil war now; it's just that not everybody's joined in," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest. It's our failure to understand reality that has caused us to be late throughout this experience of the last 3 yrs in Iraq." Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh Burke at the Center for Strategic & Internatl Studies, told ABC News, "If you talk to US intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 04." |