By: E&P Staff The Los Angeles Times and, starting Monday, NBC and MSNBC, have adopted the phrase "civil war" to describe the conflict in Iraq. Most other media outlets, including The Washington Post, still prefer phrases such as "sectarian violence." Appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews Monday night, Dana Priest, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Post, said that it sure looks like a civil war to her.
Earlier Monday, E&P's Joe Strupp had asked Leonard Downie, Jr., the Post's executive editor, about that. Downie said, "We just describe what goes on everyday. We don't have a policy about it. We are not making judgments one way or another. The language in the stories is very precise when dealing with it. At various times people say it is 'close to a civil war,' but we don't have a policy about it."
Matthews asked Priest about this issue on Hardball. "It seems to me," he said, "the President?s afraid that people will begin to think it is a civil war and not the way he wants to define it, which is we gotta fight them there before they fight us here."
Priest replied: "Well, I think one of the reasons the President resists that label is because it equates almost with a failure of U.S. policy. I will say for the Washington Post, we have not labeled it a civil war. I have asked around to see why not or see what?s the thinking on that -- and really our reporters have not filed that. We try to avoid the labels, particularly when the elected government itself does not call its situation a civil war. I certainly ? and I would agree with General McCaffrey on this ? absolutely the level of violence equals a civil war."
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