Tracking Iraq's Civil War of Words

CIVIL WARRIOR Bush Even as Operation: Iraqi Freedom disintegrates into Operation: Save Face, the rhetoric being slung from the White House has, largely, stayed the course.

Until now.

There's an election in less than three weeks and, as poll after poll exclaims, the Bush White House needs to cut and run. Now, the Center for American Progress reports that Iraq is decomposing from the inside ... like Dick Cheney. According to the document, there are "at least four internal conflicts that risk spiraling further out of control." And a press release notes that the bad news "comes on a day when the Bush Administration is seeking to change the talking points it uses about Iraq rather than make an actual change in policy."

Strange thing about those Iraq civil war talking points, they've been shifting for at least a couple of years now, as RadarOnline.com obsessively tracks.

• Correspondents Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay: "CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said Wednesday, starkly contradicting the upbeat assessment that President Bush gave in his State of the Union address."—Knight-Ridder, January 22, 2004.