A Rose by Any Other Name

The Daily Show on the 'Civil War' in Iraq.

Stewart: Certainly from an Iraqi perspective, what this is called makes no difference.

Oliver: Oh, really? If you have lost a loved one in this conflict, and statistically if you're an Iraqi you have, wouldn't you rather know it wasn't in a Civil War but rather a territorial arglebargle of regional qualms?

Stewart: 3,000 Iraqis died just this month. To argue over what to call it seems like semantic quibbling.

Oliver: Semantic quibbling? Oh, well, I wouldn't call it that.

Stewart: What would you call it?

Oliver: A minor linguistic flareup between two parties of different terminological points of view.

Stewart: It's really the same thing.

Oliver: It's "same-ey." For now let's agree to disagree on how we state our agreements. Agreed?

Dan Froomkin of White House Briefing also discussed the Civil War, It's a Civil War, Stupid:

After nearly four years of letting the Bush Administration set the terms of the national debate over Iraq, some major news organizations are finally calling the conflict there what it is: a civil war. The White House is howling in protest.

Right. The situation hasn't changed, just the terminology.

In March, I saw the first signs that the conflict in Iraq was being acknowledged as being a Civil War, in Are We There Yet?. At that time, I said:

I realize that the Bush Administration has long pretended that the fighting factions were foreign insurgents, not local factions, but at what point does the press give up that fiction and acknowledge the true state of affairs? Sounds like we may be there. It was a long ride.

It was certainly a long ride. That was 8 months ago.

UPDATE: The Borowitz Report releases its latest report, US Committed to Finding New Synonyms for Civil War -- Launches Operation Noble Euphemism:

President George W. Bush said today that he would not allow a civil war in Iraq to erupt on his watch, and said that in order to prevent that from happening the United States would aggressively search for new synonyms for the phrase "civil war."

In order to seek out the most sanitized alternatives to that phrase, the president announced that he was launching an ambitious new mission called Operation Noble Euphemism.

Showing his trademark steely resolve, Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House that the US was prepared to hunt down every last thesaurus on Earth and would not quit until the job was done.

As if to demonstrate the high priority he was placing on finding new synonyms, Mr. Bush said that the government would spend $12 billion, most of which had been previously earmarked to find Osama bin Laden.

But critics of Operation Noble Euphemism were skeptical of its outcome, particularly after the White House unsuccessfully launched a slogan contest last month to replace the phrase "stay the course."

That contest, which was announced with much fanfare, was abandoned after a leak revealed that the top contender was "slog through the mire."

(Video via Onegoodmove and update thanks to Martha)

Tags: Daily Show, Jon Stewart, Comedy, Civil War, Iraq, Video