It must be the power of television. Few people made a fuss when the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times used the term "civil war" to describe the carnage in Iraq. But when NBC News decided to do the same, this was a big deal.
The Bush administration is wary of the term as the US public, quite understandably, does not like to see its soldiers stuck playing piggy in the middle in someone else's internecine bloodletting.
The administration will know that when the avuncular Walter Cronkite of CBS News - "the most trusted man in America" - declared that it was time to leave Vietnam, the gig was up. If the media, wholesale, start to use the term civil war, America may not be far off that Cronkite moment.
Rob, at Say Anything, shares the White House's misgivings, and fires off a blunderbuss at the US media as a whole.
"This has nothing to do with finding the terminology to accurately portray what's going on in Iraq and everything to do with the media's unending mission to a) make Iraq look like a failure, b) undermine public support for the war and c) force an immediate withdrawal."
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