Is conflict in Iraq a civil war?

(sigh)

Riverbend asked that in February
"...I’m reading, and hearing, about the possibility of civil war. The possibility. Yet I’m sitting here wondering if this is actually what civil war is like. Has it become a reality? Will we look back at this in one year, two years… ten… and say, “It began in February 2006…”? It is like a nightmare in that you don’t realise it’s a nightmare while having it- only later, after waking up with your heart throbbing, and your eyes searching the dark for a pinpoint of light, do you realise it was a nightmare…"

Our nightmare began in January 2000 when the Presidency was handed to some legacy, frat boy, spoiled, useless brat who's been in over his head his whole fucking life and now he's flushing our country down the toilet and blowing up the Middle East.

Can the world wake up from this nightmare?

Update: Randi Rhodes says the CIA was asking this same question in January of 2004.