Can't sit on the edge if you're already in

Maybe, when U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace said that Iraq isn't on the verge of a civil war, he meant it couldn't be about to happen because Iraq already is in a state of civil war:

As Pentagon generals offered optimistic assessments that the sectarian violence in Iraq had dissipated this weekend, other military experts told ABC News that Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq already are engaged in a civil war, and that the Iraqi government and U.S. military had better accept that fact and adapt accordingly.

"We're in a civil war now; it's just that not everybody's joined in," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest.

"It's our failure to understand reality that has caused us to be late throughout this experience of the last three years in Iraq," added Nash, who is an ABC News consultant.

Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News, "If you talk to U.S. intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 2004."

Unless the country involves in an all out battle, it will be tough to judge whether Iraq is truly in a civil war. Even generals can't agree. But it still looks like our only solution to the insurgency attacks is to get someone else to be a part of the casualties so we can get the heck out of the way.