Pentagon cites Iraq ‘civil war’ for first time.

“The U.S. military for the first time Wednesday said in a new report that some of the violence in Iraq can be described as a civil war. In its bleakest assessment of the war to date, a quarterly Pentagon report said that last October through December was the most violent three-month period since 2003. … ‘Some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a ‘civil war,’ including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities and mobilization, the changing character of the violence and population displacements,’” the report says.