“In his weekly radio address to the nation [on September 2, 2006], [President] Bush lashed out at critics of the war and portrayed the conflict in Iraq as an integral part of the war on terror. He said the country was not sliding into civil war. ‘Our commanders and diplomats on the ground believe that Iraq has not descended into a civil war. They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence,’ he said. That may be true, but the tone of Bush’s speech was deeply at odds with a Pentagon report released late on Friday [September 1, 2006], which showed Iraqi casualties had soared by more than 50 per cent in recent months. …’Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife,’ it noted. The report added that civil war was a possibility in Iraq, which seemed to jar with the message from the White House and top Republican politicians. Bush insisted that the war in Iraq would be won by American and Iraqi armed forces. ‘The security of the civilised world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq, so America will not leave until victory is achieved,’ he said. He did warn, however, that the struggle would be hard and unlikely to end soon. ‘The path to victory will be uphill and uneven, and it will require more patience and sacrifice from our nation,’ he said.”
– Paul Harris, “No Civil War in Iraq, Insists Bush–but Pentagon Differs,” The Guardian, Sep. 3, 2006