Matt Lauer, understated visionary

On November 27, 2006, the Today Show's Matt Lauer referred to the violence in Iraq as civil war.

". . . the situation in Iraq with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas -- can now be characterized as a civil war."

It wasn't news to anyone who was actually paying attention to the war in Iraq, but the change in terminology was "newsy" because it signified NBC News's increased unwillingness to employ the White House's stilted, misleading language when describing the Iraq war.

Lauer's announcement infuriated the White House, which immediately launched a 1-2, spin-n-smear assault.

The Spin: That afternoon, White House press secretary (and former FOXNews employee) said to reporters:

"What you do have is sectarian violence that seems to be less aimed at gaining full control over an area than expressing differences, and also trying to destabilize a democracy -- which is different than a civil war, where two sides are clashing for territory and supremacy."

The Smear: Typical was Sean Hannity accusing NBC and Lauer of hiding U.S. success in Iraq from NBC viewers.

On Friday, the government released a summary of the latest National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE summarizes the collective judgement of the country's multi-agency, gazillion dollar intelligence establishment.

The NIE says that Iraq is worse than a civil war.

"The Intelligence Community judges that the term "civil war" does not adequately capture the complexity ofthe conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa'ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term "civil war" accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict."

In other words, while the White House and its media surrogates were attacking people for characterizing the violence in Iraq as civil war, behind closed doors the White House knew that civil war was actually an understatement.