We're supposed to be impressed that the company that employees Keith Olbermann - the liberal success story, now with almost one-fifth of O'Rielley's viewers - has chosen to declare Iraq a civil war. We'll start calling Iraq a civil war when they start calling France a civil war - given that it's actually a case of French citizens fighting French citizens rather than a foreign-bred and funded insurgency, we think that at least the claim makes sense in the French context.

We do have a question though: if a Muslim sectarian conflict has now risen to the level of a civil war in Iraq, does that mean that NBC is saying that there are ways to interpret Islam in ways other than as a Religion of Peace? Because if so, we expect to see CAIR call for anti-NBC boycotts any minute now - because CAIR is nothing if not consistent, and would never pass up criticizing a news story just because that news story made the Bush administration look bad. Right?

UPDATE (4:00AM PST): We didn't catch this the first time, but the FishBowl LA blurb points out that Oblbermann said in an interview that he doesn't want to become a left-wing version of O'Rielly or Limbaugh. With due respect, his ratings would need to increase by entire orders of magnitude before that would even begin to become a potential worry that he should consider entertaining.

Previously: What? No Snark About Imams Calling For Muslims To Boycott Airlines?, Politically Active Filmmakers Find a Religion-Based Summer Camp They Feel Safe Criticizing, CAIR Protest In So Cal