NYT reports that Sunnis are forming armed bands to keep the police out of their neighborhoods. Here's a bad sign, the police seem to be acting as death squads, killing Sunnis with impunity.

As evidence mounts that Shiite police commandos are carrying out secret killings, Sunni Arab neighborhoods across Baghdad have begun forming citizen groups to keep the paramilitary forces out of their areas entirely.
...
Three years after the American invasion, the war has settled here, in the quiet of neighborhoods, streets and Iraqis' backyards. Dozens of bodies surface daily. People are taken from their homes and executed. Assassinations are routine. But instead of looking to the government for protection, ordinary Sunni Arabs are taking up arms against it, perhaps the most vivid illustration of the depth of Sunni mistrust of the American backed, Shiite-led security forces. "There is no bridge of confidence between the government and the Iraqi people," said Tarik al-Hashimy, a vice president of Iraq who is a Sunni Arab.
...
In March, the Baghdad morgue received 1,294 bodies, more than double the 596 received in March 2005. In April, the figure was up by 88 percent from the previous April. Nearly 90 percent died violently, most by gunfire, according to the morgue.

"The killing, you can't imagine the killing," said Yusra Abdul Aziz, 47, a teacher, whose block, in Adhamiya, organized its watch group in March, after four neighbors were shot dead over several days. "Without any reason. Cars come and shoot us. We run to the hospital and get our wounded. We live in a nightmare, actually."

The Sunnis in these neighborhoods cite the American troops and Iraqi military as slightly more trustworthy, and capable of keeping the Shiite police/death squads from killing them. It's disturbing. It sounds as if we withdraw without adequately training and establishing the army the Sunnis will be exterminated by Shiite police forces.

So, let's summarize. Over 1000 civilians killed a month, the Iraqi interior minister estimating 100,000 refugees, foreign terrorists leading attacks on Sunnis and government facilities, open gunfighting in city streets, Shiite death squads made up of police killing Sunnis, and Sunnis forming local militias to keep the police out of their neighborhoods. When is everyone else going to see this is a civil war? What part of the definition of a civil war is missing?

Wikipedia defines a Civil War:

A civil war is a war in which parties within the same culture, society or nationality fight for political power or control of an area. Some civil wars are also categorized as revolutions when major societal restructuring is a possible outcome of the conflict. An insurgency, whether successful or not, is likely to be classified as a civil war by some historians if, and only if, organized armies fight conventional battles. Other historians state the criteria for a civil war is that there must be prolonged violence between organized factions or defined regions of a country (conventionally fought or not).

Hmmm. Seems the only thing missing is uniforms. Do the Shiite police uniforms count? Well, the BBC had an article about this last month but pretty much the only reason they could come up with for not calling this a civil war is a fuzzy optimism that a government might form and by deus ex machina everything will get better. I'm less optimistic, this is a civil war, deal with it.