Baghdad, Iraq ? America’s hand-wringing about whether the violence in Iraq amounts to a civil war, while on the surface a semantic distinction, mirrors deeper divisions about how far the U.S. should go to try to salvage a desperate situation.

Politicians recognize that what they call the military challenge in Iraq can influence what the public thinks about the struggle – nearly futile or merely dire, daunting or winnable.

Calling the violence in Iraq a civil war implies that the ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq are irreconcilable, short of a military victory by one faction over the others, and that victory – if it can come at all – will take years and cost many more American lives.

Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the debate about what to call the conflict is political to its core.

“The entire debate is a proxy for: how bad is it?” she said.

Some who see Iraq embroiled in a civil war argue the evident failure of the U.S. military to stem the chaos proves Washington should withdraw U.S. troops and take Americans out of harm’s way. Others say the phrase is accurate but suggest that the U.S. should be ready to pour more troops into the region, stay much longer than anyone expected or both.

Those who blame the daily bloodshed on terrorists and thugs tend to be more optimistic, saying that the U.S. still can help Iraqis build the foundation for a stable, democratic nation in the Middle East. Those who say Iraq is embroiled in civil war, they say, exaggerate the price of success.

The most prominent critic of the civil war label is, of course, President Bush, who persuaded the United States to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein in 2003 – triggering an insurgency that no one in his administration seemed to anticipate.

“There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al-Qaida causing people to seek reprisal,” Bush said Tuesday. “I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”

The term civil war has various definitions, some more stringent than others. Webster’s New World College Dictionary calls it a “war between geographical sections or political factions of the same nation.” The Web site www.GlobalSecurity.org sets out five criteria: rivals must control territory, have a functioning government, enjoy some foreign recognition, control identifiable regular armed forces and mount major military operations.

The media traffics in words, and the political struggle about the use of the term civil war has complicated reporting on the conflict. Some U.S. news organizations – including NBC News and the Los Angeles Times – have decided to call the Iraq conflict a civil war. Some have not. The Associated Press does not preclude using the term.

The civil war label has political overtones in Iraq as well as in the U.S. For many officials in Baghdad, as in Washington, adopting it might feel like an admission of failure.

“It is not civil war, but the result of what is taking place is by far more dangerous that what happened in past civil wars,” said Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Salam Zikam Ali al-Zubaie, a Sunni Arab, speaking Wednesday on Arabiyah.

The violence, he said, was the result of what he called “political chaos and a dangerous foreign agenda.”