Matt Lauer made headlines earlier this week by announcing that Iraq is now in a civil war.

Some reporters in the Old Media wasted no time in agreeing with him, which wasn’t surprising. Many of the journalistic guard of Old Media journalists have been claiming Iraq is in a civil war for months. So have most Democrat politicians and their pundits.

What is surprising, not to mention refreshing, is the sudden hesitation in many of the Old Media’s journalistic guard to join the civil war chorus. I say hesitate because, while these guards’ flesh may not be willing to join Lauer, their spirit obviously is. Just one example would be a commercial CBS ran for their evening news program a few days ago, touting Katie Couric covering the developments in Iraq as that country stands at the threshold of … well, you know.

I’m a guy who likes facts, and the fact is that part of Iraq is in a mess. A good chunk of Iraq, however, is not a mess. It is no paradise, and there is always the threat of danger (just like in America), but more of Iraq is peaceful than it is at war. Still, Sunni and Shiite Muslims are engaged in a power struggle as far as who will be the power in the new government, much like Democrats and Republicans engage in a power struggle for control of our government. What is becoming more and more clear every day is that insurgents funded and trained by Iran are doing their best to pit Sunni and Shiite against one another in a violent struggle that will lead to civil war. This would trump American efforts to help Iraq maintain its new democratic government, and give back the terrorists the country as a safe harbor from which to plot and carry out attacks against the West.

THAT’S the story, and it would be nice if ALL the reporters in the Old Media’s journalistic guard would remove their liberal blinders, see what is really happening, and cover THAT story.

It would be nice, but it isn’t going to happen. I know because I’ve heard this song before, as have any American over the age of 40.

Soon after Lauer announced Iraq was in a civil war, many conservatives began comparing his comment to Walter Conkrite’s famous 1968 pronouncement that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, which led President Lyndon B. Johnson to say, "If we’ve lost Walter, we’ve lost the war."

Conkrite made his comment after the Tet Offensive on January 31, 1968. On that day the Viet Cong attacked several targets to the South, including the U.S. embassy in Saigon. Every VC troop who attacked our embassy was killed, but the VC had better luck in the former capital of Hue and the U.S. base at Keh Sanh, though at a cost of 50 troops killed to every one U.S. soldier. And the VC’s gains didn’t last long. According to Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen’s A PATRIOT’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, "At Hue the surprised and outnumbered U.S. Marines evicted 10,000 Viet Cong and Vietnamese regulars from a fortified city in less than three weeks and at a loss of only 150 dead."

Prior to the Tet Offensive, Vietnam was considered a civil war between the North and South, but as Schweikart and Allen explain, "From that point on, any pretense that Vietnam was a civil war was over. The only hope the communists had to win had to come from direct, and heavy, infusions of troops and supplies from Hanoi, Moscow, and Peking." Not that it mattered. Robert Leckie, a U.S. military historian, called the Tet Offensive "the most appalling defeat in the history of the [Vietnam] war…an unmitigated military disaster (THE WARS OF AMERICA, p. 987)."

Despite this major VC defeat, Conkrite called the Vietnam war unwinnable! Schweikart and Allen point out, "Even NEWSWEEK—hardly an objective, patriotic source—admitted that for the first time in history the American press was more friendly to its country’s enemies than to the United States."

That was Conkrite and the American media in 1968; now, in 2006, we have Lauer and the Iraqi "civil war." When input the fact that Russia and China have been forging relationships with Iran (see, for example, this article from ASIA TIMES ONLINE: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GF04Ad07.html), and the similarities between then and now are frighteningly similar.

Today, of course, we have the New Media to help counter the Old Media. Conkrite and his generation’s journalistic guard had the news to themselves, and it cost America. Because of the New Media I have hope that, while the song of 2006 sounds the same as 1968, this tune will have a different and happier ending.