“For months now, skeptics of George W. Bush’s Iraq policy have been warning that the present path could lead to bloody civil war. More recently, proponents of a continued U.S. military presence have been warning that bloody civil war would be the result of a withdrawal. Both sides can, perhaps, stop warning — the civil war has already begun. Recent events in Mosul, a multi-ethnic city in northern Iraq that is the country’s third-largest after Baghdad and Basra, … bear all the markings of ethnic and sectarian warfare.

Most news accounts portrayed the fighting in Mosul — the result of an insurgent counteroffensive in the wake of the American assault on Fallujah — as part of a conventional narrative of insurgents versus combined U.S. and Interim Government forces. The reality is rather more troubling.

… (The fight) … was not between an American-backed government and anti-government rebels. It was, rather, a simple fight between Sunni Arabs and Kurds with ostensible agents of the Interim Government on both sides.” (The American Prospect )