Matt's got this one right:

General Petraeus just said that Iraq was "on the brink of civil war"
eighteen months ago, from which brink it's now been brought back. Now
it seems to me that if we'd had a large pitched battle in Chicago or
Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, we would say that the United States
was currently in a state of civil war.

Seriously,
anywhere else but Iraq and everyone would think it laughable for
Petraeus to say something like this. First off, Iraq wasn't on the brink of civil war 18 months ago. They were in a civil war.
Secondly, considering no official permanent agreement has been reached
between the warring factions, and with their government largely
ineffective, there's no other way to describe the current violence
except as a civil war.

And let's take a look at Iraqi civilian deaths year by year as established by IraqBodyCount.com, which scans a wide array of news sources to produce what may be the most accurate measure of civilian deaths available (though is still likely to undercount casualties):

Year Civilians Killed
2003 10,077 – 12,010
2004 9,741 – 10,573
2005 13,071 – 14,324
2006 25,699 – 27,519
2007 22,586 – 24,159

So, eighteen months ago, we were in 2006, in which somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 civilians were killed. Last year, the second half of which came post-surge, we still saw around 23,000 deaths. An improvement, but not one striking enough to warrant a reclassification of Iraq's civil war.

And according to icasualties.org, 2008 looks poised to outpace 2005's casualty rate by a wide margin. So, things in Iraq are only better compared to the absolute worst violence seen during 2006-2007. But as I recall, all of us thought things were pretty bad in 2005. If things are still worse now than then, how can anyone say that the situation has dramatically changed? If anything, the fact that we're three years further down the road and still no closer to the political reconciliation necessary to truly stabilize the country, then aren't we far worse off now than we were in 2005? And doesn't that mean the surge has failed its objective?

As always more over at The Left Anchor