"We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," said Iyad Allawi, the former interim prime minister of Iraq. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."[BBC News] Donald Rumsfeld denied that Iraq was in a civil war.[CNN] The United States launched Operation Swarmer against the Iraqi insurgency. While the operation was described as the largest air assault since the beginning of the Iraq war, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were captured.
