Civil war?

From my military days I recall this definition of civil war;

civil war: A war between factions of the same country; there are five criteria for international recognition of this status: the contestants must control territory, have a functioning government, enjoy some foreign recognition, have identifiable regular armed forces, and engage in major military operations.

However that would hardly suit the New York Times thus they quote a ‘common scholarly definition‘ has having two main criteria;

The first says that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.

There now, that’s a lot easier isn’t it? The real definition of civil war al la media is this; One media outlet uses the words civil war in an Iraq war article and a million other editors follow suit. It is now the term du jour for the anti-war brigade. This New York Times article is the first I’ve noticed where they at least attempt the define the term and I would suggest it has been tailored to suit the current kill rate in Iraq. Using that definition I would imagine the American Civil Rights Movement and the settlement of Australia could both be defined as Civil Wars when clearly they were not. The Iraq war may be lots of things but it is not a civil war.