Choose your words carefully

Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary for the UK, is absolutely, positively, clearly and distinctly certain that Iraq is not in a civil war.

Not in the least! Rather, the situation there is merely a high level of slaughter.

Now, I'm sure this is a technical term in the world of foreign affairs, but its precise sense escapes me at the moment, and, to my untutored ears, it's hard to hear much of a practical difference between civil war and high level of slaughter.

I guess what I'm asking is: How are these terms calibrated?

Presumably, high level of slaughter stands on the conflict-o-meter at a somewhat higher level than happiness and fuzzy bunnies, or pillow fight, or even raucous BDSM party.

But how does it compare to sectarian strife? daily massacre? blood-dimmed tide?

See, in Canada we measure these things in metric, but I guess the UK still uses old Imperial units for this sort of stuff, and I just don't get it. This scale makes even less sense to me than degrees Fahrenheit, which is already pretty absurd.