The top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, assured yesterday that the Iraqi security forces could control the situation. "We're not seeing civil war igniting in Iraq," Lynch said at a news briefing in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. "We're not seeing 77, 80, 100 mosques damaged. We're not seeing death in the streets."

Really? A few paragraphs later in the same article, here's just one of the things that happened yesterday:

The bodies of 47 civilians, mostly men between ages 20 and 50, were found in a ditch near Baqubah. Police said the victims - both Sunnis and Shiites - had apparently been stopped by gunmen, hauled from their cars, and shot.

Illustrating the uncertainty of knowledge of what is actually happening, by the way, here's a different version of the same story:

In one case, 47 mostly Sunni workers traveling on a bus were stopped at a checkpoint, dragged out of the vehicle and killed northeast of Baghdad, police said. Their bullet-ridden bodies were found on the side of the road.

Anyway, back to the point of the post, it appears that when Maj. Gen. Lynch says things like "we're not seeing death in the streets," he means that in the same sense that George Bush means "We do not torture": literally. Bush means that he (and maybe Scott McClellan) have not personally tortured anyone, and Maj. Gen. Lynch evidentally means that he and his cohorts safely ensconced in the "heavily fortified Green Zone" haven't personally seen death in the streets. And, thanks to the "sensibilities" of American media, neither have many Americans, who read the numbers ("129 dead in Iraq"), but never see any pictures of dead bodies, even American soldiers hidden inside coffins, to disturb their (our) breakfast.