KEY POINTS:
The notion that the truth is the first casualty of war is not a new one. The redoubtable Dr Samuel Johnson wrote in 1758 that "among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages".
Not much has changed, as was emphatically demonstrated in Washington this week when Jessica Lynch, a former US army driver, buried forever the heroic narrative about her capture and rescue in Iraq in 2003. The official story was that she had been injured in combat, taken prisoner and rescued in a daring raid on a hospital where she was lying, neglected and close to death.
In fact, she told a congressional committee, she had been injured in a truck crash and the Iraqi doctors who had been caring for her released her without demur.
"I am still confused," she told the committee, "[as to] why they chose to lie and make me a legend."
Not everyone shares her confusion. The US military, stung by revelations about the routine torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, needed a story of triumph over evil enemies. That's why they lied about Lynch, and about Pat Tillman, who was shot by Americans in Afganistan, and whose brother Kevin appeared alongside Lynch to set the record straight.
The Bush administration, and in particular the disgraced Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, lied about the pretext for this war when they said that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And now the Pentagon, under Rumsfeld's leadership, has been shown to have lied about its conduct too. It is worth remembering that transparent government is one of the "freedoms" that the US-led coalition is supposedly fighting for.
