Lies

Very odd headline to this Weekly Standard editorial. The headline: "Truth or Consequences: If the war is to be lost, it will be a collapse of stateside civilian morale that loses it. Everything else is secondary."

This is, of course, true. But the topic of the editorial is the lies told by the antiwar movement in defense of its position, from the ACLU accusation that 21 detainees were "tortured to death" by US forces to the infamous 16 words and Vice President Cheney's pushback against those who would employ those 16 words as proof that, to coin a phrase, "Bush lied, people died."

Since when has an accusation's ability to screw up the president's plans been thought more important than the accusation's fundamental validity?