Dare me?
That's right, TB. It MIGHT be a lie, but it doesn't HAVE to be one. That is a subtle distinction, but I'm sure you can parse it.
Remember this?
"I fondly recall the time when the Soviets scooped us in the space race by sending a probe behind the moon and broadcasting back to earth a grainy and blurred photograph of the hidden hemisphere. A local minister published a lengthy article in the Tampa Tribune explaining in great detail just how the Russians had faked the picture. Now I wouldn't have put it past the Russkies to think of something like this, but even in my politically naive mind, I couldn't imagine how they could have hoped to pull it off. After all, sooner or later one of our spacecraft was bound to go there and expose the lie.
I already knew my country could lie, I had been crushed a few years earlier by Eisenhower being caught red-handed during the U2 affair; everyone knew the Commies were evil, but they weren't stupid."
And of course there was the Bay of Pigs, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, The Break-in at the Watergate, Monica Lewinsky, Iran-Contra, WMDs and Iraqi Al-Quaeda...The Commies don't have the patent on lies any more than we have one on truth.
We didn't start the fire. It's been burning since the world's been turning.