It is said that the truth is the first casualty of war. Today, the truth is dying a thousand deaths. It simply has too many enemies and too few defenders.

A recent regrettable example: the U.S. Defense Department’s release of a report documenting prewar Iraq’s support for global terrorism under the leadership of Saddam Hussein.

Based on a review of 600,000 documents and other records the United States found in postwar Iraq, the report included several bombshell findings. Among them: that Saddam commissioned Iraqi terrorists to help Osama bin Laden’s men battle Americans in Somalia; that Saddam actively supported a terrorist group headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who later joined forces with al Qaeda; that Saddam supported one organization committed to (in the words of an Iraqi intelligence memo) “armed jihad against the Americans”; that Iraqi embassies throughout the world contained stockpiles of terrorist tools; that Saddam funded, trained and armed many jihadist groups right up to the fall of his regime. The report gives proof that “the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda,” and that “From 1991 through 2003, the Saddam regime regarded inspiring, sponsoring, directing and executing acts of terrorism as an element of state power.” Over half-a-million Iraqi documents show that this is the truth.

The version of the story trumpeted in the mainstream media, however, was precisely the opposite. “Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie,” headlined the New York Times. Excuse me?

Turns out someone leaked the report’s existence two days before its release, including this line from its executive summary: “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.” In the context of the report’s 59 pages and over 1,500 pages of appendices, that statement is patently misleading if not outright stupid. Nevertheless, this thin reed of evidence perfectly matched with conventional wisdom in the New York Times newsroom: that the president invaded Iraq without cause, that Iraq was actually harmless, that our war there distracted us from the real “war on terrorism,” that as a result we are less, not more, safe. Thus, without a whiff of skepticism or discretion, one news organization after another publicized as fact their non-existent understanding of a report they hadn’t even seen.

The truth got trampled by the juggernaut “no link” narrative.

Amazingly, however, both the Pentagon and the White House failed to expose the falsity. As Stephen Hayes wrote, one official involved in the study suggested mitigating the damage by immediately publishing the report online; another said no—not until its official release. The writer who initially received the leak reported this internal disagreement as—surprise!—a conspiracy to squelch the study.

Why no word from the White House? Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standardexplained it this way: “If you talk to people in the Bush administration, they know the truth about the report. They know that it makes the case convincingly for Saddam’s terror connections. But they’ll tell you (off the record) it’s too hard to try to set the record straight. Any reengagement on the case for war is a loser, they’ll say. Furthermore, once the first wave of coverage is bad, you can never catch up: You give the misleading stories more life and your opponents further chances to beat you up in the media. And as for trying to prevent misleading summaries and press leaks in the first place—that’s hopeless. Someone will tell the media you’re behaving like Scooter Libby …” (emphasis mine).

Madness. The press has gone far beyond fulfilling its self-assigned commission to expose abuses of power. Drunk on its own power, it is sacrificing the truth in order to fulfill its agenda to undermine its own government.

And the government—beaten too many times in a media-dominated environment where perception trumps reality—has conceded defeat. These leaders have surrendered in the war over truth.

This is far from being an isolated case.

Conventional wisdom is that the world—most egregiously, the U.S.—was incorrect in thinking Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The press routinely uses the “wmd was a pretense to invade” argument to bludgeon the Bush administration. Nary a peep is heard about the considerable evidence that wmds were moved before the invasion, and even found after the invasion. But it’s not only a matter of the media hammering away at the same story line and scuttling anything contrary. The government itself has backed down and decided to let this distorted view stand. Why? As the Spectator reported last April 21, it failed to secure some of the wmd sites that were found, and those sites were looted by who knows whom: “The Republicans won’t touch this because it would reveal the incompetence of the Bush administration in failing to neutralize the danger of Iraqi wmd. The Democrats won’t touch it because it would show President Bush was right to invade Iraq in the first place. It is an axis of embarrassment.” Once again, the casualty of this dust-up is truth.

The episode with the recent Iraq report was eerily similar to that surrounding last December’s National Intelligence Estimate. That report also contained one particularly misleading statement—this one seeming to deflate all rationale for holding Iran accountable for its nuclear program—amid ample evidence that there was plenty to be concerned about. That statement got page-one, above-the-fold, big-print treatment nationwide, accompanied by predictable commentary about how the nie repudiated the Bush administration’s supposed eagerness to “rush to war” with Iran. The press wasn’t nearly so credulous, however, when, weeks later, the national intelligence director backed off that statement and said Iran’s nuclear weapons development was still moving forward. That story registered barely a ripple in the media, simply because it defied the press’s antiwar orthodoxy. In this case, the government’s initial report was almost criminally ambiguous, and it bears a huge part of the blame in the mortal wounding of the truth.

Global warming is a truly remarkable example. The notion that America is almost singularly responsible for an impending global climatic catastrophe has attained the sanctity of holy writ among mainstream journalists. Thus, dissent—which is growing among the scientific community—is ignored or, if it absolutely must be reported on, dismissed as quackery. The same is true of recent proof that the Earth has actually cooled since 1998. But is the government standing up for the truth? By all indications, it is proving unwilling to butt heads with the mainstream view and is accepting the fallacious party line—at an as yet unforeseen but potentially preposterous cost.

What happens when we don’t value the truth enough to fight for it?

What happens when elite prejudices and public opinion—no matter how false—matter more than reality? Several curses result.

Failure to correct deceitful media coverage enables and encourages the press to shift increasingly from reportage to activism. Anti-government, agenda-driven reporting erodes the basic trust between the government and the governed. Making matters worse is the fact that we routinely see politicians and other leaders—in education, in business, even in religion—exposed for their deceit. It is becoming epidemic. It no longer shocks us.

In this poisoned environment, mistrust can become suspicion, which can provide safe harbor for lies, which can breed worse lies. Witness the popular support for the recently disclosed anti-government conspiracy theories spouted by the preacher of a popular presidential candidate. Apparently these extremist views have found lodgment in many minds not far off Main Street U.S.A.

The more the government acquiesces to misinformed public opinion, the more paralyzed and aimless its policies become. In fact, policies built on lies can destroy nations. All the wrangling over language in the nie, for example, would be silenced the moment Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes good on his pledge to “wipe Israel off the map” with a well-aimed, nuclear-tipped Shahab 3.

Lies are a powerfully destructive force. Those intent on spreading them have several tactical advantages. Put one out there, and the truth is thrown into doubt. Put 10 out there and the truth gets swamped. Effortful proving is required, and our memories are foggy, and our time precious. Enough lies and everything starts to look like a lie—or at best, a mixture of truth and error. In the cacophony, the loudest voice wins. As Lenin said, a lie told often enough becomes truth.

It is not hard to see the truth in the biblical pronouncement that the devil, the father of lies, has deceived the whole world. Propaganda has a knack for spreading. Especially when the truth has so many enemies. And so few defenders.