From Aeschylus to X

Aeschylus, a Greek dramatist who wrote around 500 BC and a U.S. Senator named Hiram Johnson in 1918 are the two leading candidates among several in a spirited discussion of who first proposed truth is the first casualty in a war.

Whoever said it first, it's worth saying again today. Frenzied reporting from war zones is often incorrect, sometimes due to the proverbial fog of war and sometimes, regrettably, as propaganda. It can be quite a while, sometimes even years, before one figures out which is which.

So the flurry of impassioned reporting from the assembled media, the U.S. Congress (or whatever's left of it), and Elon's X needs to be taken with a judicious grain of salt.

My personal formulation: Believe half of it.

It's up to you to figure out which half.

CLARIFICATION: There's plenty of stuff swirling around about events in the Middle East that's obviously untrue, or at least highly suspect. But then there's this, for example, from The Washington Post this morning…"U.S. and Israeli government officials have given diverging assessments of Iran’s involvement in the violent incursion of Hamas militants into Israel…."