"Facts Do Not Speak"

Salman Rushdie on truth, which, he says, is "the first casualty in the 'war on terror'":

What is a “fact”? In an age beset by bitter disputes about reality, the word itself, and its close relative “truth”, become embattled. “Let the facts speak for themselves,” historians, politicians and columnists like to say, but facts do not speak — they must be interpreted and spoken for. And then, according to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, what is observed is altered by the observer’s presence. Facts shift, depending on who is interpreting them.

In war, as Aeschylus said 3,000 years ago, truth is the first casualty. Solid, reliable facts and objective truths, always hard to define, become more elusive in times of heightened conflict. The “war on terror” is a new sort of conflict, but truth is certainly embattled and the facts themselves are under heavy fire from all sides, and are daily receiving near-fatal wounds....