The first casualty Letter to the Editor, The Australian, 29 May 2003

It was a US polician, Senator Hiram Johnson, a member of George Bush's Republican Party, who said in 1917 that "the first casualty when war comes is truth."  This has been repeated so often that it has become an uncontroversial cliche.

Yet when ABC director of news and current affairs Max Uechritz took the same sceptical  stance, saying "the military are lying basterds" he was accused of being anti American.  Perhaps we should add that the first casualty, when politics is involved, is logic.

Darce Cassidy
Friends of the ABC