Gaviani I haven't forgotten about you, btw. It's just what you're asking is a rather large undertaking. Few have all the facts, but I'll tell you what does it for me. I talk to soldiers when they come back from war -- just a few a couple times a year, but I get to know them and what they think about things in general. It never fails: every single time the soldier will tell me something about Iraq I have never heard before. They have a different view than I'm getting on my TV (okay, maybe I don't watch TV at home, but I see it at relatives' houses, etc) and in the newspapers. Even Fox News has dropped the ball and pissed all over it.

One side says one thing, the other side says another. Someone here is really, really wrong. I haven't been over there, myself, so I have to choose whom to trust. I, a journalist, choose to trust those fighting the war. The reasons are numerous and mostly embedded in common sense, I believe, but there's one other reason: All the soldiers' stories match up. The stories aren't a bed of roses by any means, but they're all telling me things that seem to fit together when I consider them. When I read a story on Iraq or see one on the news outlets, things do not seem to add up.

I also spend a lot of time talking to police. Cops spend a LOT of time listening to stories and trying to find the truth, despite not having been there. They all use the same technique. They get a story from every person on every side. The side that's lying, let's say they want to convince the cop their friend didn't start the fight, will not have their stories add up. It takes a carefully-planned conspiracy to pass a lie off. Even though all those people will be marching in lock step, saying their friend is innocent and didn't start anything, their version of the details just won't make sense. I do the same thing when trying to figure out what the hell happened in a story I do because 95 percent of the time, I just wasn't there.

So why can't the masses use this commonly-known, commonly-used tactic to parse and filter their daily news? The answer is that it goes against human nature. Some of the most destructive political minds in the history of the world realized this and took advantage of it. Adolph Hitler said people are more likely to believe a big lie than a small one. He was excruciatingly correct.