By Alec Karakatsanis, re-posted from social media.

One thing not getting enough attention now that the U.S. has admitted to exterminating hundreds of elementary school girls is that many very powerful people lied about it.

They knew it was on the target list, they knew they had launched the missiles, they knew the school had been hit multiple times. And they tried to hide it and deflect blame to boost support for the early days of the illegal war.

In any reasonable society—as opposed to a deeply sick one where there is no pretense to caring about truth or accountability or law or justice—a lie of this magnitude would mark the end of a person’s public life and extensive public proceedings to uncover everyone involved and to eradicate the institutional arrangements capable of such crimes and corruption.

It’s similar to the complete rejection of truth and accountability that I have seen in police and prison corruption/violence. In the most fascist corners of our society, the only principle is who has—and is willing to ruthlessly deploy—power over others. Once a society tolerates this kind of thing, it’s like a cancer that spreads and cannot be stopped.