A persistent casualty of war: truth

There’s something about shock and awe that sticks with you.

Twenty years ago, my workshop for newspaper journalists at a conference center outside Warsaw, Poland, was interrupted with the breaking news that the U.S. and “a coalition of the willing” had invaded Iraq.

As that coalition included 900 troops from Poland, you can only imagine my awe when the workshop’s format got flipped on its head. Suddenly the top editors of Poland’s newspapers started interviewing me—an American—for articles about the meaning of the invasion.