The fog of war, my dear reader, is often described as a murky haze through which military operations must grope. But let's not mince words: it's a sewer of lies, conveniently opaque for those who profit from the carnage. Today's offering from the charnel house of Ukraine: a Russian-controlled bus, ferrying eight souls to the afterlife via drone strike.
The Kremlin wails. Ukraine, for its part, offers no comment. But facts, as ever, are the first casualties of conflict.
Was it a precision strike on a military target? A drunken drone operator in a bunker? Or perhaps a bus full of Babushkas on a pilgrimage to the nearest grocery store?
We report, you decide. But spoiler alert: you'll never know. In Churchill's immortal words, 'In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
' Here, the bodyguard is a battalion of state-sponsored bullshit. Eight dead. Not a statistic, but eight lives carved into horcruxes of grief.
The bus, presumably, now a charred husk, a monument to the absurdity of empire. Meanwhile, the gin flows freely in the press room, anaesthetising the collective conscience. We raise a glass to the dead, and to the living who will soon join them.
Because that's the only truth in this carnival of death: every casualty is a tragedy, every war a crime, and every bus bomb a reminder that we've all gone mad.
