Reaffirming reality

Surely one of the agonizing attributes of our post–September 11 age is the unending need to reaffirm realities that have been proved, and proved again, but just as doggedly denied by those in power, forcing us to live trapped between two narratives of present history, the one gaining life and color and vigor as more facts become known, the other growing ever paler, brittler, more desiccated, barely sustained by the life support of official power.

Mark Danner, 'The Moment Has Come to Get Rid of Saddam:' The Crawford Transcript in The New York Review of Books, November 8, 2007, pg.59