Lies evolve too

Whoo-oo, it’s turning into Evolution Week on my blog

And whilst I have strong personal doubts that living things evolve in the manner advocated by the likes of Richard Dawkins I have absolutely no doubt that lies do. Well, sort of.

Poorly adapted lies faced with strong environmental pressures (aka the Truth), are then subject to (not so random) mutation and subsequent selection until they are adapted to exist in their new, truthier, environment.

An example:

Once upon a time there was a lie that the Leaders of our Government had incontrovertible intelligence that Iraq had WMD

Then some middle-ranking government officials said that was bollocks

And, now, viewers of Newsnight and readers of the Guardian are witnessing the birth of a beautiful new super-evolved version of the lie…

Al-Qaeda 'planted information to encourage US invasion'




A senior al-Qaida operative deliberately planted information to encourage the US to invade Iraq, a double agent who infiltrated the network and spied for western intelligence agencies claimed last night.

…

What is new, if Nasiri is to be believed, is that the leading al-Qaida operative wanted to overthrow Saddam and use Iraq as a jihadist base. Nasiri also says that part of al-Qaida training was to withstand interrogation and provide false information.

… Asked whether he thought Libi had deliberately planted information to get the US to fight Iraq, Nasiri said: "Exactly".


And I’m a monkey’s uncle