Good ideas and lies

I was reading Club Troppo today, and was struck by a simple line that Nicholas Gruen found in the New York Times blog of Paul Krugman:

Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

It was primarily talking about the Wall St meltdown, but originally referred to the selling of the Iraq War. The problem with lies is that you keep having to tell them to cover your tracks. With the invasion of Iraq, the supporters of the invasion and subsequent debacle never want to admit that the initial reasons for the war were false. They prefer to keep saying how the non-supporters never thought the war would succeed – and how we were against the surge – and that the surge has worked.

And then I read today that another bomb in Baghdad has claimed at least 31 lives. Gee – those Iraqis just do not know how lucky they are to have a surge that is successful, because I am sure that we would not be getting lies about the success of the surge.