Acceptability of lying

The government’s dishonourable conduct surrounding the Iraq war is now beginning to affect morality in general. When doing something dubious, it is now not uncommon to pray in aid, as a precedent, the deceit deployed by the government in the prelude to the war. This is done only half in jest. So embellishing any claim is likened to ‘sexing up’. Making particularly exuberant claims is compared to the claim about Iraq’s ability to unleash hell in 45 minutes. Copying and pasting information from the Internet is justified on the grounds that the government did the same. The end result may be dodgy, just as the ‘dodgy dossier’ was, but what does it matter. What’s good for the whiter than white government must be good for the rest of us as well.