verification, perception
A delicious paragraph from the NYT’s account of the Blackwater affair:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/world/middleeast/19blackwater.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
The Iraqis’ accounts have not been verified, but the anger in their
telling served to reinforce the feeling among Iraqis here that
private security companies care little for Iraqi lives. In a war
where perceptions are paramount, the effect is poisonous.
A professor could turn this little paragraph into an entire seminar
on ideology.
Doug