On September 1st, the official Chinese news-agency, Xinhua, quoted Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Valeriy Geletey, as saying, “The operation to liberate eastern Ukraine from terrorists is over. We must urgently undertake defense against Russia.”

The same day, Russian TV headlined, “Russia outraged after Kiev accuses Moscow of nuclear attack threats,” and reported that Galetey said that this “operation” had produced “the rebels’ ‘defeat’,” and that the “operation” would now be replaced by a “war” between Ukraine and Russia. He was quoted there as saying that the Russian Government had communicated to him ‘through ‘unofficial channels’,” that Russia would use “tactical nuclear weapons” against Ukraine, if Ukraine did not capitulate to Russia’s demands. However, “Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed there would be ‘no military intervention into the conflict in Ukraine.”

CBS News headlined “Russia Rolls Into Ukraine,” and reported that NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen had “urged Russia on August 29 to halt its ‘illegal’ military actions in Ukraine.” This CBS report failed to mention Russia’s repeated denials that “Russia Rolls Into Ukraine” at all.

The residents of the various countries are thus receiving very different impressions of what is happening, and even of which side is winning this war — and even of whether it’s a “war,” or only an “operation.” In all of these countries, the government might as well be writing the “news.”

In the United States, leading up to our invasion of Iraq on 19 March 2003, the U.S. Government and news media reported that Saddam Hussein had a huge and growing stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and that the U.S. needed to invade in order to capture it and kill the Al Qaeda forces there. As things turned out, there were neither WMD nor Al Qaeda in Iraq (though Al Qaeda did start there in 2006, while we were occupying the country). America’s public continued trusting U.S. news media, nonetheless. But will this trust continue if it turns out that our Government and news-media have been lying about Ukraine, too?

Perhaps Americans don’t care much about being deceived. On the other hand, maybe there is a limit to how long that unconcern about their deception can continue.

For example: what will happen if it turns out that Ukraine’s separatists win, and that the U.S. had spent more on supporting the Ukrainian army than Russia had spent of supporting the separatists? Is America’s acceptance of deception, and of deceivers, unlimited? Or will the American people never even notice that they had been repeatedly deceived?

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010,  and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.