When the facts are in, it may well turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct. But even if that turns out to be the case, it will in no way alter the conclusions we have reached on the central question addressed here: how the available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented to create a certain image offered to the general population. The answer to this question seems clear, and it is unaffected by whatever may be discovered about Cambodia in the future.

The record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome, but it has by no means satisfied the requirements of Western propagandists, who must labor to shift the blame for the torment of Indochina to the victims of France and the United States. Consequently, there has been extensive fabrication of evidence, a tide that is not stemmed even by repeated exposure.

We will consider the facts about postwar Indochina insofar as they can be ascertained, but a major emphasis will be on the ways in which these facts have been interpreted, filtered, distorted or modified by the ideological institutions in the West.

We will consider the facts about postwar Indochina insofar as they can be ascertained, but a major emphasis will be on the ways in which these facts have been interpreted, filtered, distorted or modified by the ideological institutions in the West.

Ugly facts are a challenge to beautify them.

We shore up our prejudices with selected facts...

Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

...If at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.

What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either.

It must be remembered that after all in making a picture we are endeavoring to set down on one plane various objects in such a way as to suggest an infinitude of varying planes, and hence we are justified in selecting such conditions of nature as shall help us to give the impression of truthfulness, even though it be not in particular cases absolutely true to fact.

The facts have to be determined by empirical evidence, and our thinking has then to conform to the facts, not the facts to our thinking

The contrast between the truth about the incidents and what they were made out to be should alert our newspapers and TV channels not to shoot off accounts without examining the facts. In particular, they must not go merely by the allegations of communalism-mongers.(13)

They vie with one another in offering attractive, “informative” accounts and images of the world. They are free to speculate on the facts, to bring new facts into being, to demand answers to their own contrived questions.

Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.