But misframing the past as a narrative of deceptions, betrayals and humiliations is a profoundly dangerous move.
We must cope with the problems their deceptions created.
Its account of the creation of the world and of the early days of mankind, with its parade of deceptions, retributions and covenants, has been subjected to many kinds of interpretation.
He later declared that "freedom from torture is an inalienable human right" and that the United States "remains steadfastly committed to upholding the Geneva Conventions".It is this brazenness which amazes Mr Hersh, a man who has spent a lifetime exposing the deceptions of politicians.
Critics struggled to grasp what he was up to, but he couldn't have cared about their "receptions, deceptions, hellos, goodbyes, huzzahs, hurrahs".
But they are still susceptible to the prosaic deceptions of data displays such as scale, aspect ratio and placement.In addition, intensive processing for visualisation can actually destroy information.
Both firms misled markets and investors over the health of their accounts and both spectacularly imploded when the extent of the deceptions became known.
Since 2007 financial intelligence on the deceptions practised by Iran's banks and firms has helped officials convince private companies around the world of the growing risk of finding they have inadvertently supported Iran's blacklisted nuclear or missile programmes.Some fear that Chinese and other firms will snap up the lost business.
For a start, it "engaged in a series of deceptions", the lawyers say, by declaring that the deal would yield at least $2.5 billion in cost savings in the first two years, and that the companies would lose no more than 5% of their combined revenues and lay off only 15,000 of their 145,000 employees.
"The tradition was secure, the decision was irreversible".Were Vespucci's deceptions all that wicked?
And, contrary to Mr Obama's dismissive rhetoric about war-mongers, that second camp of doubters includes not just noisy hawks but also moderate Republicans and Democrats, who are sincerely anxious about the Iranian regime's long record of nuclear deceptions and secrets.A pivotal player is the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee.
