The problem with lying is that liars begin to believe in their own lies with the passage of time. This is a pathological condition which the enemies of Sri Lanka have developed. They go on repeating their diabolical lies in the hope that they may be taken for the truth one day as Goebbels said. The Channel 4 video is a case in point. That it is a fake has been established beyond doubt. But, some members of the international community, their hired guns in international organisations and Tiger backers are still demanding that it be investigated.

UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Phillip Alston, has said the investigation the Sri Lankan government conducted into the C-4 video was prompt but not impartial. He says two of the experts who examined it were from the Sri Lanka army. What is the point Alston is trying to make? Did he expect this country to appoint a committee of international experts to probe a blatantly faked footage?

The Sri Lanka Army did exactly what it had to do. When a video is put out by someone claiming it to be evidence of war crimes, the first thing any army should do is to appoint a committee of its own experts to find if it is genuine or doctored. If it is proved to be a fake, there is no point in conducting further investigations.

Let's assume Mr. Alston is told by someone that there is a patch of blood on his neck. How should he react? Should he let out a scream at the top of his voice and make a beeline for the doctor? If he did so, he would not be considered sane or intelligent. What he should do in such a situation is to go before a mirror and examine the patch concerned himself before seeking others' help. Then, let's say for argument's sake, Mr. Alston, upon close examination, finds that the red patch is not blood but a lipstick mark. Then what should he do? Should he go ahead and present his respectable self for a medical examination? We don't think so.

Likewise, the Sri Lanka army with its face besmeared with dirty terrorist propaganda, examined the C-4 video itself promptly and fount it to be a fake. Channel 4 claimed its video had been originally done on a mobile phone camera in Sri Lanka's war zone and then posted on the Internet. The Sri Lanka experts with impressive credentials as IT experts ruled out that the footage had come from a mobile phone and proved that it had been done with a sophisticated video camera, dubbed to give the gun shot effect and transferred to a mobile phone. So, the army investigation in to the video at issue ended as soon as it began.

The army, thus, had no reason to launch an 'impartial' investigation into a doctored video. If someone still believes that video is genuine and the army is bluffing, then the onus is on him to prove the army wrong. If 'impartial' investigations were to be conducted into each and every propaganda lie LTTE spin doctors ably assisted by a section of the western media disseminate, then the army would be without time and energy to do anything else at the rate terror backers are levelling various allegations against it.

In this era of advanced technology, anything is possible, as we have seen in Jurassic Park, Spider Man, and a plethora of other movies. The world is also full of magicians capable of creating unbelievable illusions. So, producing war crimes videos or some other gimmicks to discredit countries is child's play and if they were to be used as irrefutable evidence, no army in the world would have peace of mind.

Regrettably, a person of Alston's calibre has failed to realise that the C-4 video is nothing but a fake and that there is absolutely no need for the Sri Lankan army to conduct further investigations––impartial or otherwise. The UN is considered a respectable organisation however impotent it may be vis-à-vis the not so hidden sinister agendas of the world powers on witch-hunts against smaller nations that refuse to toe their line.