From the legal, political, and ethical points of view, much turns on the precise sequence of events by which a war develops. Regrettably, by the time a conflict begins to attract the attention of scholars, it may be too late to reconstruct its origins. Participants die or disappear, records are lost or destroyed, memories fail, or false information is deliberately circulated. The resulting weakness of scholarly investigation then permits those with a vested interest in some particular view to rewrite history in keeping with their own peculiar demonology.