# Did we actually start the war?
### Part 1 of a contrarian op-ed on Ragerian Relations

## WARNING: the Office of Media Fairness has flagged this post as likely misinformation due to incomplete data and/or missing sources.  If this is your article, you may request reevaluation once your references have been updated.

We all know the official story about the so-called "First Incident", it's drilled into our children like a stone against a greenshell clam: Division 2, under the orders of General Marla Jorlen deployed attack robots and forced our scientists off the station supposedly meant to help us correct our homeworld's destabilized orbit.  Our fledgling Space Navy had no choice but to respond in kind, and the longest and first known interstellar war had begun.  Except... is that *really* what happened?

"Of course it is!"  You say.  "Every sensor and satellite in the system registered the previously stealthed Ragerain shuttle as it retreated into a wormhole.  Besides, why would our elected government, the pride of Otteria and a bastion of liberty, lie to it's own citizens?"  Dear reader, is is painful to me to admit this, but my in depth investigations have revealed that not only has our government been lying about the cause of the war for centuries, but they have gone through hell and dry floodplanes to cover it up; and I have the receipts!


### Exhibit A: Operation Ascendance - [ERROR - DATA CORRUPT OR MISSING]

The following document was found in a data core that was jettisoned from [DATASTREAM CORRUPT]

Don't just take my word for it, I've embedded the recovered copy here: [FILE NOT FOUND]


### Exhibit B: Recovered Audio
[The file seems to be in a valid audio format, however, it's contents consist of long periods of complete silence and unintelligible static.]


### Conclusion
As you can see, this alone is pretty damning evidence, and proves that even if we are not responsible for the centuries of violence that followed, our officials have a lot of explaining to do.  I have even more potential evidence on this I am in process of recovering and examining, will post more on this soon.

D'Lara Shimmerwave, Independent Otterian Journalist


{Echo Contingency file 208421 - flagged for follow up}
{Addendum: public records show that shortly after publication the author was committed for accute paranoia.  It was around this time that the storage cluster containing the relevant files suffered atypically selective file loss - no satisfactory technical explanation for this occurrence was ever logged.}