TV News LIES

The U.S. began the war in Afghanistan with a "frighteningly simplistic" view of the country and even 10 years later lacks knowledge that could help bring the conflict to a successful end, a former top commander said Thursday.

Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations that the U.S. and its NATO allies are only "a little better than" 50 percent of the way to reaching their war goals.

Nearly 20 percent of the more than 2 million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from mental health conditions, according to a new report.

They amount to more than half of the 712,000 veterans from both wars who have sought medical treatment since leaving military service. Nearly a third of those veterans may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, one of the signature injuries of the conflicts.

A three-year government investigation has found no wrongdoing by Bush-era Pentagon officials when they gave war briefings to retired military analysts who served as TV and radio commentators.

The probe by the Pentagon inspector general was a response to a 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning article in the New York Times that implied the former military officers, some of whom worked for or were defense contractors, received financial favors in return for their commentary and that they were tools in a propaganda campaign.

A U.S. soldier who admitted his role in a plot to kill Afghan civilians was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison for killing a teenage boy.

Pfc. Andrew Holmes' sentence was limited to seven years as part of his agreement to plead guilty in military court Thursday to unpremeditated murder. Holmes also pleaded guilty to smoking marijuana and keeping the finger of an Afghan victim as a souvenir.

Two days after repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy against gays serving openly in the military, the Obama administration was in court Thursday opposing a lawsuit seeking full severance pay for those dismissed under the law.

The American Civil Liberties Union is seeking class action status for 142 people who only got half pay after their discharge because of being gay. But the Justice Department asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to dismiss the case.

Extensive interviews and a McClatchy review of thousands of pages of court documents and internal studies find a congressionally caused crisis of military justice that few civilians know anything about.

The rewritten sexual assault law puts judges “in an impossible position,” the top military appellate court warned. Military lawyers find it “cumbersome and confusing,” a Pentagon task force noted. It leads to “unwarranted acquittals,” Defense Department officials added. And some judges call it unconstitutional.