TV News LIES

The US military said it killed six men on Sunday in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean as part of the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged traffickers.

Sunday’s attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the administration began targeting so-called “narcoterrorists” in small vessels in September.

As with most of the military’s statements on the more than 40 known strikes in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, US Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. It posted a video on X that showed a small boat being blown up as it floated on the water.

Donald Trump has said the US is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the US. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists”.

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The U.S. torpedoing of an Iranian frigate off Sri Lanka this week may have violated the Geneva Conventions by failing to help rescue sailors from the stricken warship, an act that could potentially endanger American service members in this and future wars.

The 312-foot Dena and its 130-member crew, many of them musicians in the Iranian navy band, had just finished participating in an Indian government naval exercise and cultural exchange that the U.S. Navy had also participated in and were on the way home on Wednesday. After clearing Sri Lanka, it was struck by a torpedo fired from a U.S. Navy submarine about 20 miles from the island’s southern tip. The weapon appears to have ruptured the hull from beneath, and the warship quickly sank. The submarine did not attempt to rescue Iranian sailors in the water.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt bragged about how the attack featured the first American use of a torpedo to sink a ship since World War II. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, narrating a video clip of the attack, used the same gloating tone. “An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death,” he intoned.

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For some U.S. military commanders, the emerging war in Iran is part of a biblical plan to bring about the end of the world as we know it, according to complaints filed by over 100 service members.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received a litany of complaints about religious ideology seeping into military orders since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran, independent journalist Jon Larsen first reported.

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF, a nonprofit group established 21 years ago that focuses on ensuring constitutional protections for service members, spoke with HuffPost by phone Tuesday morning and illuminated some details of the complaints, which have come from more than three dozen military units situated in at least 30 different military installations.

“We started getting calls in the wee hours of Saturday morning from people saying their commanders were just jubilant about this and trying to tell people, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all part of God’s plan,’” Weinstein said.

Weinstein said the “metric promised” in the Bible’s Book of Revelation is horrifying and should worry everyone.
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“They are promised a 200-mile-long river that is four-and-a-half feet deep filled with nothing but the blood that their weaponized version of Jesus will spill at the Battle of Armageddon,” Weinstein said. “That’s a lot of blood.”

Part of what makes the accounts so disturbing, Weinstein said, is that service members aren’t able to push back when they’re given orders that blur the line regarding the separation of church and state.

“This is all about time, place and manner,” he said. “If you’re being proselytized to by your superior, you can’t say, ‘Get out of my face.’ Under the military’s criminal code of justice, insubordination is considered a felony.”

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Retired four-star U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane said he believes President Trump is inching closer to a decision on using military force against Iran as the president escalates pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.

“Obviously, the president has yet to make the decision about that military option, but obviously, we can see what’s taking place. And in my mind, I believe that decision will eventually be made,” Keane told John Catsimatidis in a radio interview on “The Cats Roundtable” show that aired on Sunday.

The U.S. began building up its military presence in the region several weeks ago in response to the bloody crackdown on anti-regime protesters by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s forces. Trump had repeatedly warned that the U.S. may intervene if the regime did not stop killing demonstrators.

Iranian officials have engaged in indirect talks with the U.S. in Oman, addressing its nuclear program in an attempt to avert potential military action — negotiations that began in early February.

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A Washington DC grand jury declined to indict six Democratic lawmakers who were denounced by Donald Trump after they made a video urging troops to refuse illegal orders.

Federal prosecutors had sought an indictment against the Democrats who participated in the video, including Elissa Slotkin, Mark Kelly, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan, who all have military and intelligence backgrounds.

Slotkin, a former CIA officer, organized the video in which the lawmakers said officers can resist unlawful commands. Trump was outraged by the clip, and described it “seditious behavior by traitors” that was “punishable by death”.

Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, formally censured Kelly, a retired Nasa astronaut and decorated navy captain, over the incident and attempted to reduce his rank and pension. Kelly filed a lawsuit against Hegseth last month arguing the video he and other Democrats made was protected free speech, and that the secretary had undertaken an “unconstitutional crusade” against him.

In response to news of the failed indictment, Kelly described it as an “outrageous abuse of power by Donald Trump and his lackies”.

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The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said the Pentagon is ending all military training, fellowships and certificate programs with Harvard University, marking the Trump administration’s latest escalation against the Ivy League school.

“The @DeptWar is formally ending ALL Professional Military Education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard University,” Hegseth said in a statement posted on X, labeling Harvard as “woke”.

Hegseth, a former Fox weekend host, attacked the university as “one of the red-hot centers of Hate America activism”.

“Too many faculty members openly loathe our military; they cast our armed forces in. a negative light and squelch anyone who challenges their leftist political leanings,” said Hegseth, who made no mention of the masters in public policy he earned from Harvard’s John F Kennedy school of government.

“With some exceptions,” Hegseth added, “the Ivy League as a whole has pervasive institutional bias and a lack of viewpoint diversity, including the coddling of toxic ideologies that undercuts our mission.”

“That is why, in two weeks’ time, components of all of our departments – army, navy and air force – will evaluate all existing graduate programs for active-duty service members at all Ivy League universities and other civilian universities,” he added.

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