TV News LIES

Is the CIA's secret program of drone strikes against terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen a case of illegal assassinations or legitimate self defense?

That was a central question Wednesday as the program came under fire from several legal scholars who called for greater oversight by Congress, arguing the attacks may violate international law and put intelligence officers at risk of prosecution for murder in foreign countries.

Over 170 businesses from around the country sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid and his Senate colleagues today calling on the Senate to continue working to enact comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year. The letter was brought together by the We Can Lead coalition, a project of the Clean Economy Network (CEN) and Ceres.

The U.S. and Israel have been acting in tandem to extend and deepen the occupation.  In 2005, recognizing that it was pointless to subsidize a few thousand Israeli settlers in Gaza, who were appropriating substantial resources and protected by a large part of the Israeli army, the government of Ariel Sharon decided to move them to the much more valuable West Bank and Golan Heights.

Accused war criminal Omar Khadr says his U.S. captors suffocated him with a bag, terrorized him with barking dogs and threatened him with rape if he didn't cooperate with interrogators. All of it, he says, happened while he was a teenager in U.S. custody. Pentagon prosecutors dispute every word of it.

The torture of Iraqi detainees at a new secret prison in Baghdad was far more systematic and brutal than initially reported, Human Rights Watch reported on Tuesday. The existence of the prison, which housed mostly Sunni Arab prisoners, has created a political furor in Iraq, prompted government denials and fanned sectarian tensions.

U.S. health regulators warned on Tuesday about faulty components in more than a dozen types of external defibrillators made by Cardiac Science Corp (CSCX.O), sending its shares down as much as 32 percent.

The agency cited 14 models made by Cardiac Science, some of which are sold by other companies such as General Electric Co's (GE.N) GE Healthcare unit.

A former senior MI6 officer has criticised the torture and abuse of terror suspects and says the US response to the threat posed by al-Qaida has been exaggerated and counterproductive. Stinging criticism of the US is made in the Guardian by Nigel Inkster, assistant chief of MI6 until 2006.

Strangely, in all this no one has wondered how it is possible that the IDF, the body charged with imposing the law on the West Bank, never lifted a finger against its officers who settled in an illegal outpost in the first place.

Moreover, how can an officer in the career army who breaks the law and ignores a court order serve as a model for his soldiers?