TV News LIES

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.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is dead. But the fight for equality in the military is nowhere near finished. While the official end of DADT at midnight on Monday is a historic turning point, unresolved issues with the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and military regulations mean that service members and their partners in same-sex relationships will continue to suffer second-class treatment.

Stephen Peters knows what it's like to live a lie, both as a serviceman and as a serviceman's partner. In 2007, he was discharged under DADT after informing his commanding officer that he was gay. Peters had just reenlisted in the Marines—but he didn't want to hide who he was anymore.

The U.S. military is struggling to defend troops who are under siege day and night on ill-defined battlefields. Troops who are fighting wars in which it can be impossible to identify the enemy or to know whom to trust. And when they are betrayed, they dare not tell anyone.

They are the nation's women in uniform, and they are being sexually harassed, abused and assaulted at an alarming rate by their fellow soldiers and officers. Since 9/11, with unprecedented numbers of women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nation's military leaders say that misogyny is undermining troop readiness.

The Navy’s former top civilian has rocked the service in a military journal article by accusing officials of sinking the storied naval air branch into a sea of political correctness. Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, himself an ex-carrier-based aviator, wrote that the swagger and daring of yesterday’s culture has given way to a focus on integrating women and, this year, gays.

Pilots constantly worry about anonymous complaints about salty language, while squadron commanders are awash in bureaucratic requirements for reports and statistics, he added.

Long a contentious issue between government agencies and veterans, a new study shows Gulf War Syndrome is the result of long-term exposure to small amounts of sarin gas, and at least 25 percent of veterans deployed in the war may have the syndrome.

Long considered a form of combat stress by the US Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs, the syndrome has been examined extensively. A new study by researchers at the Southwestern Medical Center at the University of Texas in Dallas, finds abnormalities associated with Gulf War Syndrome have persisted for 20 years and in certain cases, have actually worsened.