TV News LIES

Former Libyan military officers packed an auditorium here on Wednesday to listen to the man who has been appointed to lead the country's army as the leaders of the movement that deposed dictator Moammar Gadhafi's last month attempt to consolidate their control.

But leading the discussion wasn't the man most Western news reporters have focused on in recent weeks, Hakim Belhaj, the leader of rebel forces in Tripoli and a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who was imprisoned by Gadhafi after the CIA captured him in Southeast Asia in 2004.

NATO officials in Afghanistan stopped transferring detainees to Afghan custody in several provinces this week in response to a U.N. investigation that found evidence of systematic torture at some detention centers, the military command said Tuesday night.

The move represents a serious setback for the United States and its allies in Afghanistan at a time when the international community is beginning to pull out troops and shift more responsibility for security to the Afghans.

A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks' website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.

August has become the deadliest month for U.S. troops in the nearly 10-year-old war in Afghanistan, where international forces have started to go home and let Afghan forces take charge of securing their country.

A record 66 U.S. troops have died so far this month, eclipsing the 65 killed in July 2010, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

The US government has wasted $30bn (£18bn) in contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last decade, according to a bi-partisan spending commission. The commission on wartime contracting blamed an over-reliance on contractors, poor planning and fraud for the waste.

It had evidence of lax accountability and inadequate competition, it said. Writing in the Washington Post, the report's authors warn that investments in the two countries could be wasted even after US involvement there ends.

Libya is a small country of just over 6 million people but it possesses the largest oil reserves in all of Africa. The oil produced there is especially coveted because of its particularly high quality.

The Air Force of the United States along with Britain and France has carried out 7,459 bombing attacks since March 19. Britain, France and the United States sent special operation ground forces and commando units to direct the military operations of the so-called rebel fighters – it is a NATO- led army in the field.