TV News LIES

MI6 plotted the toppling of Saddam Hussein nearly 18 months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, secret papers revealed.

Spy chiefs discussed with Downing Street a plan that was layered ‘like an onion’, with ministers openly supporting ‘regime change’ while behind the scenes working closely with those carrying out a coup.

The intelligence service also made clear in newly declassified papers that the ‘prize’ for removing the Iraqi dictator was ‘new security to oil supplies’.

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programme was drawn up "to make the case for war", flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister's chief spin doctor.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care."

Osama bin Laden's possible al-Qaida successor, Anwar al-Awlaki, was targeted but missed by a U.S. drone attack in Yemen, military officials said.
Pentagon officials said an unmanned aircraft bombed a remote compound Thursday, targeting the U.S.-born al-Awlaki, The New York Times reported Saturday.

There were casualties, but al-Awlaki was not among them, unidentified military officials told the Times. Since locating and killing bin Laden in Pakistan Sunday, the U.S. intelligence community's concern has been to identify the apparent heir to the leadership of the Muslim terrorist group.

Start­ing in late 2005, U.S. and NATO for­ces in Afghanis­tan began turn­ing de­tainees over to the Afghan Nation­al Di­rec­torate of Secur­ity (NDS), de­spite its well-known re­puta­tion for tor­ture.

In­ter­views with form­er U.S. and NATO di­plomats and other evi­d­ence now avail­able show that Uni­ted States and other NATO govern­ments be­come com­plicit in NDS tor­ture of de­tainees for two dis­tinct­ly dif­ferent rea­sons.

Some 500 inmates made a mass prison break via a hand-dug tunnel from a penitentiary in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar early on Monday, regional deputy police chief Nasrallah Yusufzai said.

Yusufzai told RIA Novosti by phone that the inmates had dug a tunnel under one of the prison walls and reached an ancient underground irrigation network that was built during the time of Alexander the Great. The tunnel the prisoners dug to the underground irrigation network was nearly 400 meters in length, he added.

The U.S. military says two American soldiers have been killed while conducting operations in southern Iraq. In a statement, released on Saturday, the military says the deaths occurred Friday.

No further details about how they died were released. The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense.

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