TV News LIES

When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons.

But what the government did not say was that Mr. Juma Khan was also a longtime American informer, who provided information about the Taliban, Afghan corruption and other drug traffickers.

Victims of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan took to the streets for the first time here Friday, as a new report claims that there are significant numbers of civilian casualties from the strikes and a lawsuit seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from the CIA for those mistakenly injured or killed.

Fifteen people injured in the attacks or who claimed to have had family members killed in the bombardment appeared in public Friday and officially joined the $500 million lawsuit that began last month with just one claimant in the Pakistani courts.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his powerful brother are among a number of senior Afghan figures to be accused of ordering the release of high-ranking Taliban fighters so often that the insurgents now run a commission to secure their freedom.

According to Reuters news agency, the practice is so widespread as to counteract the deterrent effect of capture, and pits Mr Karzai and his coterie directly at odds with the Nato strategy in Afghanistan.

The British Government gave secret assurances that it would “protect US interests” in the Iraq War inquiry, leaked diplomatic cables show. According to a communique released by the Wikileaks website, British officials warned the inquiry would attract a “feeding frenzy” when it started in earnest.

A dispatch sent by Ellen Tauscher, the US Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, disclosed how Jon Day, the Ministry of Defence’s Director General for security policy, “promised that the UK had 'put measures in place to protect your [the US] interests’” during the inquiry.

Six Nato troops have been killed by a man wearing an Afghan police uniform during a training session in eastern Afghanistan.The man was also killed in the incident and a joint Afghan-Nato team is investigating, the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) announced in a short statement.

ISAF did not disclose the casualties' nationalities, in line with its policy, but Americans make up most of the foreign troops based in eastern Afghanistan, one of the worst flashpoints in the nine-year Taliban insurgency.

"After destroying North Korea's 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, [General] LeMay remarked, "Over a period of three years or so we killed off - what - twenty percent of the population."1 It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 - 9 million people during the 37-month long "hot" war, 1950 - 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerance of another."