The black-and-white video starts with a mini-van locked in the crosshairs and the sound of a missile launching. A ball of fire suddenly consumes the van and a palm grove somewhere in Iraq.
"Good shot," says a voice squawking over what sounds like a military radio. Before the one-minute video clip is over, two more SUVs are destroyed by Apache helicopters.
The video is one of dozens brought to viewers around the world by Maj. Alayne Conway, the top public affairs officer for the 3rd Infantry Division. When her unit was in Iraq, her office sent out four to six videos a day to media outlets around the world, as well as posting them on YouTube.
Pentagon clashes with media over control of information
Cheney warns of new attacks
Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.
TVNL Comment: Cheney should know, he will be one of the people who will orchestrate such an attack. His appearances should be treated like the are al Qada videos, because they are!
Report: Air Force units failed 2 more nuke surety inspections
The failures took place at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming from Dec. 2 to Dec. 17 and Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., from Oct. 26 to Nov. 10, according to the report.
F.E. Warren was at the center of one of the two prior mishaps that cast embarrassment on the Air Force, the Times noted. Nuclear-missile units there mistakenly transported four Minuteman III forward sections containing sensitive components to Taiwan on two occasions, in October and November 2006.
Protests as US warship docks in Nagasaki
A US warship docked Thursday in Nagasaki to the protests of residents and a boycott by local leaders who said the visit was in poor taste in a city obliterated by a US atomic bomb.
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The USS Blue Ridge, which is stationed in Yokosuka near Tokyo, sailed to Nagasaki with a stated goal of promoting friendship between Japan and the United States.
"We don't want to see the US flag flying at this port and this feeling will not change until the United States takes a policy towards the elimination of nuclear weapons," Osamu Yoshitomi, an official at Nagasaki city, told AFP.
TVNL Comment: Only America would send a WAR ship to promote friendship. Open, obvious idiocy.
Army reports alarming spike in suicides last month
The Army is investigating an unexplained and stunning spike in suicides in January. The count is likely to surpass the number of combat deaths reported last month by all branches of the armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the fight against terrorism.
"In January, we lost more soldiers to suicide than to al-Qaida," said Paul Rieckhoff, director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He urged "bold and immediate action" by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. According to figures obtained by The Associated Press, there were seven confirmed suicides last month, compared with five a year earlier. An additional 17 cases from January are under investigation.
TARP recipients paid out $114 million for politicking
The struggling companies whose freewheeling business practices have contributed to the country's economic woes are getting a lucrative return on at least one of their investments. Beneficiaries of the $700 billion bailout package in the finance and automotive industries have spent a total of $114.2 million on lobbying in the past year and contributions toward the 2008 election, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found. The companies' political activities have, in part, yielded them $305.2 billion from the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), an extraordinary return of 267,208 percent.
Pentagon clashes with media over control of information
The video is one of dozens brought to viewers around the world by Maj. Alayne Conway, the top public affairs officer for the 3rd Infantry Division. When her unit was in Iraq, her office sent out four to six videos a day to media outlets around the world, as well as posting them on YouTube.
"You want to make sure you edit it in the right way," Conway said. "You have to go through the steps. ... Is this something that is going to make Joe Six-Pack look up from his TV dinner or his fast-food meal and look up at the TV and say, 'Wow, the American troops are kicking butt in Iraq?'"
Study Finds Long Lasting 9/11 Lung Trouble
Experts have struggled since the 2001 attacks to find standards to define post-Sept. 11 illness and the time it would take to develop. The city's medical examiner recently added to the official victims' list a man who died in October of cancer and lung disease, citing his exposure to the dust cloud that enveloped the city when the 110-story towers collapsed.
Mount Sinai's program has treated more than 26,000 people who were at the site or worked there in the days after Sept. 11, but the study's authors noted that participants asked to be enrolled in the program and may be more symptomatic than others who were exposed but didn't enroll.
TVNL Comment: Count me as one of the people suffering from post 9/11 lung problems. Jesse Richard, Editor - TvNewsLIES.org.
Israel seizes Gaza-bound aid ship
A Lebanese ship carrying aid for Gaza was stopped by the Israeli navy and is being escorted into port, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak says.
Earlier, officials in Lebanon said Israeli gunboats had fired on the ship before soldiers boarded it, although Israel denied this.
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