TV News LIES

A simple test could have alerted officials that the drinking water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated, long before authorities determined that as many as a million Marines and their families were exposed to a witch’s brew of cancer-causing chemicals.

But no one responsible for the lab at the base can recall that the procedure — mandated by the Navy — was ever conducted.

Studies have linked the kinds of volatile organic compounds found at Lejeune to such birth defects and cancers as spina bifida, cleft lip and palate, anencephaly, childhood leukemia and childhood lymphoma. Blakely decided to make copies of every child and fetal death certificate she could find between the years 1950 and 1990 with a connection to the Marine base.

"What I was going to do with them, I didn't know," she says.

Two senior military officers said for the first time Friday that they were “open” to proposed legislation that would overhaul military law in response to an epidemic of sexual assaults, acknowledging that victims lack faith in commanders to handle the problem.

Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Air Force Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the service’s top commander, said they were willing to consider giving military prosecutors, instead of legally untrained commanders, the authority to decide whether to pursue sexual-assault investigations.

U.S. researchers say those in the military who suffer more than one mild traumatic brain injury face a significantly higher risk of suicide.

Lead author Craig J. Bryan of the University of Utah and associate director of the National Center for Veterans Studies and colleagues surveyed 161 military personnel stationed in Iraq and evaluated for a possible traumatic brain injury.

USA Today interviewed lawmakers, social scientists and people who have worked on the sexual assault issue inside the military to determine why the Pentagon hasn't been able to stem this predatory tide. All pointed to two factors — one a new plague, the other as old as the military itself — standing in the way:

•A military culture more coarse toward women in the ranks, the result of stress from a decade of war and the status of females as second-class warriors barred from combat roles. Male recruits are drawn from a society where violence and objectification of women are staple elements of films and video games.

:A U.S. Army sergeant who worked as a sexual assault prevention coordinator at Fort Hood, Texas, has been accused of sex crimes, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, the second man in the military's anti-sexual assault effort to be accused since last week.

News of the investigation sparked renewed anger and frustration over military's inability to deal quickly with its sexual assault problem. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel expressed disappointment over the "breakdown in discipline" implied by the allegations, and lawmakers voiced outrage.