TV News LIES

Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs' big talk about killing Afghan civilians and getting away with it made him stand out when he joined a new platoon at an Army base in southern Afghanistan a year ago, according to written statements from his comrades.

Some of his Stryker platoon mates from Joint Base Lewis-McChord told investigators they didn't know what to make of him. They thought he must be kidding. Now Gibbs is at the center of an Army war crimes investigation that netted 11 of his comrades from the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. They await their own trials for misdeeds they allegedly committed under Gibbs' direction. Five soldiers, including Gibbs, are charged with murder.

In a move that could anger a vital ally in the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon on Wednesday awarded a major jet fuel contract to Mina Corp., a secretive company that has declined to reveal its ownership but has nonetheless become a trusted partner with the U.S. military.

The contract, which may be worth more than $600 million, covers supplies for a U.S. Air Force base in Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished former Soviet republic where public anger over alleged corruption in jet fuel deals has helped topple two presidents in the past five years.

Senior Airman Michael Kearns had been back from Iraq for only two months when he was pulled over on a Florida highway for going more than 120 miles per hour on his new Suzuki. He knew his motorcycle riding was reckless, but after living through daily mortar attacks on his base in Iraq, he said he needed the adrenaline rush.

“When you get here, there’s nothing that’s very exciting that keeps your pulse going,” Airman Kearns, 27, said in a recent interview.

An Air Force Academy survey found that 41 percent of cadets who identified themselves as non-Christian said they were subjected to unwanted proselytizing at least once or twice last year.

Overall, 19 percent of all cadets said they were subjected to unwanted proselytizing. Participation by cadets in the official academy survey, conducted in December and January, was both voluntary and anonymous. Forty-seven percent, or 2,170, cadets participated in the poll.

The military has been discharging troops who are suffering from combat stress, instead of providing treatment, according to Missouri Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond and several veterans advocates.

That would mean that many who could be afflicted with mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, have left the service without official medical diagnoses and no chance for medical benefits.

A federal judge formally refused on Tuesday to let the Pentagon reinstate its ban on openly gay men and women in the U.S. military while it appeals her decision declaring its "don't ask, don't tell" policy unconstitutional.

A day after tentatively siding against the Obama administration, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips issued a written decision denying a government request to lift her own injunction barring further Pentagon enforcement of the ban.