TV News LIES

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show. The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

n mid-2004, after U.S forces had been fighting in Iraq for just over a year, the then Defense Secretary ordered the Pentagon to draw up a list of potential catastrophes that had been avoided.

The document - dubbed the 'What did not happen' memo - was drawn up to make the embattled politician feel better.

It outlines 29 eventualities that Pentagon officials had apparently planned for, but which had not yet happened - like 'Saddam uses WMD against U.S. or allied forces'.

But it also listed ten things that did eventually happen, and for which the invasion forces were clearly not prepared, including:

80% of youth ages 12-17 think there should be more education about these rules before they are old enough to vote and enlist in the military

A new American Red Cross survey reveals that only 1 in 5 American youth is familiar with the Geneva Conventions, while 4 in 5 think that the U.S. should better educate young people before they can vote and enlist in the military. These rules protect civilians in conflict zones, allow safe passage for the sick and wounded and promote humanitarian treatment of prisoners.

Dozens of confidential and secret cables sent in recent years by the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to the State Department describe a softer and gentler Libya that Americans following the bloody crisis there now would have a hard time recognizing.

Moammar Gadhafi's son Saif al Islam, who's become the most vehement defender of his father's vicious onslaughts against protesters that triggered the civil war, is portrayed as a human rights advocate and reformer on the losing end of a battle with his harder line brother, Muatassim, Moammar Gadhafi's national security adviser.

Grim combat statistics that one military doctor called "unbelievable" show U.S. troops in Afghanistan suffered an unprecedented number of catastrophic injuries last year, including a tripling of amputations of more than one limb.

A study by doctors at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where most wounded troops are sent before returning to the U.S., confirmed their fears: The battlefield has become increasingly brutal. In 2009, 75 service members brought to Landstuhl had limbs amputated. Of those, 21 had lost more than one limb.

A former Afghan lawmaker told an audience of Tacoma, Washington, peace activists Tuesday that photos of Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldiers grinning over the corpse of a boy they allegedly murdered revealed a disregard for civilian lives among U.S. forces fighting in her country.

"They are making fun with the dead bodies of my people," said Malalai Joya, 32, a human rights activist who visited the University of Washington Tacoma on her U.S. speaking tour. About 80 people attended her talk, which was hosted by the group Peace Action of Washington and was her seventh in the Puget Sound area this week.