TV News LIES

"If you're asking, are there al-Qaeda in Iraq, the answer is yes, there are. It's a fact, yes." Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence, August 2002

It was one of the key American justifications for the Iraq war. But the theory that al-Qaeda was present in Saddam-era Iraq, much cited by the Bush adminsitration in the run-up to the invasion, has been undermined by the content of secret US military documents.

Fresh evidence that US soldiers handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad has emerged in army logs published by WikiLeaks.
The 400,000 field reports published by the whistleblowing website at the weekend contain an official account of deliberate threats by a military interrogator to turn his captive over to the Iraqi "Wolf Brigade".

The interrogator told the prisoner in explicit terms that: "He would be subject to all the pain and agony that the Wolf battalion is known to exact upon its detainees."

The US military gave a secret order not to investigate torture by Iraqi authorities, Pentagon logs on the Iraq War leaked by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks have disclosed.  The disclosure was included in almost 400,000 US military files leaked by Wikileaks to The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel and Al-Jazeera.

It reveals that Frago 242 - an abbreviated order - instructed troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition.

The CIA was warned that a man who claimed to be al-Qaeda turncoat might be plotting an ambush, weeks before he exploded a hidden bomb inside an agency base in Afghanistan, killing nine people and himself, an internal investigation has found.

The warning, from a Jordanian intelligence officer, was never passed along, one of a chain of lapses that ultimately allowed a double agent to penetrate the CIA's secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, CIA Director Leon Panetta said Tuesday. Panetta provided an overview of the agency's still-classified report, which he said points to multiple failures but stops short of recommending disciplinary measures against any individuals.

Prisoners are being abused at a "secret jail" in the main American military base in Afghanistan, according to a report from a US policy think tank. Ex-detainees said they were deprived of sleep and held in cold isolation cells in the site at Bagram, says New York-based Open Society Foundations.

A BBC investigation in April uncovered similar allegations of prisoner abuse at a hidden facility in Bagram airbase. The US military repeated its denial that it was operating a secret jail.

Until recently, Taj Ayubi’s specialty was retail. Mr. Ayubi, an Afghan immigrant, ran a furniture store in Leesburg, Va., and before that, a thrift shop in Washington. But today, Mr. Ayubi’s specialty is foreign policy. He is the senior foreign affairs adviser to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.

Among Mr. Ayubi’s qualifications for his post in Kabul are ties to President Karzai’s extended family. His sister is married to a Karzai, and her sons are now important junior members of the growing Karzai family network in Afghanistan.