TV News LIES

A series of bombings across Baghdad Wednesday morning targeted Christian homes, killing at least three and wounding 26.

The attacks came just 10 days after Islamist militants stormed a church during Sunday mass, eventually killing more than 50 people, mostly Christian worshipers. It was the worst attack on Iraqi Christians in recent history, and it has increased fear that more of Iraq’s already dwindling Christian community will leave Iraq and seek safer homes abroad.

At the Pentagon, the draft of a war assessment to be submitted to Congress this month cites a shift in momentum in some areas of the country away from the insurgency.

But as a new White House review of President Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan gets under way, the rosy signs have opened an intense debate at the Defense Department, the White House, the State Department and the intelligence agencies over what they really mean.

The revelation by Wikileaks of a US military order directing US forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the US military about detainee abuse.

But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by the news media, is that it was part of a larger US strategy of exploiting Shia sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the US war.

A lawyer for 200 Iraqis demanding a public inquiry into what they have described as brutal mistreatment by British soldiers in a secret detention center near Basra told the High Court in London on Friday that the abuse amounted to “Britain’s Abu Ghraib.”

They buttressed that assertion with video recordings that appeared to show British interrogators bullying, humiliating and threatening a detainee. The opening day of the court hearing featured some of the most sensational accusations made against the British forces in years of inconclusive lawsuits and official inquiries.

One of the government's highest profile American contractors in Afghanistan has agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle allegations that it overbilled the U.S. government.

In return, the Justice Department will end its investigation into allegations that Louis Berger was intentionally overcharging American taxpayers, individuals close to the investigation told McClatchy on Thursday. The settlement, which could be as high as $65 million, would include civil and criminal penalties.

The U.S. government will spend $511 million to expand its embassy in Kabul, the U.S. ambassador said Wednesday, describing the work as a demonstration of America's long-term commitment to Afghanistan.

"We make this commitment by commemorating the recent award of a $511 million contract to expand the U.S. Embassy here in Kabul," Ambassador Karl Eikenberry said during a ceremony at the construction site that marked the formal announcement of the contract.