TV News LIES

With so many problems in the USA, it's no easy job to single out a handful of the most important, priority issues. But the enormous pile of wasted money spent on wars and the military-industrial complex has to be right at the top. Not only is the money spent an enormous destructive waste, but there's also the question of opportunity cost; just a fraction of war money could make major improvements to health care, schools and universities, and our decaying public infrastructure. The release of the Pentagon's Quadrennal Defense Review indicates that Obama intends to spend even more on war. David DeGraw's article below sheds some light on the madness of war spending and the serious attempts made by the racketeers to make our wars self-perpetuating to keep the cash rolling in; infuriating as it is sickening.

Part of the company once known as Blackwater Worldwide has been awarded a more than $120 million contract to protect new U.S. consulates in the Afghan cities of Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, the U.S. Embassy said Saturday.

The United States Training Center, a business unit of the former Blackwater, now called Xe Services, was awarded the contract Friday, embassy spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

The State Department is quietly forming a small army to protect diplomatic personnel in Iraq after U.S. military forces leave the country at the end of 2011, taking its firepower with them.

Department officials are asking the Pentagon to provide heavy military gear, including Black Hawk helicopters, and say they also will need substantial support from private contractors.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The military’s intelligence network in Afghanistan, designed for identifying and tracking terrorists and insurgents, is increasingly focused on uncovering corruption that is rampant across Afghanistan’s government, security forces and contractors, according to senior American officials.

Military intelligence officers in Afghanistan are scouring seized documents and interrogating captured fighters and facilitators — but not just to learn about insurgent networks that plan attacks, plant roadside explosives and send out suicide bombers.

At least 11 civilians and two US soldiers have been killed in violence across southern Afghanistan as Taliban fighters step up attacks ahead of a planned operation by Nato forces in the south.

Nine of the civilian deaths occured when a roadside bomb struck a minibus in the city of Kandahar on Friday.