uss harry truman just off iran, as israel plots imminent tehran raid

from zero hedge: As we first reported last week, in an article that was met with much original skepticism, the Pentagon has now confirmed that a fleet of 12 warships has passed the Suez Canal, and is now likely awaiting orders to support the escalation in the Persian Gulf. The attached image from Stratfor shows the latest positioning of US aircraft carrier groups as of June 23: the USS Harry Truman (CVN-75) is now right next to USS Eisenhower (CVN 69), both of which are waiting patiently just off Iran.

As for the catalyst the two carriers may be anticipating, we provide the following update from the Gulf Daily News where we read that Israel may be on the verge of an attack of Iran, with an incursion originating from military bases in Azerbaijan and Georgia...

We caution readers to take this news with a grain of salt as the Gulf Daily News' sister publication, Akhbar Al Khaleej, has a slightly less than stellar credibility rating. Then again, this is what some, Breaking News Online most notably, said about last week's carrier news, urging readers to ignore it.

warwhores updates:
obama calls for pentagon 'civilian component'*
quagmire? 9yrs on, americans grow weary of war in afghanistan*
obama: afghanistan deadline an obsession' for some*
kissinger warns of afghan exit strategy*
petraeus says he'll change afghanistan's rules of war*
mcchrystal to retire & leave US army*
new big screen documentary exposes pat tillman cover-up*
'tillman story' reviews uniformly glowing & trusting*
military's new name for psyops: miso*
pentagon to spend $1b on psychological operations; 40% to contractors*

mcchrystal falls on sword after truthful comments on afghan war

updates: mcchrystal relieved of duty; petraeus tapped*
why obama had to fire mcchrystal*
obama's remarks on gen. mcchrystal's resignation*
petraeus will replace mcchrystal in afghanistan, obama announces*
towards the eighteenth brumaire of general david petraeus?*

video: mcchrystal may lose job over rolling stone interview

mcchrystal's burning contempt for the puppet obama
from kurt nimmo: The farce that is the war in Afghanistan is coming apart at the seams. General Stanley McChrystal’s sharp comments about Obama, Biden, and the administration published by Rolling Stone are not so much about disrespect, as the script-reading corporate media talking heads would have it, but rather about a policy in disarray in Afghanistan.

warwhores: sloganeering, psyops, satellites & suicides

sailors take aim at new recruiting slogan: 'a global force for good'*
US army cancels plan to send another brigade to iraq*
US to make blackwater-style entry into somalia*
US after new military ventures in africa*
US largesse keeps african militaries rolling*
photos of military deaths in afghanistan banned*
$400 per gallon gas to drive debate over cost of war in afghanistan*
video: posner says taliban trying to addict US soldiers to heroin
(when they roll this guy out, you know they're shovelin' it...)*
al-qaeda big wig killed. again.*
america's phoney war in afghanistan*
white house rejects cheney's afghanistan criticism*
pentagon opposed measure to help rape victims*
unfriendly fire: a close look at pat tillman*
US fighter-jets collide off south carolina*
iron eagle: john elway's awesomely bad anti-terror vid*
administration fights to protect secret propaganda budget*
pentagon used psyops on US public, docs show*
olympia antiwar group succeeds despite infiltration*
saic awarded $95m contract to support natl guard bureau*
admiral: i can empty guantánamo camps in 10 days*
nro pledges on-budget spy sats*
ex-gi sentenced for child-sex videos*
US soldier commits suicide in indiana theater during 'zombieland'*

ghosts of admins past & present: tillman, torture, war & more

flashbacks: deliberate & calculated lies about tillman & lynch &
officers blamed for tillman case errors

tillman's parents want general's record reviewed
from ap: The parents of slain Army Ranger and NFL star Pat Tillman voiced concerns Tuesday that the general who played a role in mischaracterizing his death could be put in charge of military operations in Afghanistan. In a brief interview with The Associated Press, Pat Tillman Sr. accused Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of covering up the circumstances of the 2004 slaying. "I do believe that guy participated in a falsified homicide investigation," Pat Tillman Sr. said. Separately, Mary Tillman called it "imperative" that McChrystal's record be carefully considered before he is confirmed.

video: rumsfeld greeted as 'war criminal' at white house correspondents dinner


obama admin reverses itself, won’t release detainee abuse photos
from thinkprogress: Last month, the Pentagon agreed to comply with a court order and release dozens of photos showing abuse of detainees by American captors. Now the White House has reversed course, and will object to the court order: "The president 'believes their release would endanger our troops,' a White House official says, adding that the president 'believes that the national security implications of such a release have not been fully presented to the court'." Yesterday, conservatives were outraged about the potential release, claiming that the photos would incite future terrorists. Of course, at the very same time, they ardently defended the actual tactics depicted in the photos.

evangelicals wrestle with torture issue & more broken promises: obama’s military commissions, detainee photos betrayal

oh, but now al qaeda's global base is pakistan, petraeus says
from wsj: Senior leaders of al Qaeda are using sanctuaries in Pakistan's lawless frontier regions to plan new terror attacks and funnel money, manpower and guidance to affiliates around the world, according to a top American military commander. Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in an interview that Pakistan has become the nerve center of al Qaeda's global operations, allowing the terror group to re-establish its organizational structure and build stronger ties to al Qaeda offshoots in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, North Africa and parts of Europe. The comments underscore a growing U.S. belief that Pakistan has displaced Afghanistan as al Qaeda's main stronghold. "It is the headquarters of the al Qaeda senior leadership," said the general, who took the helm of the military's Central Command last fall.

navy seal jesse ventura volunteers to waterboard cheney


pipeline-istan: everything you ever wanted to know about oil, gas, russia, china, iran, afghanistan & the obama administration

update1: pelosi says cia misled lawmakers on torture
from mcclatchy: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged Thursday that U.S. intelligence officials had misled Congress about the use of torture on terrorism suspects. The California Democrat recalled a September 2002 briefing in which "the only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed... But we also now know that techniques including waterboarding had already been employed, and that those briefing me in September 2002 gave me inaccurate and incomplete information."

rumsfeld changes course, will testify on tillman death

from raw story: Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will testify at a Wednesday hearing on the friendly fire death of Army Specialist and former NFL player Pat Tillman.

"In a late breaking development, Secretary Rumsfeld will appear before the Oversight Committee tomorrow," stated a release from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The release was confirmed by the Oversight Committee's Republican staff.

Earlier, Raw Story reported that Rumsfeld had "a conflict," and had submitted answers to questions for the record.

No explanation was available at press time for Rumsfeld's change of heart.

update: rumsfeld denies tillman cover-up
from eontario: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has denied that he was any part of a cover-up to hide the truth as to how Pat Tillman, former NFL star and Army Ranger, died during battle.

When Tillman originally died it was not revealed truthfully how it all happened. The truth finally came out thogh that the death of Pat Tillman was actually due to friendly fire. A House committee was hard at work on Wednesday but was told by Rumsfeld that he was no part of the cover-up to hide the truth.

news on the march

no evidence of enemy fire in tillman death
from ap: Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press... No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene — no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

related: general faces demotion in tillman case

credit card aimed at relieving 'carbon footprints'
from nytimes: Feel guilty about fueling up that gas guzzler or buying that box of incandescent bulbs? Would you feel better if, instead of frequent flier miles or cash, your credit card’s rewards program allowed you to offset your role in global warming? General Electric is betting you will... Environmentalists are not quite as sure. “It’s ironic,” said Michael J. Brune, executive director for the Rainforest Action Network. “G.E. supplies parts for coal-fired plants, so its credit card offsets emissions it helps create.”

dna identifies another 9/11 victim
from newsday: The city medical examiner has identified the remains of one more of The Missing - the more than 1,100 people who died at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, but whose bodies were never found. The medical examiner Tuesday announced that the remains of Edward Ryan, 42, of Scarsdale, who died at the World Trade Center, were identified by after DNA testing on remains found in a Con Edison manhole at Ground Zero in October.

fbi proposes building network of US informants
from abc: The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities.

According to a recent unclassified report to Congress, the FBI expects its informants to provide secrets about possible terrorists and foreign spies, although some may also be expected to aid with criminal investigations, in the tradition of law enforcement confidential informants. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

while real bullets fly, movies bring war home
from nytimes: On a night four years ago, five soldiers back from three months in Iraq went drinking at a Hooters restaurant and a topless bar near Fort Benning, Ga.

Before the night was over, one of them, Specialist Richard R. Davis, was dead of at least 33 stab wounds, his body doused with lighter fluid and burned. Two of the group would eventually be convicted of the murder, another pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and the last confessed to concealing the crime.

Now some in Hollywood want moviegoers to decide if the killing is emblematic of a war gone bad, part of a new and perhaps risky willingness in the entertainment business to push even the touchiest debates about post-9/11 security, Iraq and the troops’ status from the confines of documentaries into the realm of mainstream political drama.

'executive privilege' hides tillman documents

from raw story: Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed on Friday afternoon that the White House and Pentagon were holding up a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the friendly fire death of former professional football player and Army Corporal Patrick Tillman.

"[T]he Committee wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding seeking 'all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President' relating to Corporal Tillman's death," noted a press release from the Committee.

But the White House has apparently again invoked its executive privilege to hold up the documents sought by Waxman and Ranking Minority member Tom Davis (R-VA).

"The White House Counsel's office responded that it would not provide the Committee with documents that 'implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests' and produced only two communications with the officials in the Defense Department, one of which was a package of news clippings," the Committe noted. "The response of the Defense Department to the Committee's inquiry was also deficient."

In their letter to Fielding, Waxman and Davis doubted that the two documents were the limits of White House-Pentagon communication over Tillman's death.

"It is difficult to believe that these are the only communications that White House officials had with the Department of Defense between April 22,2004, the day Corporal Tillman died, and May 29, 2004, the day the Bush Administration publicly announced that Corporal Tillman's death was a result of fratricide," they wrote.

They also explained what they believed was at stake in this probe.

"These questions have implications for the credibility of the information coming from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan and raise significant policy issues about how to prevent the future dissemination of untrue information," Waxman and Davis wrote to Fielding. "They also have a profound personal impact on the Tillman family. It is for these reasons that the Committee requested documents from the White House."

The Committee said that it expected a response to the Friday letter by July 25. Waxman also scheduled an additional hearing on the announcement of Tillman's death for Aug. 1.

Full information can be found at the Committee's website.

'deliberate and calculated lies'

from raw story: In a major hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the brother of deceased Army Specialist Pat Tillman, who appears to have been a victim of friendly fire, said that reports of his brother's 'heroic death' were "deliberate and calculated lies."

"These were intentional falsehoods that meet the legal definition for fraud," said Kevin Tillman, who served alongside his brother in the Army Rangers in Afghanistan.

Tillman testified alongside his mother, Mary, at a hearing on "Misleading Information from the Battlefield." Pat Tillman had been a safety for the Arizona Cardinals who turned down a contract extension in 2002 to enlist in the US Army Rangers.

Also at the hearing was Jessica Lynch, the Army Private whose tales of heroism were exaggerated in the aftermath of her capture and subsequent recuse from an Iraqi hospital in March and April 2003.

Lynch criticized the media for making too much of her heroism.

"My parent’s home in Wirt County [West Virginia] was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true," she said. "The truth of war is not always easy to hear but it's always more heroic than the hype."

Lynch, who still suffers from many injuries inflicted during her ordeal in Iraq, showed a quiet and reserved manner distinct from the Tillmans, who made it clear that they were pursuing truth and justice.

Kevin Tillman set the scene, arguing that the image of America's military campaign in Iraq was bruised after the US tactical defeat in Falluja, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and the call-up of 20,000 additional American troops to fight in Iraq.

"The media accounts, based on information provided by the Army and White House, were wreathed in a patriotic glow," he said of reporting on the circumstances of his brother's death.

"This was a terrible tragedy that might have further undermined support for the war in Iraq, and was instead transformed into a message," to build support for the war he argued.

When quizzed by one Republican Congressman, Darrell Issa of California, if there was any evidence of a conspiracy to falsify details of the Army Specialist's death, Tillman answered without any doubt.

"The evidence is leading to a point, which is why we came to your committee sir," Kevin Tillman responded.

Referring to the 'disconnect' between the stories told of Tillman's death and the truth about its circumstances, his brother said more investigation was needed.

"Based on how a lot of these wars are perception based, it's imperative that the committee take a look," Tillman argued. "[Politicians were] the ones who ultimately benefited from that story."

When Specialist Tillman's mother, Mary, was asked what gaps there were in the public record, she pointed to the large ring binder sitting on the table in front of her.

"See this binder?" she said to Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA).








For starters, she suggested that the Army's awarding of a Silver Star to her son needed to be investigated, as it 'created a paper trail.'

She also challenged the Army Inspector General's report that a group of generals were the sole cause of the fabrications of the circumstances of Pat Tillman's death.

"That's a smokescreen, these officers are scapegoats," Mary Tillman said angrily, while answering a question asked by Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT).

But while the Tillman family saw a political decision being made to falsify accounts of the Army Specialist's death, Lynch said to Issa that she didn't see any larger conspiracy beyond the media.

She blamed the media, "for letting the story keep going, they should have found out the facts before they spread the word like wildfire."

But in his opening statement, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the committee's chairman, doubted that the media itself could be to blame for the story on Lynch's capture and rescue.

"Jessica Lynch was captured on March 23. The Washington Post published a completely factual article on her rescue on April 2. But by April 3, ten days after her capture, U.S. officials had become the source for a story that riveted the nation, but twisted the truth beyond recognition," Waxman argued. "It’s four years later and we still don’t know who’s responsible and why they did it. All we really know is that they did a great disservice to Jessica Lynch." ...

officers blamed for tillman case errors

'You know, this war is so fucking illegal.' - Pat Tillman

from ap/yahoo: Nine officers, including up to four generals, should be held accountable for missteps in the aftermath of the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, a Pentagon investigation will recommend...

Dozens of soldiers — those immediately around Tillman at the scene of the shooting, his immediate superiors and high-ranking officers at a command post nearby — knew within minutes or hours that his death was fratricide.

Even so, the Army persisted in telling Tillman's family he was killed in a conventional ambush, including at his nationally televised memorial service 11 days later. It was five weeks before his family was told the truth, a delay the Army has blamed on procedural mistakes...

According to the officials, the report will not make charges or suggest punishments, but it will recommend the Army look at holding the nine officers accountable.

One defense official said it appears the inspector general will not conclude there was an orchestrated cover-up in the investigation...

The other report is by the Army Criminal Investigation Command, which will focus on whether a crime, such as negligent homicide, was committed when Tillman's own men shot him. One defense official said it appears the investigation did not find any criminal intent in the shooting.



Tillman's case drew worldwide attention in part because he had turned down a multimillion-dollar contract to play defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals in order to join the Army Rangers after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks...

To date, the Army has punished seven people for the Tillman killing, but no one was court-martialed. Four soldiers received relatively minor punishments under military law, ranging from written reprimands to expulsion from the Rangers. One had his pay reduced and was effectively forced out of the Army.

The Army, which requested the inspector general review last year, said in a statement released Friday that it "plans to take appropriate actions after receiving the inspector general's report."

The officials declined to name any of the officers the report will implicate. The commander of Tillman's 75th Ranger Regiment was Col. James C. Nixon. Last year he was named director of operations at the Center for Special Operations at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.

Nixon knew within about two days that Tillman's death was fratricide, another officer involved in the investigations told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Previous investigations of the case have focused on the facts of the incident and sought to answer questions of whether it was a fratricide.

The report's findings were first reported on Friday by CBS News...

related: after pat's birthday
(a scathing & powerful letter written by pat's brother, kevin)