Reuters | At least 21 people were killed on Tuesday in an attack in northern Syria, activists said, and members of a team of U.N. monitors caught in the incident said they were in rebel hands "for their own protection." When Reuters asked one of the four monitors by phone if they were being held prisoner, he said: "We are safe with the (rebel) Free Army."

Global Research | The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal yesterday found former US president George W Bush and seven of his associates guilty of the charge of ‘Crime of Torture and War Crimes’. The associates were former US vice-president Dick Cheney; former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Bush’s former counsel Alberto Gonzales; Cheney’s then-general counsel David Addington; Rumsfeld’s then-general counsel William Haynes; then-assistant attorney-general Jay Bybee; and former deputy assistant attorney-general John Yoo.

Infowars.com | Fort Leonard Wood Public Affairs director Tiffany Wood has provided the first official response to the shocking U.S. Army document that outlines the implementation of re-education camps, admitting that the manual was “not intended for public release” and claiming that its provisions only apply outside the United States, a contention completely disproved by the language contained in the document itself.

Global Research | The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously. The concept of the “Long War” has characterized US military doctrine since the end of World War II. The broader objective of global military dominance in support of an imperial project was first formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War.

New American | The U.S. government is developing implantable sensor microchips for use in American troops, supposedly to monitor their health on the battlefield, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced earlier this year seeking proposals. But critics of the scheme are speaking out, warning that the new technology could just be a prelude to expanding the use of related devices among the general population — with dangerous implications for freedom and privacy.

Reuters | The United States has been secretly releasing detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan as part of negotiations with insurgent groups, the Washington Post reported in its Monday editions.The "strategic release" program has allowed American officials over the past several years to use prisoners as bargaining chips to reduce violence in restive provinces, it said, citing U.S. officials who it said spoke on condition of anonymity.

PRESS TV | Washington has fabricated the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan to relieve political pressure on US President Barack Obama, Press TV reports. James Fetzer, American Philosopher and former Marine Corps officer, says Washington fabricated the bin Laden raid to divert public attention from “Obama not having closed Guantanamo, having stationed troops in Pakistan and having his birth certificate being subjected to minute scrutiny.”

Rawstory | Months of “not quite public” Obama Administration efforts to negotiate a still-secret pact to ensure that US troops will continue to occupy Afghanistan through at least 2024 came to an end today, with a “not quite public” visit to Afghanistan by President Obama to sign the pact.

Washington Post | The United States has begun launching drone strikes against suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen under new authority approved by President Obama that allows the CIA and the military to fire even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known, U.S. officials said.

AntiWar.com | As part of a plan to further ramp up its spying operations worldwide, the Pentagon today announced the creation of another spying unit named the Defense Clandestine Service (DCS). With the military’s other spying units focusing on spying in places where the military is actually involved, the DCS focus will be on spying in nations that the US isn’t currently attacking or occupying. This seemingly puts it in direct competition with the CIA, but officials say that the goal will be for the DCS to work closely with the CIA, particularly in places like Iran where the US military doesn’t have an official presence.

Wired | The U.S. military’s propaganda activities — known formally and euphemistically as “information operations” — has this week faced serious accusations of targeting Americans, a major infraction. According to USA Today, military personnel (or contractors) apparently took to the web to unleash a vitriolic, and embarrassingly transparent, smear campaign against two of the paper’s staff members. Why? Because they published a damning investigation of the military’s dubious propaganda campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wired | In a big reversal, the Army has issued a stern new set of guidelines to doctors tasked with diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among returning soldiers. Stop spending so much time trying to spot patients who are faking symptoms, the new guidelines instruct. Chances are, they’re actually ailing.

Salon | Greg Miller of the Washington Post reports on the White House debate about CIA director David Petraeus’ request for a homicidal escalation of the CIA drone war in Yemen. The brutality of “signature strikes” is not new for the CIA leadership. As the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has reliably reported, “signature strikes” have regularly targeted funeral ceremonies in Pakistan. The amorality of the U.S. actions is chilling. An alleged militant is killed by a U.S. drone

Gizmodo | Iran claims that their engineers have reverse engineered the secrets of the American stealth spy drone RQ-170 Sentinel that went down in their territory last December. To prove it, they have made public some of the encrypted information stored in the plane. If confirmed, it's very bad news for the United States.

Wired.com | The Pentagon hasn’t made much progress in solving the PTSD crisis plaguing this generation of soldiers. Now it’s adding new staff members to the therapy teams tasked with spotting the signs of emotional pain and providing therapy to the beleaguered. Only this isn’t a typical hiring boost. The new therapists, Danger Room has learned, will be computer-generated “virtual humans” programmed to appear empathetic.