suits are assisting police at the cemetery ship polities daughter and a responding officer remain in intensive care after being poisoned it's believed they're exposed to a toxic nerve agent. donald trump says a deal between the u.s. and north korea on its nuclear program is very much in the making in a tweet he said if completed the agreement would be a very good one for the world the white house says there'll be no preconditions to the tram pleating with kim jong un by may mr trump soaker label chinese leader xi jinping by phone and they both agreed to continue the tough sanctions regime on north korea until steps were taken to end its nuclear program the russian president vladimir putin has rejected accusations by u.s. intelligence that he ordered citizens to interfere in the true the sixteen presidential election in an interview president putin said he couldn't care less if anyone meddled in the campaign as they weren't connected to the kremlin but europe

today it's coming up next here on al-jazeera it's up front. facing realities growing up went to do you realize that you were living in a special place a so-called secret city getting to the heart of the matter while activists to live in jail just because she expressed herself hear their story on to al-jazeera at this time. it's been fifteen years since the united states and its allies invaded and occupied iraq millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands of dead later some supporters of the war still believe there's nothing to apologize for in an op from special challenge the u.s. military's former chief spokesman in iraq retired general mark kimmitt.

mark kimmitt thanks for joining me up front as brigadier general you as the deputy director of operations and chief u.s. military spokesman in iraq after the invasion fifteen years on from the invasion and occupation of iraq by the u.s. and its allies do you have any regrets you have anything you want to apologize for you think the u.s. should apologize for or don't think so i was on the record as apologizing for the abu ghraib problem the opera group situation obviously some of our soldiers had screwed up their the embarrass the nation the embarrass their credibility inside of iraq i apologize for that but i think by and large there is nothing to apologize for nothing to apologize for so when the u.s. invaded iraq in two thousand and three in defiance of international law no w m d's found no al qaeda connections terror threat to the us increased thousands of people tortured hundreds of thousands killed millions displaced from their homes iran's

influence increased in the region eisel born in iraq several trillion dollars burned through in the process you know that requires any kind of you know well we got some things wrong well we certainly did get some things wrong but that's what happens unlike being in the media where you can write a editorial saying i got it wrong you don't get to do overs in history you don't get to do over in these types of events look i understand your point of view you've had that point of view. since two thousand and three you're selecting your facts to promote your thesis but i think that's somewhat of it in the company point of view it was circling the media well plenty of top u.s. general of the time no no no not in their opposition to what i've read your article from two thousand and thirteen and and that's exactly what you said in two thousand and thirteen and you're repeating it now so what so why don't i quote to someone else plenty of top u.s. general at the time at the time for get do overs they wound eric shinseki former

army chief of staff and to me zinni former centcom commander even colin powell in private former general secretary of state the time how dead doubts about the war but you didn't did you i mean you still seem to be a true believer you went to work for george w. bush after retiring from the military when you well let's be very clear i was in europe when the invasion one off i had no influence on the decisions that were made but like good soldiers when i was assigned to iraq i did my job and that's exactly what did you and that's exactly what five hundred thousand other soldiers did as well i'm just wondering did you have your doubts at the time i'm not sure there's ever been a soldier that's gone into a war or gone into battle that hasn't had some doubts countless inquiries in the u.k. and the u.s. have said the intelligence wasn't just wrong it was heavily politicized selected cherry picked to use an argument you're using about my argument it wasn't just an innocent error of going into iraq i don't think you can get every nation in the world that's an alliance in the situation to selectively cherry pick intelligence there's always an outlier that was the majority of the world riposte to the iraq

invasion so if they they interpret the intelligence very differently you'll certainly didn't vote that way in the u.n. they didn't they didn't vote that way in the u.n. did you get a u.n. resolution to support the war was in violation of international law one of the things i said earlier did in fact the security council meet in oppose the war did the u.n. security council approve the war. you didn't answer my question because i'm not here to answer your question and i'm not here to answer well if you don't have to answer my question that's very. very odd thing to say in an interview. selectively choosing selective anything you say is selective and so that's all let me also question you and then also what did the united nations security council approve the war in iraq kofi annan said it was a violation of international law no they didn't but at the same time eleven forty one gave a lot of reason for the war to occur would we like to do a do over of course we would would we have done it differently of course would you have done it at all is the question let's start what i'm wondering well let's take a look at syria today the conditions are very very much the same authoritarian

leader he is leading a group that is a minority inside the country heavily oppressed his people and look what's happening there you talk to two thousand and fourteen about the greatest disaster two thousand and thirteen about the greatest disaster and refugee flow and humanitarian problems inside the middle east and syria's worst insurgence worse than iraq's number two and zero in the states is responsible for that serious it's the two worst refugee crisis because by assad in the u.s. government it's not great company to be in is it now it certainly is not but the facts in the reasons are different do you believe that saddam if still in power would be running sort of some mesopotamian holiday spall of course he would be oppressing his people the arab spring would have reached his you want to counterfactual you can't say we have gone in and we're responsible for tens of thousands of deaths millions of refugees but you know what have we not done it would have been worse we don't know that do we you know if we many people died as

a result of an illegal we did not go into the war on a counterfactual every intelligence service in the world particularly in the wake of nine eleven which i think you discount completely believe that there was a weapons of mass destruction threat if we had not believed that as a government if we had not believed that as a nation if we had not been. that is military we wouldn't have gone and having now knowing what you know now would you go in again jeb bush for example instead of the horse we would not have but you don't get to do that that that's the prevalence of the media you don't get to go back and do it again but you do get to say i'm sorry we got it wrong we should've done it we got you're not going to say we got it wrong ok so you do think that what don't look toward someone that's what i don't want to some checking what's that which but are you saying that was wrong we didn't have the facts then that we have now of course we would have enjoyed having the facts then we wouldn't have done it that way and we may have done it a different way and you know other countries of the same facts and didn't but your invasion is such a case such as from germany russia china. did the german intelligence services not

have the same intelligence as you they did but that was a political decision not an intelligence but a good political decision engelman went in there we had listened he nations thought yes i want to know and the chilcot inquiry the official investigation to lambasted the british government for its how it used intelligence and how it how it legal illegal it so what you're suggesting is that there was a conspiracy of almost every intelligence service in the world to politicize and i'm saying there was definitely a conspiracy by members of the bush administration to lean on those facts politicize those facts cherry pick those facts and present a false case full well i mean why did you have to do that why did your country with all of that is what we certainly believe was on board ok and the and the other countries were on board as well which other countries name how many countries supported the war in iraq there are one hundred ninety one hundred in the world seventeen countries along with the trees that america lean on the only major countries australia britain the united states of america i mean count on one hand

ok so the idea that this get the majority of the world pulling was was against the war the majority of the world didn't support the war at the united nations in any shape or form or objected to it but just what i've taken to the biggest protest we saw at the time in the us if you forgot the millions of people on the street so there were millions of people in the streets so let's hear what millions of people in this new are suggesting that there was and there were millions of people who said in the united states fine let me clarify now millions of people around the world protested against the war ok but let me ask you this question tell me you of an event ever were poll testing suggested it was time to go to war. i'm sure there are many wars of popular support blame on all popular sport once they were kicked off before the war nobody wants to go to war i'm nobody i didn't want to go to war none of my soldiers wanted to be there but we had a job lot of people did want to go to war dick cheney george w. bush tony blair let's just talk about your view of iraq at the time and since there was some of you that you've never really want to take sept how bad the situation in

iraq is even at the time when you were spokesman back in two thousand and four when images were being shown on news channels of iraqi civilians being killed by u.s. forces you famously advised people to quote change the channel but the facts are the facts thousands of people did lose their lives in iraq continue to die today you can just look away you can just change the channel when confronted with the well it was awed that in fact it was your channel that asked the question showed the pictures which later turned out to be false to suggest that american soldiers were going out there to intentionally massacre of civilians i find reprehensible you don't think the us soldiers carried out massacres of civilians their own i don't what was that the massacre what was the mahmoudiya massacre what was the massacre we. have no idea what you're talking about i think you are inventing situations telling me that twenty four people unarmed iraqi civilian men women and children were not killed and had some of them shot multiple times at close range that didn't happen in november two thousand and five you believe that happened there was never an investigation done on that so all the journalists all the human

rights watch experts all the older people have looked at these massacres in balad in memory dia full of dead civilian family following the gang rape of that's all made up i'm not saying it was made up i'm saying those situations happen were they done by americans were they done. for goodness sakes well i've u.s. soldiers were charged in mahmoudiya with those killings what's your response to that my responses five soldiers may have been alleged to have committed those atrocities if you're convicted by a civilian court how do you alleged to have done that i'm confused it's a very we're saying american courts convicted those four yes five soldiers. you know aware of that i'm personally not aware of it and i don't think many people are aware of that but let's get let's get back because what you're saying is you're taking a specific incident three different incident three different so many and and trying to indict the entire american military and law and i don't know you and i and my you know by the way not to indict the whole american nation sorry with respect you don't speak for the entire american nation and nor do you and i never claimed and

nor do i know what you do i mean or do you accuse the entire american neighborhood i'm glad we agree i don't know you is anyone of anything i was responding to your specific rather bizarre claim that the americans have killed anyone in iraq intentionally no civilians when there is evidence that they have plenty of it over fifteen years you're suggesting that americans routinely and you are going to tell you that you can win them on that i mean one in thirteen will read your own two thousand and thirteen article ok i don't know we're going to talk about my twenty thirty to i'm going to ask you simple questions and you're having struggling when i'll see them not just going to i'm not struggle i'm told you know what yes i'm going to work i am going back to the simple thesis that it's a new to. the three of you have been opposed to the iraqis have indeed and what you are now doing and that is is you are that's what i like to you know and so my question is is it because i'm very sad because of the american soldiers killed intentionally you say no i give you evidence you say i'm not aware of the evidence then you quote miles to go to me that's a very odd way of again i'm not challenging your facts i'm challenging your intention for asking the specific question an interview with

a guest i have them every week but right now let's talk about what you said so for example you said at the time change the channel i'm saying ok you can't really do that when people are dying for. let's talk about. how many civilians were killed in fallujah do you think by the u.s. forces and the one thousand four have no idea why you should tell me when you should tell me you were in charge of the u.s. military was doing the killing i was in charge of the u.s. military and a senior commander on the u.s. military scene doing the audits are in there ok i agree so how many people died in future how many people died in combat inside a full week of the civilians were killed by. u.s. forces in fallujah intentionally know how many total killed i don't know if you can i certainly care every every going to the loss of a civilian life in years to fire every loss of a civilian life is a tragedy i accept that everyone's a tragedy i'm saying how many died in fallujah i don't know why you don't that's a bizarre thing you go to war you bomb a city you don't bother to find out how many people you killed intentionally or

unintentionally we got out of the body count business years ago the numbers while relevant are not something that we quote nor do we keep in our back pocket different studies show suggests between eight hundred maybe more civilians were killed in two thousand and four in the two attacks on fallujah against insurgents by the us military than ten times what we do know intentional and there was documented killings by journalists on the ground i would tell you right now that. it is unfortunate every time a civilian is caught in the middle of a crossfire collateral damage or soldiers go to extensive extensive manner to try to avoid that but there hasn't been a clean war in the history of warfare a senior british army officer at the time told the telegraph newspaper which is a pro will paper in the u.k. my view in the view of the british chain of command is that the americans use of violence is not proportionate and over response to the threat they're facing they don't see the iraqi people the way we see them they view them as well to mention

subhumans the nazi language they're not concerned about iraqi loss of life of their own allied officers saying i'm going to find one hundred officers that would speak that you again you're cherry picking the facts it is certainly go to open light but i could probably get a thousand army also has to challenge that saying we won't tell you that the americans went extraordinarily took extraordinary measures over that making it up as his agenda and i'm going to give that opinion but he probably was never attacked by operation center watching a strike by apaches or by or a craft and watch them get waved off because we were concerned about civilians in the still end up killing several hundred civilians. flattening the city i mean people who went to flee just saw the destruction that was done i have no doubt of that i mean i saw it as well and that is unfortunate in many ways it is. well it's extraordinarily sad for how it affects the civilians but it turned them against americans that this is war this is war and so that symbols and we

followed those rules did we intentionally attack civilian targets no but you are aware that under the rules of war even without intentionally targeting if the attacks a disproportionate and huge numbers of people die quote unquote collateral damage that's a problem too you can always zero back and we didn't mean it we didn't mean to kill ten thousand people or whatever it is again i would expect that right again you can i will repeat to you we followed the rules of engagement we went to extraordinary lengths to avoid collateral damage and you still ended up killing so. many people and we ended up unfortunately killing people that we would not have intentionally killed had we known that the reader was there or that it is not the business of the american military to kill civilians for stuff as we discussed earlier there are plenty of examples where that has happened you guys are usually you guys used allegedly used white phosphorus and depleted uranium weapons against not just military targets but civilian targets which is denied by the u.s. military to be fair but what do you step it is absolutely no you didn't use it i

don't mean the american military admitted to using against civilians i think you're saying you civilians you're exactly right yes we did not intentionally use one phosphorus and yet what do you say to the fact that plenty of studies since two thousand and four show quote dramatic increases in infant mortality cancer leukemia and the city of fallujah they link rates of miscarriages and disability in children born in fallujah to u.s. moment military operations i don't know has there been and at the end of p.t. i'm logical i can't pronounce a word i have had studies done in the bulletin of environmental contamination in toxicology nov twenty twelve found unusual numbers of birth defects surfacing in the city a study carried out by professor alister hay at leeds university said the studies are extraordinary there's been a five fold increase in birth defects in fallujah is that something is that something is that something you feel i would want to know. about response i feel extraordinarily set about that. but you don't take responsibility for what i take

responsibility for is certainly knowing that ethically morally it hurts when we kill civilians we certainly don't do it intentionally that's the cost of war and what you try to do in war is achieve victory at the smallest cost so let's treat the being has a list of our smallest cuts in civilian cultures not just fallujah in two thousand and four in may the u.s. bombed a wedding party killing more than forty iraqi civilians the massacre it's been referred to by many iraqis you want to have the u.s. military took to the podium and said quote there was no evidence of a wedding there may have been some kind of celebration bad people have celebrations too and yet the associated press straight off to get video footage proving that it was a wedding and those were innocent people again you're talking about ex post in our priore op priore the intelligence was very clear that there were known insurgents at that location and that because of that they believe within the rules of engagement the authority and in many ways the responsibility to to attack that

target. ex post i'm not sure what was found out at the time i made that statement we had absolutely no evidence that there was a wedding party if it had been determined after that that there was a wedding party again but that is what will have celebrations too is a very flippant response to forty two dead including thirteen eleven women and fourteen children at that time there was no evidence of forty two people dead and when you found out to do people are dead general mattis now defense secretary then a commander on the ground said bad things happen in war i don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men just on why so many iraqis were so antagonized by the u.s. presence when that was the kind of attitude towards innocent deaths yes do you regret making those remarks the kind of months you and general mattis made i have no regrets of the remarks i made no music matters his remarks were a mistake i'm not here to talk for general mattis so then what do you regret him confuse you're not regretting your i'm going to the one i said i regretted my own comments when they in fact in fact were seen as flippant and after the fact if they

were seen as wrong i certainly regret that it wasn't the only comment you made that upset people when also an iraqi journalist at a press conference in february for why u.s. helicopter mounting night raids flying so low to the ground terrifying iraqi children you replied quote what we would tell the children of iraq is that the noise day here is the sound of freedom and again your take another context my wife taught school inside of military schools for decades and that's exactly what she told her children when they had to what it doesn't make it right that a teacher will console her children when our tillery fire is going near that location would console them us saying don't worry you'll be fine not that's the sound of freedom from american occupy again if you read the quote that's what i said my wife said but is it correct to have said that either you or her it certainly worked in the case of the children that she taught do you really think iraqi children across the country many of whom suffer now from mental disorders p.t.s.d.

do you really think they were thinking that was the sound of freedom when they were getting bombed when they thought of what they didn't think at the time of me make. in that comment it was poor choice of words however it had been taken out of context both in terms of how that was just read and i took it out of context i projected what my wife was saying to children which call them half a world away but you can see how that looked at the indifferent and offensive to a generation of children who've been scarred by war insulted by your country well i don't think that there are too many people and children scarred by that one comment not by that comment but i'm not raids by the bombing that you were defending in your role as chief minister but i think every child that is in the middle of a war zone is affected by that yes i mean iraqi children entire generation growing up in a war zone i think something like five presidents george bush sr bill clinton george bush jr barack obama donald trump have all bombed iraq five presidents running this one country has taken

a lot of bombs from united states of children let's go back to the children you were there last one i want to go did you see children walking around shaking from the sound of bombs going off not in the part of iraq i was in nor i ok but i also met dozens of orphans thousands of iraqi children being laid off and there are studies showing that one in ten iraqi kids in the mosul p.t.s.d. call you're not listening the toll you yourself say that was and is but it's a rule that you guys and i am not suggesting for a moment that war is not bad and i'm not suggesting for a moment that war doesn't kill people i'm not suggesting for a moment that war doesn't sometimes kill. innocent civilians that's the price of war so as a soldier what you do is try to minimize that at all costs and anybody that believes that collateral damage doesn't happen in war is a living in a fool spirit ninety percent of eighteen to twenty four of the rockies in a poll not long ago said that they believe the americans are an enemy that's an

entire generation of young people who've grown up their own fans of what you and your colleagues achieved i agree why do you think that is do you think we've been talking about for the last half hour if we didn't believe that we wouldn't be having this conversation so when you were there in iran can you watching the your fellow soldiers locking up people who some of you some of whom you believe security threats and putting them not just in abu ghraib but come cropper and all the bases did you think at the time did you imagine that you know what we're laying the groundwork for i so you know i did what did you say at the time what did you say to your colleagues you actually predicted that this would happen i didn't predict it i was worried about it i was worried at the time that the mass incarceration of what the troops on the ground believe would be security threats would come back to haunt us yes and you said i told that to my colleagues and i told that to my spirit so that knowing that thinking that then and knowing what we know now you still started this interview saying we don't have anything to apologize i don't think we do have anything to apologize giving them or helping give the world eisel well first of all

let's make sure we understand eisel was not created inside of iraq was it created well they started out primarily inside of syria al qaeda or if you're suggesting that it's a business that started in iraq and moved to syria. we can have that the scream and because we didn't start in syria to know it's. still going on you know what you know actually in iraq. we started inside of a jordanian prison. agree with that but you know what i'm saying is. the link between the iraq war and i still that's one of the legacies of or are you suggesting that the legacy of iraq is that it created islamic extremism i'm saying the legacy of iraq is it did help give the world yes there was no weisel prior to two thousand and three you can put a name on it the question is simple did the iraq war. which many people believe start the rise of its own excess abated and i think you would agree most intelligence agencies in the world you love to quote intelligence agree that iraq

increased the terror threat to the world to the region to the us i think it was yeah i'll stipulate that sure ok last question last december following the recapture of one of the last remaining isolated towns in iraq the country's promise to hyderabadi said the end of the war now it's the end of the war against eisel back in august twenty fifteen the general odierno who is the u.s. army commander on the ground he warned that we could go into iraq with a certain amount of american forces we could probably defeat eisel the problem would be we'll be right back where we all six months later do you think that still holds true today well first of all he wasn't the commander twenty fifteen he was governor twenty five however you brought up a very good point which is why the united states took a new strategy after the rise of beisel rather than having the american troops those boots on the ground doing the fighting we went into a training advising and assisting role who's been killing eisel inside of iraq probably i can say it's been the iraqi military it's been the iraqi federal police

it's been the iraqi counterterrorism service and i believe that by killing i saw and by conducting operations play such as mosul we are not creating that antagonism which we did the first time mark kimmitt thanks for joining me on that front thanks for having me thank you. and then reported on the. u.s. and british companies have announced the biggest discovery of natural gas in west africa but what to do with these untapped natural resources is already a source of heated debate nothing much has changed they still spend most of their days looking forward to for a dry riverbed this one five years on the syrians still feel battered or even those who managed to escape their country haven't truly been able to escape the war .

from the foreign ministry. news is happening faster than ever before from different places from different people and you need to be part of that you need to be able to reach people wherever they are and that means being across all social media platforms this is where our audience lives as well as in front of a t.v. they're on the smartphone they're on that's how that they're on their computer. and that's the way al-jazeera is of all into a true media network. paint the scene for us whether online what is american sign in yemen that peace is possible but not what happens

not because the situation is complicated but because no one cares or if you join us on set there are people that are choosing between. eating this is a dialogue i want to get in one more comment because this is someone who's an activist who's close to the story join the global conversation at this time on al-jazeera. and live from studio al-jazeera headquarters. welcome to the news grid significant gains for pro-government forces in syria. they've cut off a true important.