[captioning made possible bydemocracy now!] >> from pacifica, this is democracy now!>>the situation in syria is like an infected wound. if it is not treated properly, it will spread. and this is what is happening area >> as sunni militants seize iraqi largest oil refinery, we will speak to the foreign -- to the former u.n. arab league special envoy to syria, lakhdar brahimi, on the escalating

conflict, the crisis in syria, and the long-term impact of the 2003 u.s. invasion. >> the mistake was to invade iraq third having indicated , and i would be probably very unfair, but i am tempted to was aat every time there choice between something right and something wrong, not very often the right option was taken. >> we will also speak with a and freedomlomat fighter lakhdar brahimi about his own country, algeria, and it struggle for independence from the french, and the classic anti-colonial film, "battle for algiers." all that and more coming up. welcome to democracy now, democracynow.org, the war and

peace report. i'm amy goodman. have seized -- the islamic state of iraq and to control, is said 75% of by e.g.. seizing the refinery would be a major coup for isis forces, handing them a rack pot large a source of the mystic fuel. in other violence, at least 18 people were killed and over 50 wounded tuesday in a pair of suicide bombings in baghdad. speaking earlier today, airing in president hassan rouhani said hisa not hesitate -- comments come as the obama administration said it remains iran oncooperation with stopping the ices advance. u.s. and iranian officials briefly discussed a rack this week on the sidelines of nuclear talks in vienna. the speaking in washington, expectations were played down.

>> they discussed the need for inclusivity in iraq and the need to refrain from pressing sectarian agenda in terms of where we go from here. we are open to continuing our engagement with the iranians just as we are engaging with other regional players on the sio in iraq. by id it is likely those discussions will happen at lower level and we do not expect further conversations with iran on this issue in vienna. >> the new york times reports the obama administration is considering an airstrike campaign similar to is drone attacks in yemen. obama has invited congressional leaders for a briefing on a rack. the u.s. has captured a suspect accused of masterminding the 2012 attack on the compound in benghazi, libya, that killed four americans, including ambassador christopher stevens. -- president obama hailed

tala's capture. >> it is important to send a message that no matter how long it takes, we will find those responsible and bring them to justice. that is a message i said the day after it happened, and regardless of how long it takes, we will find you. >> ahmed abu khattala is the first benghazi suspect to be detained in u.s. custody. the obama administration says he will be tried in federal court and imprisoned in the united states, not in guantanamo bay. the washington post learned of delayed location. hasspected u.s. john strike killed at least five five people in pakistan. if confirmed, it is at least the third attack since the u.s. resumed the drone more inside pakistan last week after a

nearly six-month pause. an al jazeera journalist to stage the lengthy hunger strike against his imprisonment in egypt has been freed after 10 months behind bars. was arrestedmy after covering a crackdown on a city and stage by muslim brotherhood support. he and 12 others were ordered released on medical grounds. speaking outside the prison, elshamy said his ordeal has changed him for life. -- everybody who is a freedom fighter, either a journalist or anyone doing his honesty, this experience has changed my life. i am not the person i have been anymore. i am now stronger than before, more determined to carry on, not because of me, but everyone who is able to do this. is anys of hunger strike

experience i will never forget in my life. everyone who has been through this battle, the battle of hunger strike -- it has never been -- >> three other al jazeera journalists -- peter greste, baher mohamed, and mohammed fahmy, remain behind bars following their arrest in december. their cases up for judicial review next week. to see our coverage of the arrest of all the journalists as , go to mohammed elshamy democracynow.org. following thedown kidnapping of three israeli teenagers in the west bank. israel said it has detained over 65 palestinians overnight including 50 freed in the 2011 prisoner swap deal for captured israeli soldier. the teens were kidnapped last week while hitchhiking from a jewish settlement. no one has claimed responsibility. vice president joe biden was in brazil tuesday months after revelations of nsa spying led brazilian president dilma

rousseff to cancel a trip to washington. leaks from edward snowden showed the u.s. spied on her personal communications as well as on brazil's state-run oil company, petrobras trade joe biden said he assured dilma rousseff the u.s. is taking a new approach with its foreign spying. >> we discussed the uris -- the u.s. surveillance programs disclose last year. i know the issue matters a lot to people here. quite frankly, it matters to the people of the united states as well. president rousseff and i had a candid conversation about it, and i told her, which she already knew, that president obama ordered an immediate review after we learned of the disclosures, and based on his instructions, we have made real changes in our process. we are taking a new approach on these issues. visite president biden's to brazil comes two weeks after

snowden announced he has applied for asylum in brazil. his temporary asylum in russia is due to expire in august. biden also announced the u.s. will hand over internal documents related to the brazilian military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. >> the united states is banding up a special project to declassify and share with brazil's national truth commission occupants that shed light on brazil's -- documents that shed light on brazil's dictatorship, which is obviously a great interest to the president. we turned over an initial batch of those documents today. to the brazilian government. i hope by taking steps to come to grips with the past we can find a way to focus on the future.promise of the >> the u.s. backed the coup that overthrew brazil's government in 1964 and provided support to the ensuing military regime.

the marissa herself was a political visitor tortured under the regime. georgia and missouri have carried out the first executions since the botched killing of a death row prisoner in oklahoma two months ago. marcus wellons, a convicted murderer, was killed tuesday night in georgia by lethal injection. the supreme court had turned down a last-minute stay request s, who arguedrney secrecy around the drug's source could lead to undue suffering. outside the prison, a small group of protesters staged a rally against capital punishment. >> this is a sad day in georgia. we are maintaining a barbaric practice, and this is not about guilt. we know that mr. wellons is guilty. this is about the dignity of human life. missouri executed john winfield, also a convicted murderer. anfield had initially won stay following allegations state officials threaten the prison staffer who is supportive of granting him clemency but a u.s.

appeals court waived it earlier tuesday. another execution is planned for today in florida. a trial is underway after years of delays for four like water operatives accused of killing civilians in the 2007 massacre at baghdad's nissour square. the suspects are charged for the deaths of 14 of the 17 iraqi civilians who died when their blackwater unit indiscriminately opened fire. the case has liked for years with prosecutors accused of dragging their feet and a lower court's dismissal of the charges in 2009. congressional democrats have unveiled new legislation that would ban internet service providers from charging media companies for faster speeds. the measure from senator patrick leahy of vermont and congress member doris matsui of california would prevent so-called paid prioritization, which ties to internet speeds to extra fees.

this would include a recent deal us on netflix pay the cable giant comcast for faster service than other content providers. in a statement, patrick leahy and doris matsui said the measure "would help prevent the creation of a two-tiered internet system and ensure consumers can all access content equally." the canadian government has conditionally improved a controversial pipeline that would carry crude oil from operatives tarzan's. corporation's northern gateway pipeline project would bring tar sands oil to kennedy -- to canada's west coast. it is seen as the main backup option should president obama reject another tar sands pipeline, the keystone xl. on tuesday the office of canadian prime minister stephen harper said the pipeline to go ahead if it meets over 200 conditions. but none of harper's conditions

include preventing a negative impact on climate change. opponents say they plan to increase protests against the pipeline and organize a provincial referendum to put the project a popular vote. those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i am in the goodman. sunni militants have seized part of a rack's largest oil refinery located in the northern city of baiji. the militants reportedly now control three quarters of the refinery compex. shiite families are leaving the city of back who but -- of baqub just 40 miles from baghdad. many analysts say the fighting in iraq has become a proxy war between the sunni-led saudi arabia and shiite-led a ran. on tuesday iran's president hassan rouhani vowed on live television to protect shiite shrines in iraq. he said many iranians have

already signed up to go to iraq to fight. this came as a shiite led cabinet accused saudi arabia of promoting genocide in iraq by backing sunni militants. in washington, president obama is scheduled to meet with the four top congressional leaders. there are conflicting reports of his plan of action. "the wall street journal" reports obama has decided against immediate airstrikes, but "the new york times" reports obama is considering what the targeted,ribed as a highly selective campaign of airstrikes. to discuss the situation in iraq and across the wider region is lakhdar brahimi, who resigned his post last month as the united nations arab league special envoy for syria. he has been deeply involved in middle eastern diplomacy for decades. he is a former algerian freedom fighter who went on to become algeria's foreign minister. as a diplomat he has worked on many of the world's biggest conflicts from afghanistan and iraqi come from haiti to south

africa. he is a member of the elders, a group of retired statesmen formed in july 2007 at the initiative of nelson mandela, who was originally each -- which was originally chaired by archbishop desmond tutu and now by kofi annan. nermeen shaikh and i interviewed him on tuesday. he is in paris, france. i started by asking him to respond to what is happening in iraq right now. iraq haslamic state of invaded and taken control of the second-largest city in iraq, which is absolutely extraordinary. that is the city of mosul. i understand they went down also and took apart -- may be they are still there, in the city of tikrit. the birthplace of saddam hussein. and are marching on baghdad

have been stopped somewhere. i doubt very much that they will enter baghdad in any significant manner. the fragilityates of the state of iraq that has been created by the americans after they invaded the country in 2003. extraordinary that the state as important and rich as iraq cannot protect the second-largest city in the country. indicates what the secretary-general of the united nations and myself have been saying for months, years even. that is that the situation in syria is like an infected wound. if it is not treated properly,

it will spread, and this is what is happening. the secretary-general has very syria isned that if not attended to properly, then most if not all of its neighbors are in danger. this is one of the neighbors of syria. of course, it has its own problems. is this latest development an addendum, something that has come on top of the problems that are there. , the country was more and more divided along and then lines,

corruption was alive. and the government was not culpable, has not been -- was not capable, has not been capable of reestablishing services like water, electricity, and so on. at the level they existed under saddam hussein when the country was under extremely severe sanctions. so this is where we are. -- there is fighting there. there is killing. there is bombardment taking place. and people are -- there is no development taking place, and people are leaving their homes, their villages, their cities and

are either remaining inside the country as a displaced people or going to neighboring countries like lebanon, jordan, and turkey, in particular. and quite a few of them have gone to iraq, actually. , youbassador brahimi mentioned the complicity of the united states invasion of 2003 in the present situation in iraq. i want to turn to comments made by former british prime minister tony blair over the weekend. he said in fact the 2003 invasion of iraq was not responsible for the violent insurgency engulfing the country. he was speaking on the bbc's andrew marr show. let's go to a clip. >> if you left saddam hussein in place in 2003, when 2011 happened and you had the arab resolutions on through libya, bahrain, egypt, and syria, you

would have still had a major problem in iraq. you can see what happens when you leave a dictator in place, as what happens now. what i prefer a situation where we left saddam hussein in place in 2003? do i think the region would be safer if we did that? my answer is unhesitatingly no. >> that was former prime minister of britain tony blair speaking over the weekend. could you respond to the comments he made? the situation in iraq was extremely bad, and definitely it of feared the republic with reason. you cannot justify post-fact of an invasion that was absolutely horrible. first of all, it was unjustified. lie,d, it was based on a the weapons of mass destruction.

just in the imagination of some people who wanted to invade iraq. justifications were invented after. democracy, getting rid of a dictator and that very was inictator just as he 2003, a very good friend of the united states and of britain when he was fighting iran in the 1980's. but let's forget about that for the moment. so the invasion was absolutely , and it has -- let's talk about what is important to talk about now -- terrorism. there was no terrorism. there were no terrorists in iraq in those days. was sucked in, brought

in as a direct consequence of the invasion, and it flourished first of all in iraq, and then it went to syria, and now it is back in iraq. to say in 2000 thursday to say that 2003 had nothing to do with what is happening now -- to say that 2003 had nothing to do with what is happening now is -- i don't know -- an overstatement, understatement. not part of reality. >> the first head of the coalition provisional authority in iraq, one of the first thing see did in that role was to sign the coalition authority orders one and two, completely dismantling iraq's government and military. during your tenure as un's special envoy to iraq, you referred to bremmer as the dictator of iraq. writing in "the wall street

journal" over the weekend, he said, "it is time for both american political parties to cease their ritualistic incantations of no boots on the ground, which is not the same as no combat forces." of course americans are reluctant to engage in iraq, yet it is president obama's unhappy duty to educate them about the posed. our interests can you elaborate on your comments about all bremmer being dictator -- about paul bremmer being dictator in iraq and what that means for iraq? >> i was repeating something that he said himself. i think he said -- and he has written, i think, in his memoirs, that nobody in the history of iraq had as much power as he had. money, that is equivalent

to being a dictator. and he was doing everything he wanted. and you had mentioned the dissolution of the army. every american who knew anything about iraq -- and there were quite a few, many of them in government -- former ambassadors, people who know the country and the region -- they were all unanimous, don't touch the army. definitely, 10, 15, 100, 1000 officers who have blood on their hands, who are corrupt, who should be taken off the army. but keep the army. this is the backbone of the country, and it is going to cooperate with you. as a matter of fact, a lot of people including in the military were already talking to some of

the iraqi military to see how they could come back and reorganized themselves and work with the occupying power. was underr -- and he instructions from the secretary of state for mr. rumsfeld, said no, no, we will dissolve the all me. dissolve the army. i do not think there is any argument that that was a mistake. what should the americans do today? i fully understand the hesitation of president obama to send foreign troops in, american troops into iraq again. troopsincipal, foreign meddling in a situation like this is not a very good idea. i also hear that there is the

possibility that they will be talking to iran, and i am sure they will be talking to other neighbors of iraq, chief amongst them saudi arabia, to see what needs to be done to help iraq solve its problems and perhaps these terrorist organizations from making more progress. that this help from outside does not make things worse. there is a lot of sectarianism in iraq. i do not think that is a secret or anybody ignores that fact her and says it does not exist. and says itfactor does not exist. help face this isis,

do not make things worse by supporting more sectarianism or less sectarianism. >> ambassador brahimi, on the question of sectarianism, there are several reports that suggest that in the initial days of the iraq invasion in 2003 there were some neoconservative members of the bush administration that actively fostered sectarianism between sunnis, shia, and kurds as a policy of kind of divide and rule. could you comment on that? >> i have told my american -- ofs several times course, i am not privy to what is taking place in the pentagon, where the responsibility lies for iraq. president bush has given full and total responsibility to the

pentagon over iraq. what was discussed there and what they did there, i don't know. but somebody from the region, just looking at what was actually taking place, it was extremely hard not to believe ism is beingan promoted and people were being put in charge -- i mean, of course the kurdish region was 100%, and theurds rest of the iraqis had no part in it. , then the rest of iraq that then one had was people were preferred by the occupying powers, were the most

sectarian shia and the most pro-iranian shia. iraq is now, that very close to iran. again, from the point of view of somebody who thinks from outside, i have absolutely no knowledge of what went on in the high sphere of power in washington. the impression we had is that these people were put in charge either out of total ignorance -- and that is extremely difficult to accept -- or intentionally. is that the system that was established was very sectarian. >> ambassador lakhdar brahimi resigned last month as special envoy to syria.

we will be back in a moment. [♪]

>> "where have all the flowers gone," by earth, wind, and fire. conversationur with ambassador lakhdar brahimi. he resigned as u.n. arab league special envoy to syria last month. nermeen shaikh and i interviewed

him yesterday from paris. dr. the biggest mistake was to invade iraq. know, invaded iraq, you would be probably very unfair, that am tempted to say every time there was a choice between something right and something wrong, not very often the right option was taken. want one instance of what was wrong, it is probably the dissolution of the army because the army was the backbone of the country. because the army was nonsectarian. majority of the soldiers were shia. and i think in the officer

corps, it would be very interesting to take a look back, and you would find that there were a lot of shia in it. saddam was not -- i mean, did not care about who was sunni or shia. cared who was with him and considered, whom he as loyal 1000% and whom he does not. i asked some american friends a couple of times -- i don't know if you remember the deck of cards with saddam being the ace of spades. 54 bad guys in iraq, i used to ask my american friends whether they knew how many shia were in that deck of cards. one of them said 0, 1 of them

said four or five. wasally, the number of shia four or five. inot of shia were fighting the ranks of the army of their country against shia iran. i think he was extremely suspicious of the shia because they were shia. he asked a lot of religious leaders -- there was that. but nothing like what existed after that and what it is today. you haveador brahimi, suggested that sectarianism was exacerbated following the 2003 invasion of iraq by the u.s. >> sure. >> one of the other effect you mentioned earlier was the spread of terrorism, particularly suicide attacks in iraq, which prior to 2003 were unprecedented.

neither iraq, afghanistan, or syria had witnessed suicide attacks before 9/11 occurred and subsequent to that, the u.s. invasion of afghanistan. could you talk about the implications of that, what the effects have been, and how you think that phenomenon, so widespread, should be dealt with? >> it did not exist in iraq. and this al qaeda did not exist at all, had no dormant cell in iraq. it was brought in after the invasion as a way of people crusader, aght a power invading a sister muslim country. that is when al qaeda came in and started to recruit iraqis

and to bring in non-iraqis. isis wastor of the created as a direct consequence of the invasion of iraq, nothing else. on, andeveloped and so 2006, 2007, 2005, where -- were absolutely horrible years in iraq. when the civil war was really americansce with the on the receiving end themselves, and of course they destroyed falluja completely. the americans destroyed the city of falluja completely. car bombs did exist before, but it did not exist in iraq.

and al qaeda had absolutely no presence in iraq before the invasion. reality as aame a direct consequence of the invasion in 2003 and developed from that. is thet you see today, son or grandson. viewerse some of your may remember the name of zarqawi , a very cruel man who is one of the members of al qaeda in iraq in those years, 2005-2006. so this is it. and what the terrorist organization that exists today, as far as iraq is concerned, in

syria as a matter of fact, the origin is definitely post 2003. >> i want to turn to comments made by the former u.s. ambassador to syria, robert ford. he resigned from his position in may. he was speaking to chris yellen on cnn last month. >> i was no longer in a position where i could defend the american policy. we have been unable to address either the root causes of the conflict in terms of the fighting on the ground and the balance on the ground, and we have a growing extremism threat. there really is nothing we can point to that has been very successful in our policy except the removal of about 93% of some of assad's chemical materials. but now he is using chlorine gas against his opponents. syrianravention of the

government's agreement in 2013 abide by the chemical weapons convention. the regime has no credibility, and our policy is not addressing the syrian crisis as it needs to. ford, formerobert u.s. ambassador to syria. ambassador brahimi, could you comment on what he said and what you see the flaws with u.s. policy vis-à-vis syria being today? i was very, very surprised when i heard him say that he left because he could not support the american policy anymore. very, very surprised. i am not familiar with what goes on inside the government and what discussions he had with the secretary of state before he left. but the impression i had was that he left because he reached retirement age and he was tired

of dealing with very difficult problems in syria. that is understandable. this is something that is very surprising to me, what he said about not supporting the u.s. policy anymore. the view in the region is that he was making the policy, or at least he was taking a very important part in making that policy. withnow, what was wrong american policy -- i think every single party that dealt with over the last three years have made mistakes. the united states, like everybody else, misjudged the ,eaning and what was happening

and, you know, where things were going. tunisia were made in when everybody thought that president ben ali was so strong, so organize, that these demonstrations will last three days, three weeks, and it will be over. he left after less than a month. mubarak in egypt. egypt is a stable, very well organized country. tremendously strong and well equipped. there we managed to ride this storm. and to be fair, the muslim -- theyood in egypt took quite a while. they were telling those young people go home, you are going to

be killed for nothing. the regime is not going to fall. made as -- so everybody mistake there. and libya. everybody thought that libya would fall in a matter of days. it took several months and $7 billion spent by the americans and french, and british and , destroying the country. and look at the results. not great. when the turn of syria came, i think understandably everybody said ok, this is now the trend. resist one month, three weeks, six months, so this will be the case in syria. so i think that the americans, like everybody else, thought going toregime was fall, and everybody started

after, andut the day people were afraid that we would not be ready for the day after, that the regime would fall and we will not be ready, how to help the country rebuild and so on and so forth. almost threemaybe years, three or four years, four people started to realize that this was different. by the way, the russians were the first who said syria is not going to follow with what happened in tunisia and egypt. the regime is not going to fall. no one listens to them. i think if we had perhaps, it would have been better for all of us. >> why did you quit as former u.n. and arab league envoy to syria? >> i wanted to quit one

year before i did. because in these kinds of jobs, you come and try a few ideas and move on. this is not a 9:00 to 5:00 job that you do for years and years. that is one reason. the second reason is that we organized that conference in switzerland, and we moved from there to what we thought was going to be negotiations between the opposition and the government. and that was a failure mainly because of the government. and then the government announced that they were organizing presidential elections, meaning that they they thought in a different way from what we were discussing in geneva. so i think it was the normal thing for me to do. i have tried this working with

the russians and the americans. together, the three of us have organized the geneva 2 conference. i led those concessions -- i led those discussions in geneva. i think it is time to tell the syrian people we are not i apologize to them for that. ,nd also to tell everybody else please be careful, this is a very, very bad, very complicated , very dangerous situation and we have got to pay more attention to it. i hope that they will pay a little bit more attention and that they will help the secretary-general, ban ki-moon, who is devoting a great deal of heention to syria, i hope will be helped to do a better job than i have been able to do

until the end of may. >> ambassador brahimi, you have also suggested in an interview you gave to the german newsmagazine earlier this month that the situation in syria is it was inrse than afghanistan in 1999 when you resign your u.n. position there. could you explain why you think that is the case? afghanistan,in war, the, yes, a civil factions in afghanistan were not way the parties that are involved in syria are. the of the nation that the syrian government has

that they had. -- it as harvell world, was this horrible world. know, work,ans, you in their way, much better organized and also much more open in their discussions with us. -- example, we never had after the russians left, that is the part i know -- we never had thelems going for vaccination in spring. knew they would go all over

the country and vaccinate kids. that has not happened in syria. the russians had destroyed quite a little bit of the country, and the afghans very early on before the taliban destroyed kabul when the russians left to read but after that, there was not that kind of destruction that you see in syria now. friends who went to homs recently, it looks like the picture we see of berlin in 1945. so the level of destruction is absolutely horrible. when i arrived on the scene in years of russians and the internal civil war of the factions, there was something like 5 million refugees from

afghanistan. syria, weears only in have 2.5 million refugees, 6 million or 7 million internally displaced. and by next year, if things continue the way they are, we will have 4 million refugees. population being about the same, 23 million in syria, maybe 25 million or 26 million in afghanistan. violence andof instruction is much higher in syria than it was in afghanistan. >> lakhdar brahimi resigned his post last month as united nations arab league special envoy for syria. we will be back with him in a minute. [♪]

ali from "battle of algiers" soundtrack. we continue our conversation with lakhdar brahimi, resigning his position last month. nermeen shaikh and i interviewed him yesterday. >> this is just the beginning of a larger regional war. do you think any of these states will survive intact, iraq or syria? , i think will survive.

i think that the people in syria are not thinking themselves of any partitions. if things go on as they are for 10 years, i don't know what will happen. if we start having solutions this year or next year, i think that syria will remain united. risk inery early on the syria is not partitioned in states like it happened in yugoslavia. the country will become a failed state with warlords all over the place. in iraq, i don't know really. i hope that the country will think that, but i the danger is bigger in iraq than it is in syria >> ambassador brahimi, as we begin

to wrap up this discussion, i want to do something the soundbite media rarely does, and that is go back in time. you participated in nigeria's struggle for independence and represented the national liberation front in indonesia are from 1956 to 1960 one. i want to go to an excerpt of the highly acclaimed 1966 film "the battle of algiers" that depicts the jury in fight for independence. a fighterscene where is answering questions from reporters. isn't it a filthy thing to use women's baskets to care explosives for killing people? even filthierseem to drop napalm bombs on villages, wreaking even greater

havoc? it would be better if we, too, had planes. give me the bombers and you can have the baskets. opinion, does the flm still have some chance of defeating the french army? the flm has more of a possibility of beating french forces than they have of stopping history. battle of from "the algiers," one of the most influential political films in history. it was released in the can 66 by an italian film maker -- in 1966 by an italian film maker. the pentagon offered a screening just months after the u.s. declared war against iraq officially over. a flyer for the screening stated the following, "how to win the

battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. populationtire builds to a mad fervor. sound familiar? the french have a plan. it succeeds tactically but fails strategically. to understand why, come to a rare showing of this film," said the pentagon's hos poster. ambassador brahimi, your response? >> what can i tell you? that was definitely one of the best films in history of cinema, i think. who playede people in that film, were playing their own role in life. think, what he said. when you are in a kind of

that we werer engaged in, you use methods that, if you look from outside, are reprehensible. this is a fact of life. of, there were strengths hours, fellow students, women. two or three of them are still bombs inho transported their handbags. in those days. won the battle of algiers, but they lost the war, that is true.

that is, again, this is history. benmidi, by the way, was assassinated by the french. man who died not long ago who was a captain in the french army said i have strangled him with my own hands. so when you are engaged in this , a lot ofonflict things happen that are better if they did not. occupiedknow, we were years, andrs -- 132 the occupation has been absolutely terrible. were dispossessed.

first of all, the war of invasion when they came in in 1830, from 1830, was absolutely savage. they have burned villages, they have put people in caves and --ned them out, so that was that was much worse than the bombs planted in cafés in the 1950's and the 1960's. and then they dispossessed a , practically every piece of good land was taken away from algerians and given to colonists. million french colonists there. 80% of the good land in algeria.

know, colonialism was very, very inhuman. much more in human them the thes in the bags of some of fellow students in those days. over.t is where are we now? that is another story. >> the fact that secretary of defense donald rumsfeld was using this as an example of lessons the u.s. should learn in dealing with iraq? you know, a friend of mine who made some films about this, rumsfeldeard that mr.

was showing the battle of please, he said somebody tell him how the story ended. how the battle of algiers was won by the french, but the war was lost. so i don't know what to say, what is it that they wanted to teach their soldiers. but the lesson i think that everybody has drawn from the battle of lg years -- the battle peopleers is that the who fought on the algerians side, the people who fought that war, lost the battle but they won the war. algerians diplomat lakhdar brahimi, speaking to us from paris france. he resigned his post in may as the united nations arab league special envoy to syria.

democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning.e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible bydemocracy now!]