conversation started in a constructive way. >> governor, i don't know. i don't believe i know a, personally know a black man in this country who does not believe that race was somehow involved in the fact of the arrest, who believes that all other things being equal had it been a white professor an arrest wouldn't have taken place. i'm sure there may be people out there who do. and again, this comes from history. it comes from experience. it is not provable. but it's strongly -- it's a strongly held belief. >> is there anything to be done about the kind of -- you can laugh at glenn beck and rush limbaugh, but they are inflaming things and making them much, much worse, other than being punished at the polls which they clearly will be by the under 35 generation that elected barack obama in the first place, what do you do about that? it's not just harmless stupidness. it's really dangerous

incitement. >> it is dangerous incitement and i don't know what you do about it because i'm not a believer in some sort of new fairness doctrine. you know, i believe in free speech. i believe that there is a marketplace of ideas and rotten, putrid ideas ought to, you know, be discarded. but i take your point. it is a problem. here's one thing i've been curious about. where are the principled conservatives who believe in individual rights, who oppose intrusive police power for example or the abuse of police power? wouldn't it be smart politically for a few conservatives to come out and on the side of professor gates and say, you know, he may not have acted well but the man was in his own house and shouldn't have been arrested. >> if they're ever going to

recover they have to learn that. eugene robinson, pulitzer prize winning columnist of "the washington post" thank you so much for your time. that does it for wednesday edition of "countdown." up next on msnbc "the rachel maddow show." i'm governor howard dean for keith olbermann. thanks for watching. thank you for staying with us for the next hour. the strangest politics story of the day is news that a car bomb in new orleans has apparently targeted the campaign advisor to the porn star who is running for senate against david vitter. hands down that is the weirdest politics story of the day. hands down the most important politics story of the day is the president trying for health care reform against a barrage of truly odd conspiracy theories and a barrage of attacks against him all based on race. this is supposed to be the slow news days part of the year. yeah right.

lots coming up this hour. we begin with the confluence of wacky new conspiracy theories in u.s. politics and wacky old special interest driven d.c. tactics. in 1993 the last time a newly elected democratic president was pursuing health care reform two of his most formidible foes were harry and louise, a fictional middle aged couple sitting at a kitchen table talking smack about how dangerous it would be to reform the american health care system. harry and louise of course weren't just a freelance actual middle class couple concerned about cutting into the insurance industry's profit margins. they were actors, hired by the insurance agency to try to sink the reform plan. well, incidentally, the same actors who portrayed harry and louise back in 1993 this year have been hired by pro health care reform forces to try to sell the idea of reform. so the corporate interests opposed to changing the system they profit from so handsomely and their allies in the conservative movement have found new actors to sit at a fictional kitchen table and talk smack about how dangerous it would be to reform health care this time. here they are. they're the new harry and louise and this time the reason they say changing the health care system is so scary is because --

you guessed it -- health care reform is really a secret plot to kill old people. and to try to make people have more abortions. >> they won't pay for my surgery. what are we going to do? >> but, honey, you can't live this way. >> and to think that planned parenthood is included in the government-run health care plan and spending tax dollars on abortions. they won't pay for my surgery but we're forced to pay for abortions. >> our greatest generation denied care. our future generation denied life. call your senator. stop the government takeover of health care. >> you got that? the real agenda lurking behind health care reform is a secret plot to kill old people. and to promote abortion. that ad was just released by the conservative group the family research council. now, you know about the conspiracy theory that the president secretly isn't really the president because he secretly is foreign.

those conspiricists are called birthers. the health care reform has been -- the deathers conspiracy is advanced in congress by republicans like virginia fox of north carolina. >> it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government. >> the deathers theory is also being advanced by republicans like congressman louie gomer on talk radio. >> we've been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens and put them on lists and force them to die early. >> the deathers theory is also advanced as of today on the editorial page of the conservative newspaper the "washington times."

it should probably be noted that the editorial cites as its sources right wing talk show host mark levin, the red state blog and fox news.com. but as the deathers' theory leeches from the main stream of efforts to stop health care reform, consider where it started. consider its source. when you start digging, it turns out that this theory all traces back to a single person, a person named betsy mccoy. she's a director of a medical device company called cantel medical corporation and also a former director of a biotech company called genta and also a senior fellow at the hudson institute a think tank funded by some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the country. betsy mccaughey started the whole conspiracy theory that the government promoting people getting living wills which the government has done for 20 years is somehow now a secret plot to kill old people. >> congress would make it

mandatory, absolutely required, that every five years people in medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner. >> wrong. not true. not in the bill. not there. totally false. but nevertheless, ms. mccaughey has seeded that idea on the editorial page of "the new york post" and in talk radio interviews with hosts like fred thompson and that's been enough for it to take root on the right. now, betsy mccaughey has also done this before. in 1994 she wrote an attack on the bill clinton health care reform proposal in a magazine called "the new republic." that article was so riddled with errors that the magazine ultimately distanced themselves from it even though they published it in the first place. that didn't stop the opponents of health care reform back then from citing her disproven attacks over and over and over again. so far, nothing is stopping the opponents of health care reform now from doing the same thing.

the deathers' theory is everywhere on the right. it's on the house floor. it's on talk radio. it's in tv ads. and it is a script, a nonsense, totally made up, totally disprovable script written by the corporate interests who have wanted to block health care reform forever because they're making a mint off of the way it is now. welcome back to 1993. joining us now is governor tim kane of virginia, chairman of the democratic party. thank you so much for joining us tonight. >> good to be back, rachel. thanks. >> you're the head of the democratic party, governor of virginia. you've been stumping with president obama about why we need health care reform. who do you think is the other side in this debate? how do you think that you plan to beat them? >> well, you put your finger on it. there are special interests inside the beltway and primarily insurance companies who are doing great. they do better if they can kick

people off insurance or not cover people who they say have preexisting conditions and they've been doing quite well even in a tough economy. and they fought against it very, very hard in the 1990s and are fighting against it now. but what we see is the overwhelming majority of the american public think the system is broken and want health insurance reform. they want a public option to put some real competition into the system so these interests aren't running the show and basically controlling the dialogue. we're going to beat them with the american public. we don't have to hire actors. we've had hundreds of thousands of regular citizens tell their own stories about what no health care coverage or inadequate health care, health insurance has meant. we're going to use the stories and experiences of real americans to carry the day on this. >> if this were going to be decided by referendum, if americans were going to vote on how much they liked the current system, how much they would like to have a public option some of the other reforms that have been proposed i think you're absolutely right you would definitely win. but it doesn't happen that way.

it happens through a representative democracy. >> right. >> it does seem like in congress we're seeing some opposition from members of congress. i have to ask you if the opposition in congress, even from conservative members of the democratic party, is because of pressure from industry? >> well, i think that those pressures are some of the many pressures that people are feeling. let me just say this, rachel. this is a heavy lift. every president since president truman has said we need to find a health care future where we have a competitive insurance market and all americans receive coverage. what we've seen happen in the last month or so is we now have bills that have passed through three different committees in the senate and house. two other committees are expected to take action very soon. we're farther than we've ever been. it's heavy lifting. it ain't easy.

we have to take the various bills and make them into a workable plan but you're right. if we could have a referendum the american public would overwhelmingly vote to significantly reform this system but i think that the voices of americans are being heard and will be heard and that's why we are going to make health reform happen this year. >> in terms of some of the level of discourse that's happened around this issue which i referenced in the introduction here, the level of what i consider to be wing nutary craziness in this debate is primarily of course an indictment of the wing nuts themselves and the people in the main stream media who are willing to give them a platform. but is it also to a certain extent an indictment of those who are in favor of reform, that the message hasn't been clear enough, hasn't been strong enough to drown out the conspiratorial nonsense? >> well, i don't know that you ever drown out wing nuttery. you can't put duct tape over folks' mouths. they'll say what they want. and especially if they're encouraged to by people who have a lot of money and they're trying to protect themselves. again, rachel, as we pointed out, all the polling i've seen

says the overwhelming majority of the american public wants to see significant reform to health insurance. they support the basic principles of lowering costs for families and businesses, preserving choices, and expanding choice with a public option and then finding a way to cover all americans. so wing nuts will say whatever they're going to say. the american public isn't buying it. congress is moving forward on these bills. and it is a challenging process but we heard even today that the two committees that are still working are expected to put bills out and then we'll have to work to take those various bills in both houses and make them into a workable plan. but this thing is moving. i think the insurance industry knows it. they're fighting desperately. they're lobbying hard against it. but the american people want this to happen.

it's going to happen. >> as head of the democratic party, you are a very important tent pole in a very big tent and there are a lot of democrats in congress right now. to what extent -- not to call you a pole or anything though i don't think that would be an insult. to what extent is the prospect of getting health care all about the prospect of holding the democratic party together, about having party discipline and loyalty on this issue because it really is all on the democrats' plate? >> rachel, i've never been compared to a tent pole before but i think that's a good comparison. i'm a big camper. i'll take the analogy. we do have a big tent on the democratic side. let me talk about democrats and then i'll talk about republicans. we are a very broad party. i like being a democrat because of our diversity. that diversity includes ideology so there is a pretty wide expanse of democrats and an awful lot of this debate is ultimately getting the democrats to pull together and be results focused rather than what has to be my plan or i'm not getting onboard.

but i see that happening even amidst the diversity and the breadth of ideas i see it happening in these committees that are putting bills out on the floor for the first time in the history of this debate about how to reform our health insurance. what i'm looking for among republicans is, you know, are there any republicans who are going to stand up and say, you're right. this system needs fundamental reform and change. a system where 15 years ago more than 60% of small businesses provided health insurance to their employees and today 38% do and that number is dropping like a stone while the percentage of gdp that we spend on health care is going up. that system is broken. you don't hear a single voice really among republican leadership standing up and acknowledging that and saying we've got to make some changes. the president is right. we have to make some changes. so we'll do our best and i feel confident that we, the president, the senate, and house leadership will get democrats behind a position. we're looking for any republican who will just have the courage to admit what americans understand that this is a system that's broken and it needs change. >> governor tim kaine of virginia, chairman of the democratic national committee, thanks very much for your time tonight.

i know we had a lot of logistical hoops to jump through to get you on the air and i appreciate you bearing with us. >> glad to be with you always, rachel. >> okay. an amendment that would have stopped the implementation of the don't ask don't tell policy was yanked yesterday. reportedly under pressure from the white house? the sponsor of the amendment that was and then wasn't was congressman alcee hastings, and he joins us next. later the latest attack against the president from the right is that he hates white people. you know, like his chief of staff, his press secretary, most of his cabinet, and his mom. the president is anti-mom. no word on apple pie. moisturizing body washes, you might as well be. you see, their moisturizer sits on top of skin, almost as if you're wearing it. only new dove deep moisture has nutriummoisture, a breakthrough formula with natural moisturizers... that can nourish deep down.

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call or click today. national security.

i said before, i'll say it again, i believe don't ask don't tell doesn't contribute to our national security. in fact, i believe preventing patriotic americans from serving their country weakens our national security. my administration is already working with the pentagon and members of the house and the senate on how we'll go about ending this policy, which will require an act of congress. >> it would require an act of congress, but then why would the white house be putting the kibosh on exactly that kind of act of congress? you just saw the president speaking one month ago today about his long-stated opposition to the pentagon's policy of kicking people out of the military because they're gay. congressman alcee hastings of florida introduced an amendment this week to the defense appropriations act that would have prevented the government from spending money on kicking gays out of the military. and then the next day he withdrew that amendment

releasing a statement explaining that he withdrew it, quote, due to pressure from some of my congressional colleagues and from the white house. well, today the service members legal defense network told nus response, quote, we hope it is not true the white house pressured representative hastings to withdraw his amendment to stop funding don't ask don't tell investigations. such a move would go against president obama's commitment to end don't ask don't tell. now we need to see some positive action, some follow through from this white house. joining us now is congressman alcee hastings, democrat of florida, the man who was thwarted yesterday in his attempt to cut off funding for the don't ask, don't tell policy. thanks very much for joining us. >> thank you, rachel. i like that word thwarted because that's exactly what i was. >> well, tell me how that happened. what sort of pressure did you receive from the white house? how did it all go down? >> well, certainly i didn't speak with president obama. let me get that very clear. but how the process works is there are liaisons that work

here at the capitol that come from the white house and before the rules committee meets there is a meeting. in this particular instance there were persons from the white house that were there and when the discussion was had with reference to my amendment they chimed in and their thinking, rachel, is different than yours and mine would be. i have a different political calculus. if something is bigoted and if your intent is to see to it that it does not continue, then i did not understand the leadership of congress or the white house in saying that the time is not right. my position is the president has said he wishes that this matter be repealed. my colleague patrick murphy now has more than 170 cosponsors on a measure to repeal it. secretary gates has said i'm glad he is now saying when we change our policy. last year he would have been saying "if" but my view is that

the time is now to eliminate this bigoted law once and for all. >> when you are hearing that the time isn't right, when you're hearing from fellow democrats, even from fellow opponents of "don't ask don't tell" that the time's not right for your amendment, that this ought to be delayed, that there is a more strategic way to do it are you also hearing that there is a white house endorsed strategy for when to get rid of it or is it just being put off indefinitely? >> very good question. i have not heard anything other than the rhetoric. i wrote to the white house on june 22nd and had 76 other members of congress to join me in a letter to the president explaining what the president can do right now. and that's what i was attempting to do with the amendment and that's saying to the secretary of defense, stop it. just don't put anybody else out of service. rachel, i'd be terribly remiss if i didn't take the opportunity to say how i came to this is the

soldiers we are forcibly separating are combat veterans. they're intelligence officers. they speak the languages we need on the battle field, so aside from the absurdity of telling dedicated soldiers that we don't want them, because they're gay, this law negatively impacts our national security and that's what your tv shot showed that the president was doing. and let me just go one step further in saying the last five years we've put out of the service under this policy 59 arabic speakers and nine farsi linguists. i serve on the select committee on intelligence and i'm telling you we cannot afford at all not to have language speakers with the paucity of language speakers we have in the intelligence community. >> congressman hastings, as you know the beltway common wisdom on this is this is an incredibly sensitive issue that a lot of capital needs to be invested in and that president clinton was immeasurably hurt by the way he

pursued this issue at the start of his first term. do you think that's true? do you think it's true now this would be incredibly risky for the president to take a leadership role on this? >> i really do not. the majority of americans do not support don't ask don't tell. without question, every poll has shown an uptick in favor of us getting rid of this policy. and the one that is particularly salient is that members of the military are in favor of getting rid of this policy. it is shameful for us to continue with reference to this matter. i keep hearing we'll do it next year. well, in my view that's ridiculous. if you know we want to do it, let's do it today and spare any more of our servicemen and women from the humiliation of being investigated for their sexual

orientation. >> congressman alcee hastings of florida, thank you so much for joining us tonight and foosh your eloquence on this issue. great to have you on the show, sir. >> thank you, rachel. okay. still ahead, do you remember the old public enemy record "fear of a black planet" fight the power welcome to the terror dome? what's the likelihood we could get the rest of the band to do a reissue? except this time it would have to be fear of a black president. the attacks on president obama turn explicitly racial. from even supposedly main stream critics on the political right. coming up, our chief compelling video correspondent kent jones updates us on humanity's race to stay ahead of the robots we've created. turns out it's not going all that well. that's coming up. of all the things made just for women, maybe this is one of the most important. new centrum ultra women's. a complete multivitamin for women. it has vitamin d which emerging science suggests... supports breast health... and more calcium for bone health. new centrum ultra women's. whether you consider it a cruiser or a clunker, you could turn it into cash. get to your dodge, chrysler, and jeep dealer, and get up to double

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coming up, our chief compelling video correspondent kent jones updates us on humanity's race to stay ahead of the robots we've created. turns out it's not going all that well. that's coming up. but first time for a couple holy mackerel stories in today's news. here is a very strange story about a very strange story, frankly. most americans were introduced to louisiana republican senator david vitter back in the summer of 2007 when his name showed up on the client list of the d.c. madame. >> i am completely responsible and i'm so very, very sorry. >> at that point, the common political wisdom was senator vitter's career, at least his career as a more moral than now

family values espousing hypocriical politician was over. of course because i'm calling it common wisdom you know things didn't work out that way. not only did david vitter not resign, he's running for re-election next year, even today attacking a critic in his own party by saying, quote, i am on the side of conservatives getting back to core conservative values. there are a lot of us from the south who hold those values, which i think the party is supposed to be about. not sure where the whole repeatedly patronizing prostitutes while bragging about your own family fits into those values but there you have it. now one of mr. vitter's opponents in his race for re-election is a woman named stormy daniels. she has had a career as an adult film star. ms. daniels launched her campaign earlier this year saying, quote, i guess the big question is not just why is david vitter in office but why is he not in jail? here's where things get weirder

than weird. ms. daniels has a political advisor named brian welsh and on monday someone allegedly threw an explosive device of some kind into mr. welsh's car while it was parked on a new orleans street. he spoke to wgno tv in new orleans and said that he would not jump to any conclusions, but -- >> it's too early for me to go pointing fingers. i'd like to hear officially what happened and then we can kind of take it from there. but in the meantime, you know, i want to be really careful about how we approach this. >> right. >> but, i mean, if somebody is trying to send me a message, you know, something like this is not going to work. >> mr. welsh then followed up that statement today by telling us, quote, until we have more conclusive information as to the nature of this incident the only thing i can say with any degree of certainty is that i need a new car. footage from a security camera near the bombing shows an unidentified person opening the car door and throwing something inside just prior to the explosion. we promise to keep you posted on this story and any further developments. strange or otherwise. finally, a lot of what we

know about the inner workings of the taliban in afghanistan is from documents and books and paraphernalia that are found with taliban fighters when they are killed or captured in afghanistan. recently coalition troops say they've been finding copies of a new taliban rule book on taliban fighters and that's not a euphemism. the book is actually titled "taliban 2009 rules and regulations booklet." it includes orders like, limiting suicide attacks and avoiding civilian casualties. something tells me if these really are their rules and not just a big propaganda effort, that the taliban aren't very good at following their rules. shocker. so many arthritis pain relievers --

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make it your "mission" to click or call esurance today. this president i think has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seeded hatred for white people or the white culture. >> here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman. i think he is genuinely revved up about race. you know me. i think he is genuinely angry in his heart and has been his whole life. >> i think he is a racial opportunist. >> i had a dream. i had a dream that i was a slave building a sphinx in a desert that looked like obama. >> he has a problem.

he has a -- this guy is i believe a racist. >> after that they're going to go after oreos. might have to put that off until obama is out of office but they'll eventually go after oreos. >> the racial divide in this country didn't disappear when barack obama was elected president. and no reasonable person has expected it to. but it is somewhere between eyebrow raising and breathtaking to have such blunt, unvarnished race discussion so forward in the national discourse and the type of race baiting to which we're subjected is fairly consistent. the argument that the president hates white people for example which you just heard glenn beck make on fox news. that it's he, the president, who is racist. that argument dovetails perfectly with the arguments made against supreme court nominee judge sonia sotomayor and the far more gentile setting of the united states setting. >> many of judge sotomayor's

statements suggest that she may allow or even embrace decision making based on biases and prejudices. >> your wise latina comment. >> already prejudiced against one of the parties. >> allow biases and personal preferences. she said a wise, quote, wise latina would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male. >> and that ethnicity and gender can and even should have an impact on a judge's decision making. >> the language of our republican senators is less blatant than the language of professional conservative talkers. but the theme is the same. what we have here are ethnic minorities who can't be trusted to use their official power fairly because they're prejudiced against white people. with or without outrageous cracks about the biracial president being an oreo as we just heard from rush limbaugh, the conservative movement and the republican party are positioning themselves the same here. they're positioning themselves as defenders of the interests of white america against the threat posed to white america by people like obama and sotomayor.

are white people in america enraged by having a black president, by the success of people like obama and sotomayor? is there outrage that being white in america no longer guarantees you monopolistic access to positions of great power in this country? there must be some certainly but whether or not this race baiting political tactic succeeds depend on whether there is enough of that kind of tapable white rage out there to compensate for how bad it makes these guys look to be seen spewing this kind of overt racial invective. joining us now is the associate professor of politics and african-american studies at princeton. melissa, thanks very much for joining us tonight. apparently your audio i've been warned is a little hoopy so i hope you don't mind yelling. >> i can certainly yell but then i'll probably be called an angry black woman and since i have a white mama maybe an angry black oreo but i'll yell. it's fine. >> could we get wise in there

somehow? >> wise angry black oreo. i can do that. yes. >> all right. well, let me ask you here. what do you think the strategy is behind so many figures on the right calling the president racist? >> as a political scientist you always want to start with the assumption that a political party whatever choices it's making are trying to seek office, right? we've talked about this a couple of times, trying to think about how this is somehow a strategy of the right or strategy of an element of the gop to somehow gain office either in the mid-term elections or more long term for the presidential race. but the other part i think that i have maybe not been thinking about as carefully is that when we think about the history of race in america, sometimes we have to put aside the notion of strategy and just embrace the reality that race in this country has often brought out irrational anger, fear, anxiety, emotionalism so it is possible that this is not actually a gop or a conservative strategy but

there is instead really kind of an emotional tantrum on the part of some members of the conservative wing who really just are floundering as they look at a world that is changing so dramatically around questions of race. >> i am with you to the -- i guess i could say i was with you on it being an irrational tantrum until i started to see the same very specific tactic used in very different venues about very different subjects, this idea of the person who is not white being the problem racist, being used against sotomayor, being used in so much of the discourse about the gates arrest, being used against the president now unrelated to any policy issue but just as a free floating critique of the president. and it does make me wonder about this as an overt political strategy. if it is one, do you think it's right to sort of use a white

outrage-o-meter to try to measure tapable white outrage to decide whether it's going to work as a strategy? >> if we can remember that president obama paused in the middle of the primary race to speak in philadelphia about the question of race in america, and he set up sort of two possibilities, black anger rooted in a history of african-american inequality and white resentiment rooted in a sense of kind of a loss of racial privilege, now, i think in many ways it's a very accurate assessment of sort of the ways that blacks and whites not completely and not perfectly but often perceive things quite differently. so i spent the month in new orleans and hurricane katrina is a perfect example of this. everybody in the country was mad but african-americans saw the failures of the federal government around katrina as a race issue. white americans who were still angry about the failures of the government saw it primarily as a

bureaucratic issue rather than a race issue. so here you have these two groups with very different perspectives. now, that made all the difference in being able to make policy. so i think that they're hoping that these differences in how blacks and whites often see the world can be a perfect kind of wedge to use on health care, to use on education, to use on a wide variety of issues that, in fact, really -- if we don't fix health care, it is bad for all americans. but if we can somehow kind of suggest that the president is just trying to do things that are good for black people, and bad for white people, then it opens up that kind of possibility of anxiety, distrust, and different perceptions. >> melissa harris lacewell associate professor of politics and african-american studies at princeton university. i think that's tremendous insight. that sort of insight is the whole reason that i sought you out in the first place and had you back on the show so many times. it's really invaluable. thanks, melissa. >> i love being here. >> thanks very much.

coming up next, we welcome sarah chayes back to the show. she went to afghanistan in 2001 to cover the u.s. invasion of afghanistan for npr. but then she decided to give up being a reporter and just move there and live there. now eight years later she has decided to start working with the u.s. military in afghanistan. the last person in the world you'd expect to be doing that. her reasoning about it will blow your mind.

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♪ one is the loneliest number that you ever knew ♪ >> on monday's show we brought you footage from fire dog lake's mike stark, footage in which he asked republican members of congress on capitol hill whether they were birthers essentially or whether they were willing to say that the president was in fact born in the united states and isn't secretly foreign and therefore secretly not really president. well, mr. stark has now gone back out for round two patrolling capitol hill to ask

still more republican members of congress whether or not barack obama is as the constitution requires a natural born citizen of the country of which he is president. the results were alarmingly similar to round one of mr. stark's effort. >> do you believe he was born in america? and anyone who believes otherwise is a little bit kukoo? >> i wouldn't say that. i have no idea where he was born. >> no, no. >> i would like to talk to you, but -- no, no. >> quick question. >> no, no. >> do you believe barack obama was born in the united states? >> you know, i've got to go right now. >> i'll tell you what. she has to get -- do have you a card? >> i'm looking forward to seeing more documents. >> let me get your name and number. >> the best way to do it is produce the birth certificate and let that be the end of it. i don't think that's been done yet. >> i don't think that's been done yet. real stunner came from the former number two republican member of the house roy blunt of missouri.

mr. blunt is running for senate in 2010. surely he would therefore want to knock down any remnant of a doubt about this disproven bit of paranoid hysteria, wouldn't he? >> what i don't know is why the president can't produce a birth certificate. i don't know anybody else that can't produce one. i think that's a legitimate question. no health records, no birth certificate. >> he has produced a certificate of live birth, right? >> i don't believe so. >> people with computer machines or 15 seconds of free time all believe he has produced it because there it is. can you imagine, senator blunt, the birther? behold the modern republican party. ththththththththththththth

here is something awkward. you know james carville? besides karl rove james carville is probably the closest thing in this country to a political consultant who is a household name. mr. carville made his bones running bill clinton's campaign for president. he's gone on since to be a very successful campaign guy, a very successful media guy, and a guy who is a democrat who is very famously married to a republican who does the same job as him. well, now the new presidential campaign that james carville is working on is for a guy who's running for president of afghanistan. he's running for president of afghanistan against hamid karzai. james carville is the political consultant for the former finance minister of afghanistan.

james carville has been doing things like saying in interviews that karzai is incompetent. meanwhile, hillary clinton is secretary of state. how's that for an awkward moment the next time secretary clinton is supposed to meet hamid karzai? madame secretary looking forward to these negotiations. perhaps you could first remove the teeth of your consigliare from my ankle. the elections are in less than a month and because this is afghanistan there are pretty amazing details about what it takes to get a national election done there. the ap reporting this week, frank, that 3,100 donkeys are being dispatched to remote villages that are inaccessible by any kind of vehicle. the official american line on what we're doing in afghanistan now is using our troops to protect the civilian afghan population from insurgent fighters, to keep the taliban from coming back to power. meanwhile we're supposed to be trying to build up the capacity of the afghan government to

actually provide services and be seen as the legitimate source of authority in that country by their own people. does that mean the u.s. wants hamid karzai to win the election and stay in power? that is a very good question. another question, how good an idea is the whole american strategy now? how long are we expecting this war to go on and how winnable is it? we've got nearly 60,000 americans there now, almost double the number from a year ago. and still more on the way. top commanders now requesting even more troops than were initially planned. u.s. casualties stand at 40 for the month of july alone which makes this month the deadliest yet for americans since we invaded nearly eight years ago. yes, we invaded nearly eight years ago. and we're still there. tonight we ask an american who has lived in afghanistan for more consecutive years since the war began than anyone else i know of if the u.s. is fighting the same war we started eight years ago. or if we really are doing something new now, something that might some day both work

and have an end. stanley mccrystal. >> are we achieving our goals? >> to be honest, we did lose time between the u.s. elections and afghan elections, to be honest. and the problem is that a lot of afghans feel the whole process is rigged and that president karzai has taken advantage of all of the leefrz of power he

controls as president to try to fix the election. and i wish i had brought them with me. but i bought five -- no, ten voter registration cards. can you buy them. like i could have bought 1,000 if i wanted to. and i could take those or somebody could take those into a polling place, you know, one of the more remote ones and just fill out ballots. i've heard of a couple of opposition rallies being broken up. you know, i would say that on an international and historic scale the abuse of the electoral process may not make a huge splash. but afghans, it really z number one, because they're trauma tiesed. and it doesn't take a lot of intimidation to cause them to change their behavior. and number two, they see that

there are 42 countries, you know, in their country trying to insure free and fair elections. when this kind of thing goes on, they assume that it's all of our, the international community's deliberate policy. >> you have been through a number of transformations in terms of your own role in afghanistan over the last seven, eight years starting as a reporter, moving on to work directly with the afghan people in kandahar, now i understand you're in kabul and you're working as a special adviser to the top u.s. military commander there. why did you make a decision to start working with the military? didn't seem like that was the obvious next thing for you to do there. >> i felt like this was a way to make a difference. i felt like this was the -- first of all, the organization that's got the biggest footprint in afghanistan. and second of all, i'd have to say somewhat to my surprise, given my own background, i assessed over the course of a seven years that i've been watching that actually the u.s.

military is incredibly public spirited in afghanistan. and to some extent even more so than a lot of the folks that you would have expected to be public spirited like humanitarians and maybe civilian officials and things like. that i was really seeing the u.s. military doing its darnedest to do the right thing. and so it's -- it seemed to me when i got the invitation if i was going to try to put my experience to use to make a difference this was how to do it. now there is always the issue of how do you stay honest? how do you not get he could opted or whatever it s and i think that's the balance that i have to fight to maintain. en that means getting back out into the countryside as often and as seriously as possible. and then just getting in there and even when it's -- when it clashes, when it does sometimes, or even when it is

disharmonious, always inserting this afghan perspective. and i'm very fortunate in that for the moment that's really been welcomed, even when i'm a little voice which sometimes i am. >> that says a lot about the intention of the mission that they extended the invitation and says a lot you about that you said yes. so thank you for your work. thank you for making time to join us. i know this is real quick trip. have safe travelled back to kabul. >> thanks so much for having me. it's really an honor. >> my interview with sarah chayse. she is a special adviser to the top military commander in afghanistan. okay. coming up on "countdown," elizabeth edwards will join dr. howard dean. next on this show, kent jones has a exclusive about our new robot overlords. i, for one, welcome them. that's next. ever worn your clothes in the shower?

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