those key provisions they will also increase government surveillance powers but should we really support or trust this legislation julian sanchez will join me in the studio to speak about it then we'll talk to a friend of bradley manning who's been able to visit him while he's being held in solitary confinement quantico david house will be here to discuss manning's current conditions and the effects that it's had on his health and we regularly speak about the ways that the economic crisis hurts people individuals but what about entire cities they are going broke too and the effects of a city without money could hurt even worse artie's lauren lyster will join me at the end of the program to discuss the growing risk of municipalities defaulting on their debt but now let's move on to the top story the protests in egypt continue today as did the violence egypt's military stepped in to separate pro and anti mubarak protesters journalists are being rounded up and arrested and hosni mubarak said in an interview with christiane amanpour that he's fed up with being president that he would step down immediately but fears that that might cause his country to

descend further into chaos but it seems like things are also getting volatile here in the u.s. if you listen to the fear mongering being spread by fox news as more conservative voices speak out against democracy in egypt so here to discuss it all with me is new or erekat human rights attorney and adjective fessor at georgetown university and richard hellman president of the middle east research center want to thank you both for joining me today now let's start with hosni mubarak's comments today in his interview with christiane amanpour he says he apparently is fed up and he would leave immediately but he just thinks that chaos might break out aren't we already seeing chaos breaking out because the people want him to leave it's actually very disingenuous on his part the reason there is chaos to begin with is because he won't step down in tunis there was an uprising of three days of a popular movement demanding democracy and there are now transitioning and what isn't chaos and yet because mubarak is paying fugs to go. into the streets to

attack people with bats and against their bodies in pieces to trample crowds with camels and horses that's what's creating chaos the fact that he won't leave in his remaining entrenched and now creating this momentum of fear and removing the police from the streets of there is no security it's precisely the danger and if he doesn't leave immediately and allow the people to rule themselves as all self governments should then he isn't the only one simply richard what do you think i mean is this man delusional is he crazy just not get it or is he that stubborn that he won't leave. well perhaps in the situation there are a little of all of the above but i think basically he is an air force general he is a military man he likes order clearly to an extreme in this situation but i testified more than once years ago and more recently that we should not have been giving carte blanche to two you know dictators presidents for life and kings in the

middle east and elsewhere with our foreign aid in building up military i knew a general who headed the military assistance command in egypt and it was a personal friendship of our wives and we went and visited him on a tour to egypt and i was amazed at how he matter of fact he told me that they were building a carbon copy of the u.s. army on a smaller scale and of course they have an assembly line for the m one a one fact i think even a more advanced version than what we have in the united states army the egyptians are building there and they have f. fifteen they have em around missiles and so forth and the big question is if if they've received two billion dollars a year for something like going on thirty two years it's a sixty four billion dollar questions what is what are those arms going to be used for so i agree with nora that of course you know president mubarak

must go but i think someone needs to answer the question what. comes next and that is always of course what in washington what is the what is the process so i think if that were more transparent and in egypt it is not iran if there isn't a transplant i think it's a little this is an uprising you know where there is no leader at the moment but i mean what i can tell you who does apparently have all the answers as to how this is going to play out is that is fox news because if you've been watching their coverage it's been all about the muslim brotherhood is taking over in the muslim brotherhood i. and there are all jihad is the world is coming to an end and let's take a listen at some of the program and it's not all due to your coverage that's all right but let's take a listen here. it's possible a country like egypt also the country to be pakistan if you let the majority of people decide the form of government they would wind up with a whacko anti western it's a democratic repressive government i want to go you. had to replace the whole

government this virus spreading throughout the middle east so here john mccain is calling democracy a virus that's spreading throughout the middle east because of course we've seen not only tunisia and egypt we're seeing risings of course in jordan in syria as well in yemen right now but is that the way that a lot of people in washington really think about this i mean come on let's be honest they think that democracy only works when it's their kind of democracy and otherwise it's a virus well let's be a little bit more explicit right this isn't just about a democratic form of government that people are calling a virus it's more associated with the people as opposed to the system so the same way that this kind of mainstream labels all muslim violence violence is terrorist as opposed to a type of violence the same way that the assailant representative giffords was represented as just a pregnant sailin and where is a muslim assailant would be represented as a terrorist is the same way that now democracy in the arab and muslim world is

being referred to as a virus and that has more to do with a racist conception of a people's ability to rule themselves what is this question what if they elect a whacko what if we elect a whacko this is about self government and it's not you cannot dismiss an entire region as able to rule and govern themselves otherwise we need a white man to continuously comment civilize the servage that's the discourse and what's underlying this entire narrative but is was also underlying here is that we you know we've heard not a lot when it comes to the obama administration. secretary clinton has spoken a few times in change thirteen people are scared because it doesn't necessarily fit into u.s. foreign policy. according to the wind and depending on who it is here that comes out on top well the obama administration frankly has been on all sides of this issue starting with our great vice president and god love him as he would say saying that he were supporting mubarak and he didn't think he was

a dictator where he's right and straight and should stand well i think that the problem is we always come to these crises and then we have i think in the white house a something like a crisis management team or a crisis response team but what i would hope before long and this is not a partisan statement a white house and a state department would have a crisis anticipation. and. something to do and something to deal with something to deal with any for the player larry because you know i said though it will happen he wanted what's going to happen either serious born in the united states does want freedom and democracy in fact as not. a sign of this the road in defense of democracy it's the right to stand up in the town square be it cairo or or gaza or jerusalem or damascus whatever town and say whatever you please without any fear of

of danger and so i think we really need to stand for that but at the same time this i said on t.v. more than a week ago in fact ten days ago that this is going to sweep the middle east and i think with respect to the well you know and with respect to what someone said we speak of viral marketing so i think today it's a neutral term but the idea is that the new the new middle east the new new middle east is not going to look like what we have today in the united states and that is a million how do i fit into our marketing right here you know diane relationship very. you know with real american security interested in what results were in fighting they were there well and it isn't about the security interests it's had those security interests it's had this political interest in this question to and to answer your question u.s. foreign policy in the middle east is antiquity it's old it shows it work it's counterproductive doesn't serve us change but then how does the u.s. right now if you know your catalyst for the u.s. to reconfigure how it views the middle east not to try to reshape the middle east

to fit its own and i think that's a perfectly every nation you know wonderful valid id or it happens because israel our closest ally whom we protect at the same time his camp will leave that the u.s. has turned its back on the bar well i think that's that's not completely true sammy but these are the statements that are coming out of syria and some of the talking heads and pundits that in israel are saying things to that effect but others are saying it's time for israel not to trust and uncle sure. as you would say in hebrew to trust in the almighty so i think there's a problem that the perception is that israel and america are too close and it's not advantageous to israel or america israel can and or regularly says we can defend ourselves just just let's not they don't necessarily even need us foreign aid but you're going there only the biggest recipient was a really good thing about israel being appalled that the u.s. isn't stepping in to do something about keeping them but it can please what that

says is that absent external support the entire middle east would look different if there were self-government the entire middle east would look different and that's with significant that what we are witnessing is the status quo is a tenuous status quo held together almost it's combustible it's bound to implode and this is the best thing that can happen to the region the most that the u.s. can hope for is that it could be a step ahead in order to dissipate how to embrace democracy how to support nasa and democracy in the region and it should then consider. if it means this much effort to sustain israel's presence then maybe israel is what needs to change and not necessarily to change i want robert he doesn't do anything it's not about israel it's about these governments which we frankly i agree with you we've supported the dictators because it was convenient and but it's too late when it was convenient and more than it was going to do we had geopolitical interests that were they helped us to support well absolutely and it's too late to get out ahead of the

curve but i do know that the united states does need to deal with this appropriately but i think the question is what. even if israel wasn't there what are these nations going to look like afterwards are they going to look like iran are they going to look like somebody you look like with the people one of them the same question of course everyone is asking are you guys we're not sure that iran looks like what the people would like them to have ever the emigration was there it was our own how we can help that transaction make sure that it's not as and i mean that we are you guys i'm surrounded i've been fortunate because we're out of time but that is you know the big question of course everyone here is asking is what is it going to look afterwards what's going to happen next how long until mubarak does flee or step down or who knows where you said ok i'm going to die any gyptian soil very stubborn man i want to thank you both for joining our still ahead on tonight's show who is calling the shots in the war in afghanistan according to a new article in rolling stone it's definitely not the president's find out who

gave it its image and lawmakers are quietly beginning to bring you several parts of the patriot act so we'll tell you what key provisions are going to be expanded extended that can violate your civil liberties we'll hash it all out in just a moment. what drives. really believe something it's. something. we. will see. it's time to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy is a report on our. last year a rolling stone article ended the career of general stanley mcchrystal now rolling

stone has done a profile on general david petraeus who's taken over command of the war in afghanistan now while petraeus himself declined to be interviewed the article aptly titled king david's war portrays a man who does whatever it takes to make things go his way that includes undermining the president working with and paying off corrupt warlords escalating violence despite the counterinsurgency strategy that he himself wrote the book on and perhaps most importantly being a master of spin in his nine hundred eighty seven doctoral dissertation at princeton betray us wrote the following what policymakers believed to have taken place in any particular case is what matters more than what actually occurred but nearly ten years into this war how long can that betray us keep manipulating the situation before the veil is finally lifted here to discuss it with me is robert farley a blogger at lawyers guns and money robert thanks so much for being here tonight thank you for having me now i want your opinion first of this profile that we've

been given after this here in rolling stone it's not necessarily things that we haven't heard before but here it's all in one little twelve page package but i thought it was very interesting it was certainly less exciting than the mcchrystal profile was in the sense that this is not good and general petraeus is career trash talking no no no cussing over beers but i guess that's because he wasn't interviewed for himself right right he refused to be interviewed and he does often give interviews even to publications which are normally military he gave an interview to runner's world a couple years ago that talked about his work out happy. and so forth so he certainly knows how to manage his media identity and his media persona but interesting then why do you think that he didn't take this interview i think that everybody in the military is afraid of michael hastings who wrote the mcchrystal article so that it's very hard for people to talk to him right now. which i think is why there's been so much insider and stuff here it's a lot of stuff that we've heard before in this particular article now you know well some of the things that i've found a little funny that was that it's very technical in the beginning and then it kind

of goes into start praising this man if you've ever seen those commercials about the most interesting man in the world for the beer and here they almost are talking up a tray is that when they say he wants gave a signed autograph to a reporter he went jogging with you know in meetings the general mentions iraq in his success there every five minutes this is clearly somebody it's very self-confidence i guess you could say loves himself but clearly he also is a master of spin and we were just talking about the way that he works with the media and you know in this piece where they talk about how he lobbied before the nato summit to get our nato allies to scratch that twenty eleven withdrawal deadline and say to two thousand and fourteen and beyond we know that this latest strategy review that was in december ended up being not much of a review at all because anything negative that was written in he put in the positive so do you think that he's right here and what he said back in one thousand nine hundred seventy is that all you need is for congress for the people to think everything's going ok more than what's actually going on in the ground i think that

all of these things are connected for him i think that he understands the value in the importance of his own persona he was not well known before the surge in iraq certainly people who followed military affairs knew and he had a reputation for being a really smart and a really successful officer but now he has a reputation for success and the reason he mentions iraq so often it's not just because he's very proud of what he did there although it sure is but also because that evokes success in people's minds and that's part of the spin to try to get the other countries to do what he wants them to do with afghanistan and that's part of the spin in terms. making the. strategic review come out in exactly the way that he wants it and i think in some sense it is correct that it is what policymakers right now think that matters in terms of what we're going to do in the next three or four years rather than what historians or what even very close analysts activity in afghanistan are thinking right now to the extent that he can transform the narrative of the war door to the extent he can control the narrative of the war and

he's doing what he thinks is his job and one thing that i found interesting in peace to you is that you know there is that assumption that well it now if it is in charge if obama loses the war then it's not going to be his fault because petraeus is the man that everyone thinks can do anything do you think that's true and i think that was in the minds of the obama people when there's still obama's war well it's almost there will be a lot of debate about who is exactly responsible when this is over and i think the obama people felt that they had been confined and constrained by transected city in running up to the last review and giving him command was essentially ok we'll hear then it will be your responsibility and this is something that you can handle and you will take some of the load away from the president now let's talk about what he's doing in afghanistan on the ground that we know that he's increased violence increased you know these night raids he has a role in the tank these increased airstrikes but he also has gotten very cozy like he did in iraq to win in iraq and actually worked with warlords with these men that

are corrupt that a lot of the afghan people don't trust themselves in any hands out money to them hands out projects and you know afterwards how do you clean up that mess you know some people say this is this almost could launch another civil war inside of afghanistan and you know how do you backtrack on who you propped up and who you gave money to one point in time right it's extremely complicated you're right that he has launched a much more kinetic form of war than was expected when he was made commander and for more air strikes for more searching for taliban in order to destroy them and that he has. focused very much on the warlords who were either there or emerged over the past few years i mean i think part of the units are for the what do you do next is that you don't do anything so it's one potential answers and that may be the answer that we're going to where we look at afghanistan that isn't necessarily in afghanistan with a lot of national institutions but with a very strong central government or with structures that resemble

a modern nation state very much but it's an afghanistan that doesn't have the taliban and the warlords are following that as long as there isn't the taliban there and so that may be what we're aiming at just kill as much about as possible and turn over the authority you need to the warlords and so that would be a short term strategy is just in the short term get rid of the taliban while you're there then leave leave it to the warlords and who knows what happens afterwards but how long do you think betrays thinking about this is perception game of telling everyone that things are going well and that they are gaining momentum against the taliban and when the proof is really questionable there he might be able to keep it up for quite a while even at the height of the surge in iraq when we the people were questioning whether this was a good operation whether these were good tactics. he managed to portray a success he managed very well. in american military activities it's possible that he'll be able to pull this off in afghanistan as well for at least as long as he wants to be there and we don't know exactly how long that is what people are using

the number to call the way today was a for that he'd like to be there for decades perhaps even generations but we'll see if if the congress people let him if the american people also let him robert thank you so much for being here thank you for having me. now on february twenty eighth if you can provisions of everyone's favorite civil liberties crushing piece of legislation the patriot act are going to expire but if you're not because a lot makers are on it last week senator patrick leahy introduced the usa patriot act sunset extension act of two thousand and eleven now this is going to save three of the most nefarious. provisions roving wiretaps without having to identify the person or the location the lone wolf measure which permits surveillance of non u.s. persons who aren't affiliated with terrorist groups and the library records provision which allows the f.b.i. to obtain any library records that are present to fully relevant to a terrorist investigation well besides all that leahy is trying to sell this as a package that americans should all support because it increases oversight of

government surveillance powers but considering the more than forty thousand violations of the f.b.i. made under the guise of the patriot act in the last decade should we really be supportive or should we be skeptical joining me to discuss it is julian sanchez a research fellow at the cato institute and d.c. based writer and journalist thanks so much for being here now before we talk about these oversight provisions which i'm very curious to know how many of them there really are and whether they'll be effective let's begin with what is being extended here these roving wiretaps tracking foreigners that the library thing to you argue these make up some of the worst elements of the patriot act that they just want to keep on going you know i actually don't i think the worst problems in the patriot act are related to national security letters which have already been found to have been misused in the normal scale by the government's own internal watchdog reports you mentioned a recent report that found a number of violations and they found the proportion of reported violations of the intelligence oversight board accounted for by problems with national security

letters was close to a third and this is actually one of the provisions that doesn't sunset it's also one that again and again during these sunset debase they've trying to introduce reform so that's i think the most urgent thing to fix these other of these other provisions though also i think require modification not because they're quite as urgently problematic as national security letters but because you know there are potential issues with the specific wording of some of these that it requires amendment but are we just saying that because in the last decade we've gotten so used to the govern. why are tapping people wherever you go and perhaps tracking foreigners all under the guise of terrorism i mean ten years ago before nine eleven if we had looked at something like the patriot act we have all said this is crazy i think that's probably true and certainly that is that is what we said i mean most of what's in the patriot act is stuff that was on the f.b.i.'s wish list wish list for years and that indeed had been proposed in particular posts after the bombing of them or a building in oklahoma city was seen as being

a bridge too far at the time after nine eleven they had a ready made set of wishes to present the congress rubber stamps the sad thing i think is that mild leahy's proposal is really is from a civil liberties perspective probably the best of the available options the alternatives at this point really are a three year extension with no changes at all no further oversight or senator chuck grassley recently said he just plans to make the law permanent so that not only are the provisions renewed but we don't have an occasion to go back and debate whether they require further modification now leahy is saying though is that you know it's ok i'm going to extend these three provisions but there's going to be more oversight do you actually believe that's going to happen or what does he mean by that some of it some some of the proposals he make makes are decent one of the things he would do is create more record keeping and further audits the abuses we know about so far because of inspector general audit so requiring more of those is

not a bad idea more record keeping is important i mean these thousands tens of thousands of national security letters that are issued every year you know one of the problems is that is a huge volume of stuff so to go back after the fact a couple years later and trying to figure out whether the were used properly or not requires there be some kind of paper trail so one of the requirements here is also that even though these are not presented to a judge for approval at least we see f.b.i. agents have to keep a record of the facts justifying seeking records of the national security letter so when someone goes back years later and says well why did you get all these people's telephone records internet records they can't just say. seems like a good idea there has to be some kind of paper trail saying this is why we believed it was relevant there was a little bit of judicial oversight that strengthened here more approval of minimisation procedures to limit what happens to information once the reported slightly more strict standard for these two fifteen orders the call the library records provision because librarians made a stink about it actually lets them demand the production of any tangible thing

which includes records includes a d.n.a. sample maybe if your doctor has it. and and says look it's no longer presumptively relevant just for example to have someone in contact with the target of investigation there's not enough to just say we're investigating this person and everyone they've emailed is now intentionally in the presidential candidate you have to say something about why that person i mean is very likely he has good intentions here but if we just look at this recent report which we're just talking about released by the way they did get to pour through some of those records that the f.b.i. was keeping they apparently made forty thousand over forty thousand violations so why would we think that just because there's a little more oversight and what is going to abide by that especially the f.b.i. you know this pretty troubling i have she would say the forty thousand is if that's extrapolation from a sample they looked at eight hundred reported violations to the intelligence oversight board so they're projecting from what they looked at to say there could be as many as forty thousand violations of both internal guidelines and formal law

but it should be troubling in particular because so much of what we're being asked to do is to count on internal procedures internal oversight internal checks to ensure that these powers are used properly because they're used in secret with so many other kinds of investigations we assume information's in to come out eventually and so sunlight will be want serves as a check to prevent these abuses if they're not paying attention to their own internal guidelines to their own internal reporting requirements if as this report said they're on average waiting two and a half years. years before reporting the violations that do get reported to the proper oversight authorities although what's the point the damage has been done and you know also mentioned here too that the fs was also you know a little bit shocked by the willingness of so many companies to comply with the government when they were asking for certain information secretly that's all the time we have it thanks so much for joining us doing thank you are still to come on tonight's show the president spoke today at the national prayer breakfast here in

d.c. but what do we know about the group that actually plans this practice wait until you hear what we've uncovered in tonight's time segment and he's been in custody for months accused of leaking documents to wiki leaks so tonight we'll be joined by a guest who regularly visits bradley manning and lock up at quantico. it's.

seven thirty am in the russian capital good to have you with us here on our team using your headline gyptian president hosni mubarak says he's fed up with being in power but won't leave office for fear of chaos a state that many say his country's already in huge crowds remain on the streets and violent clashes continue. president dmitry medvedev welcomes progress in the moscow airport attack investigation by chides officials for earlier announcing that the case had been solved. and in britain we investigate links between radical groups and the opposition in egypt as protests in the u.k. are used by its alarmist organisation banned in many other countries to promote its own policies. stay with us part two of the alone

a show coming your way next. for the full story we've gone to. the biggest issues get the human voice face to face with the news makers. time for tonight's tool time award it was a show of force in both the political and religious world today here in d.c. the national prayer breakfast took place this morning at the washington hilton and among the guests who are president obama and the first lady now this event was first started one thousand nine hundred fifty three by dwight eisenhower and every single sitting president since then has attended other breakfasts attracts some thirty five hundred guests including international invitees for over one hundred countries and the national prayer breakfast is hosted by members of the.