it's easier to be in the park we can see players. as second explosion at the fukushima nuclear power plant in japan has set off a panic and speculation about the crisis but lost in a technical mumbo jumbo is what it all means we're going to try to make sense of what exactly is going on in just a bit. but what is very wrong. whatever happens the rule of law has to be followed and told so far it's treated. so as bradley manning just getting what he deserves and what about the now former state department official who criticize the pentagon over many treatment for his debates.

good evening it's monday march fourteenth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine of and you're watching our team now japan's nuclear situation has taken another dark turn today after a second explosion rocked the fukushima nuclear power plant some one hundred fifty miles north of tokyo now the reactors are said to be intact but reports say that the nuclear fuel rods are now completely exposed and officials are warning that the radioactive material could spread over the next several weeks so what is so can japan learn anything at all from the one nine hundred seventy nine three mile island nuclear disaster here in pennsylvania well who better to ask than the man who handled battles aster himself earlier i spoke to former governor and u.s. attorney general dick thornburgh and here's part of our conversation. technical challenges very simple you want to bring the reactor to a cold shutdown and you want to prevent the leak of radioactive material

and sounds easy but it's tensely difficult as we're seeing in japan now how do you deal with myriad of information that's coming out in crisis like this i mean you have experts coming out of the woodwork pretending to know x. y. and z. about this you have media reports how does the government and can the government actually be trusted to know what's really going on with government i think any of us who have responsibility in these kinds of areas has to work very hard to retain our credibility because it's important to be able to be an authoritative source for information that people can make their own judgment as to their own well being. you're really going to throw you're absolutely right there's a welter of information coming at you from every source and in the case of three mile island we found out we originally relied on the utility that ran the reactor for information and we found out during the first day that they had misrepresented things to us and stated things that weren't true and we had to go back to the

public and say look what we told you isn't correct we were right to buy these folks and we had to start looking around for other facts and terribly frustrating and painstaking process because you have to double check every source and you have to more or less triangulate to get accurate information and meanwhile the public is very impatient when they were asked forward thirty two years to today of the situation just saying or could it actually send to the japanese authorities have been saying that you know there shouldn't be too many worries about high levels of radiation could could the people of japan be like they could be but there's no reason to think that they are being lied to you see some real evidence of that the the difficulty is the worst thing you can do is put out misinformation and the temptation to do that is very intense because. there is great pressure on people in authority to say something or do something and oftentimes the best thing is to keep your mouth shut and wait and see what develops but as i said in the meantime what

you've got to do is painstakingly check every possible source balance from all one against the other and as you pointed out there are a lot of so-called experts out there who are going to tell you more than they know or less than they know is the case may be. the real challenge of being in a position of authority during these kinds of incidents well i certainly want to i would not want to be in no shoes it could be argued that the psychological impact of the three mile island disaster was far more worse than the actual physical impacts there were no casualties of course in that situation like we have not seen a new nuclear power plant commissioned since one nine hundred seventy nine when that accident took place what do you foresee will be the psychological impacts on the nuclear industry following that your plans aster well there's no question that the three mile island accident stopped the development of nuclear power cold in its tracks there hasn't been a single plant commissioned since that time. and i don't think this is very good

news for the nuclear industry happenings in japanese and it's interesting because prior to this episode in japan there was a resurgence of interest in including nuclear power in the mix as we attempted to free ourselves from reliance on foreign oil and it was so easy able to get your honor exactly is exactly but. i think that probably has dissipated somewhat with concern about what's happened in japan now and again we have to keep in mind number one we don't really know what the outcome of this is going to be what the lessons learned will be from the japanese experience really really understand what's actually going on and i think any proposed nuclear fuel rods it sounds bad but i don't really know what that can be there the nuclear fuel rods three mile island were exposed we had a what's called a part. meltdown that did not produce any environmental or health. adverse consequences later study showed but sifting all that out takes

a long time in the public gets impatient and they see their gas prices going up and it's it's not. an ideal situation but again as i said the worst thing to do is that push out misinformation and falsely reassure people who are falsely frightened them . all right well that was the extern grover the former governor of pennsylvania now it comes from a leader with the bradley manning case you should probably go back to watching the jersey shore or whatever else you do for fun but to recap the young soldier who's suspected of leaking classified documents to the file sharing website wiki leaks now the twenty three year old has been held in virtual solitary confinement in a marine base in virginia and faces numerous charges including aiding the enemy a capital offense like an earned him the death penalty now the fact that he has yet to be can the fact is that he has yet to be convicted of a crime despite if you spend twenty three hours of the day in a windowless six by twelve foot cell forced to strip naked every evening conditions that according to at least one friend has left manning in

a nearly catatonic state and the saga has divided the country and it seems also the obama administration now in the latest developments the public face of america foreign policy p.j. crowley has been forced to resign after speaking out about manning's treatment saying it was quote ridiculous counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defense now there's a lot to discuss here and for more on this we're going to be joined by two men with a rather different perspective michael prysner is an iraq war whether veteran an antiwar activist who joined us to join us from the los angeles studio and here in washington we have the founder and president of less government seats and not lee now gentlemen we have quite a bit of time for this so i do want you to express everything you have to say but one at a time please then i'm going to start with you bradley manning villain or hero of villain for sure if you kill three again i'm. one of them are there if he's convicted of what he's been accused of he should get be executed for sure that is

a capital offense the amount of information some of the high security some of the admin some of the information but yes i definitely think that if he's guilty of all these things he should definitely be executed and michael prysner same question villain or hero. well absolutely he's a hero what bradley manning has revealed is this web of lies around the wars in iraq and afghanistan and around us foreign policy as a whole and i think i think it's very important for us to focus on with the release of these top comments in particular because right now it's kind of the most pressing issue for u.s. service members and for people here at home is this war in afghanistan and that these documents prove that the obama administration the pentagon the u.s. government know full well that the war in afghanistan is lost that only that they cannot win the war in afghanistan if they're sending wave after wave of more young men and women for united states to have their legs blown off to be killed in

a war that they know cannot be won and what bradley manning has done is tell the truth when all we're getting from the u.s. government is lies and lies and lies just like we were fed before the iraq war telling the truth it's not a crime telling the truth is heroic the criminals are the ones in the white house and the pentagon criminals are the ones in the white house and the pentagon reaction satan more i would hold so separate so the issues. look we whether or not we can win in iraq or afghanistan is not the point the point is a private in the army is not. charged with releasing that information there's been and the damage goes well beyond just what he released about iraq and afghanistan i keep going back to the damaging information he released on the part on the king of yemen who has been working with us and one of the most damaging cable was you keep killing al qaeda and i'll keep taking credit for it because of course in the muslim world everything has to have a. face on it and he's been taking credit for us killing al qaeda in yemen and now he's been outed he's going to be a target for of al qaeda he's going to be

a target of terrorist organizations muslim brotherhood throughout the middle east because of this idiot manning now i know i've been stuck in the studio for a while but was he manning was actually charged i mean you knew there was those part of the information that he put in the lady gaga allegedly put out here in the city doesn't this get to the bigger i said it waiting doesn't it get to the bigger issue which is that i thought you know i was i was born in russia but i thought in america you have a constitutional right to a fair trial here and i did i started this all i said if he's guilty i don't want to have do i have to say that every time before i say something i think and what we're operating on the assumption that i've said at the beginning and i'll say it again now the blanket overarching theme of this is everything i say can be prefaced with a three word phrase if he's guilty karma and then whatever i say we don't know if he's guilty you know for sure i want to be tried if he's convicted i want to be executed but going forward in this conversation every time i say something it's the

unspoken three word phrase if he's guilty comma and then i'll say whatever i say michael prysner should bradley manning be executed as our friend here is that. well i think that's completely ridiculous and you know he's already being published and says you know if he's guilty but he's already enduring pretrial punishment you know that's you know reminiscent of what we saw coming out of guantanamo bay and abu ghraib but you know see ins argument would make sense if u.s. foreign policy in iraq and afghanistan in the middle east in yemen was designed for national security in the interests of the vast majority of people in united states but it's not us foreign policy is driven by what is best for the oil giants what's best for last three and a defense contractor what will or if you had u.s. intervention what it was like as the ride is for is for rich men and rich corporations and every single soldier who's dying in these wars all of those civilians in yemen that being killed in yemen all of those civilians and yemen and pakistan are dying for regional domination of banks and corporations here in the

united states i do want to say that of course we have to focus on afghanistan look when the vietnam war when nixon came into power in the nixon administration came in they knew full well that the war in vietnam was lost and could not be won but to avoid the political setback of a military defeat because they didn't want to take responsibility they sent more soldiers to that war and more bombs on vietnam after they knew the war was lost thirty thousand more u.s. troops died and millions more vietnamese died before the inevitable u.s. withdraw and if you are against what bradley manning has done or allegedly done which is told the truth about the situation in afghanistan if you're against that then you're saying you're for all of those tens of thousands more soldiers who are going to be sent to their deaths we're going to be sent to get their legs blown off for a war that this government knows very well is lost now i don't sell michael you were an iraq war veteran and when you sign up to join the military and you take an oath to to swear this country and to stand by the laws of this country so let me put

this question to you. if you violate adult eirik allegedly releasing that information. but he's sort of those to defend his country defend his friends and his family and his coworkers and his neighbors here in the united states and if he did release these documents he has done exactly that we have no reason to support these with these words are costing us over seven hundred million dollars a day at a time where in the united states to wishing is skyrocketing people are being cut off of social services and health care unions are under attack public sector workers are under attack and we're told there's not enough money when over a trillion dollars a year is being flooded into the into the pentagon to fund its military operations in iraq and afghanistan and yemen and pakistan and all of these other countries that are in the crosshairs of all right well let me i have absolutely ask you that you have bradley manning the man at issue here and now p.j. crowley is not some sort of you know east coast liberal hippie running around and

trying to stop wars anywhere he's a democrat but he is he is he has spoken out from the harshest terms against bradley manning and against wiki leaks who do you think that he was speaking for when he called this treatment i'm just stupid and. which is why i thought i mean so do you see a split within the obama administration on this bradley manning case well brought obama picks and chooses certain spots to look tough on foreign policy to look for him on immigration to look tough on issues that he's actually. genuinely weak on and bradley manning is the is the you would say michael would say unfortunate victim of this he's the exception that proves the rule in the broad obama i'm weak on foreign policy. play he's been used as a scapegoat he said i would be tough tough for being on bradley manning look out of it look at who we're going to lock down in quantico so i'm not you know i don't know the the specifics of the case i don't know how much they know about what he's

done and they may feel he has more information and need to keep them out there like this i don't know this. but i want to listen a little michael's rambling. as he meandered all over the place. just because you don't like the country's foreign policy doesn't mean you can out it to the planet earth does it make you a truthteller that makes you would treat a traitor well i mean the u.s. government can be blamed for not protecting information better a lot of people have all of the women that's fine with it but that means both sides are guilty that there's no contract everything from manning if he's guilty but what it does is it adds blame and culpability to the idiotic system that was privately go in and. download that much later and i thought i felt the earth move because you can seem to agree at least on one thing which is that the treatment of bradley manning is not exactly the best but it's very hard to parents but if you if he's if he's guilty and they know something about how much information he still may have then maybe the lockdowns just i don't know and i'm not going to accuse of the

security personnel of anything of not knowing what they know about the situation clearly a divisive issue and one of our producers lindsay garfield had taken to the streets to ask people exactly what it is they thought bradley manning whether he should be rightly treated as he's being treated are treated differently and whether peter crowley should have actually resigned as he did let's take a look he resigned his post as state department spokesperson yesterday this just coming after his comments saying that bradley reading's treatment is stupid counterproductive and ridiculous we know what the state department thinks about this but d.c. residents think let's find out about counterproductive but probably stupid you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. and so i don't think that that is indicative that he is being considered innocent until proven guilty if he's already being tortured everybody could have their day in court and should be treated with

dignity or were you surprised to learn that he was in solitary confinement had been forced to strip naked and had been essentially tortured does that surprise you. well it doesn't surprise me considering all that happened with you know iraqi and you know finding out that those who were put in jail were treated unjustly and they were you know the same thing happened with them so it doesn't surprise me the government cover that up and i did you see what you're saying about iraq because a lot of people have been comparing this to iraq and on the graves that you know they're saying that this is one of our own u.s. citizens being treated the same way that we treated iraqi citizens you know that scares karma and you know goes around comes around i mean i hate to say about you each three others you know that way don't think it would come to your own citizens i mean at the end of the day you know it's kind of it's really crazy but it's kind of like you know what goes around comes around you do it to other countries he said he was a long process you know innocent till guilty so no one should be treated badly you know while they're in care custody before they've been tried including in solitary

confinement and. you know it's quite dreadful psychological torture if he is guilty he'll serve a time that you know he needs to serve and that's how it should be but he should be he should not be tortured you know this isn't a police state we're not this isn't a fascist government that the u.s. has so no i don't i don't think that that's appropriate or you know what this country is about and what it is wrong very wrong but whatever happens the rule of law has to be followed in terms of how he's treated if it is true if it turns out he is being found guilty of leaking this information do you think that the punishments more warranted. what i think tortures warranted ever. this is not a military dictatorship my family's smart and. military dictatorship is it's sad but it's what you expect from a military dictatorship. this is a democracy and you know the u.s. is about equal rights and it's just not. acceptable well there you have it

a lot of divided opinions and i'm going to go back to you we are in fact a marker separate issue a public constitutional problem separating from what the consequences of manning's allegedly are do you think that the treatment of him to date is democratic. first of all i can i go back to if they think if you don't you think that he's got a lot of additional information and they're afraid he's going to leak it because he has a track he has a potential track record of doing that then the solitary confinement may be. warranted in essence you trust the government in deciding this without i trust the security personnel for sure you know the boys at quantico know what they're doing and i certainly give them the benefit of the doubt i don't i don't assume the worst with with those types of people now michael you're leading a group of people to meet the boys of quantico this weekend the coming rally on the

twentieth to bradley what do you expect to accomplish with that. yeah that's right you know this saturday on march nineteenth actually thousands of people all over the country from los angeles to washington d.c. are going to demanding an immediate end to the wars in iraq and afghanistan and freedom for bradley manning allegedly has exposed so much about these wars now you know i went to iraq in march of two thousand and three with the u.s. army as a part of the initial invasion force in that country country and occupied the country for twelve months i went there because this government said that there is an imminent attack from these weapons of mass destruction this government said that the iraqi people wanted us to come into that country liberate them the u.s. government lied about every single thing surrounding the war in iraq so they could go in and denationalize its oil around five thousand u.s. soldiers are dead over a million iraqis are dead tens of thousands of soldiers have been maimed or wounded hundreds of thousands of psychological trauma now the american people had the right

to know that the u.s. government was lying to them about why we went to war in iraq the u.s. government has are they you the american people have the right to know that their tax dollars are paying for the death of scores of civilians in iraq and afghanistan and pakistan and yemen the american people have the right to know that while the obama administration goes on t.v. and says the afghan war is going great we're winning we're making gains we just send some more soldiers it's all going to be good and then we can leave the american people have the right to know if there are a lying when they say that and that every single soldier that's deployed there right now is doing so in a war that they know is lost and those people's deaths will be in vain so what bradley manning has done if you did it is heroic because the u.s. government is incapable of telling us the truth all they told us is lies and millions of people around the world have been so detrimentally affected by it that they've proven they're incapable of it so we have the right to expose ourselves now i want to turn to what president obama has said he's actually finally spoken out on the bradley manning scenario and he was asked what he thought of the treatment and

i think we should have that sound right at this press conference on friday and take a look at what the president. you know i have actually asked the pentagon whether or not. and the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards they sure mean that they are. now satan. in what world do you turn to that organization that's accused of doing something wrong what do you agree with it or not and take them at their word for it i mean is that really enough to africa the pentagon a bomb at the pentagon the pentagon for us a place that must be great for all the lawful use made a career a fifty year career out of accusing and abuse of being wrong when they're not so we can't you know that it's not it's the evidence that was required it was a there was a senator in the in the in the tooth out in the nearly two thousand that is bush it's not the blood it's not the amount of evidence that matters it's the

seriousness of the charge that's absurd there has to be some evidence behind it and this guy you know so he starts his entire screen with the bush administration said we wouldn't be in danger of imminent attack and no one ever said that so everything you said out of that was tainted by the fact that you started your sentence with a lot less give back so many of us get back to many one of the things that i want to bring up here is there is an inherent contradiction in our treatment of bradley manning and our treatment of certain contractors perhaps that work for us in foreign lands now one of the more important developments i want to bring up is there's two former blackwater contractors who were actually accused of killing innocent afghan civilians they were on friday and. basically convicted of involuntary manslaughter right for the death of one they are facing eight years in prison for this and they were acquitted of the murder of another one now when you have american contractors working abroad in foreign governments don't you think

that these kinds of crimes but i believe it to so many more anti-american attacks so many more reversals of support for this country across the world see a lot of a lot of what but not all of it but a lot of what america gets is what i call the hype high school quarterback treatment very few people in high school like high school quarterback he's the big man on campus united states is the big man on campus there's some envy there's some jealousy you're going to. yet a lot of it occasionally conjures a look what you have to look at and it's there it's there prism if you don't want to look at it through this person that's fine but i think you're mistaken in afghanistan you have what thousands and thousands of american troops standing between muslims trying to kill other muslims because they want to focus on the two contractors who got convicted of involuntary manslaughter versus the thousands of soldiers that are defending innocent muslims from geologists and if they want to choose to focus on those two and sort of those tens of thousands that's their choice but i'm not going to lose any sleep that i think they don't like because

they're looking at the world through that prism go what's your response to seaton's that's my american way or the highway approach. well you know if it this high school quarterback analogy is is a little ridiculous you know the reason that most people in the world dislike the united states is because of the actions of the united states around the world because of all the countries they have dropped bombs on invaded occupied overthrown democratically elected leaders and installed some of the worst most brutal dictators in world history that's why where is that had around the world where did that happen michael where do we have a ron the philippines got another one. right on the town and let's get back to the issue here but satan doesn't there's various saying that preaching democracy as we see they have not really think about yes we are we see negotiation through this countless times in the uprisings and you ask me to defend the obama administration no but i'm asking you to explain how this you know the rest of the country and the rest of the world should behave as we do approach and how that squares away with

the kinds of an actual first of all i'm going back to two thousand and three i was going i was i was against nation building in either iraq or afghanistan i want to go in take the taliban out lead will leave a note to the you know this is where we were just on the march to remember how you got here and we'll be back if you mess with us i didn't go to nation build so we have our american nationals on foreign soil committing crimes on foreign soil and they're also saying that we're not they're not supposed to stick to the rules of afghanistan they're supposed to be you know they do our big. we're supposed to the rules are good when they go to the right and we get it and i'm just here we along would have been they would have been allowed to be murdered by the thrivers that's a family that was killed and we will first go there isn't shari'a law and in afghanistan the taliban did it and they were through overthrown so there's no shari'a law in afghanistan second of all you're saying that they broke the law and they did and they were tried and convicted so they weren't living by a separate set of rules that everybody else and again i say that two or five or seven instances where contractors behaved improperly versus the tens of thousands of both military and nonmilitary personnel so they and personnel that are over

there defending innocent danni's against attacks from other muslims so if you again if you want to focus on two or five or seven versus tens of thousands you can do that too i just think you mistake michael that some balik consequence of us two or five or seven contractors how bad my god i didn't that is not how much that her reputation around. well very badly and i think that the mercenaries that have earned their reputation in iraq and afghanistan for constantly killing civilians aren't civilians unprovoked and then receiving no punishment at all and the government of those countries that they're operating in having no ability to prosecute them under their laws is you know of course complete have parkers you by the u.s. government and fuels their hatred of those people in countries towards the foreign occupiers now since making the ridiculous assertion that afghanistan is this country where there's most of them killing muslims and if we left it just the catastrophe in the u.s. soldiers were there to protect them i didn't say that i didn't this is absolutely

ridiculous this is absolutely ridiculous i wonder see in knows what the pentagon's official number is up a number of armed resistance groups who are fighting the u.s. occupation it's not just the taliban it's over eighteen hundred separate armed resistance groups the resistance in afghanistan is a popular uprising of afghans from all walks of life from all backgrounds in every corner of afghanistan who rightfully see the occupation of their country as an empire trying to gain a foothold in the region that's of strategic importance for resources and for dominating the region in afghanistan he. said i'm going. to be one of the hijackers on nine eleven will not we're not from advantage over one another that includes you michael now let's just get to the final question and that's in this whole mess how do we get at the end of the day whether you agree or not on this issue of whether bradley manning is being unfairly treated are not obviously are standing a bribe is not in a good place right now how do we get out of this mess is it possible to get out of

this and i seen well i was again he said i was i was not for the nation building i was for getting in and getting out both in the industry and in iraq what we have to do it look what the world is the rats in the queue they're reacting to the perception and a lot of this perception is because of doofus is like my four who insist on and focusing on the. minority rather than the vast majority of what we do around the world what about all the tsunami relief we give in indonesia what about all the tsunami relief or about to give in japan what about this what the earthquake relief we gave iran how did that do for us how did that why didn't that count towards our reputation why do only the small slight negatives count towards a reputation michael right all the huge positives we do michael we're almost out of time quick response sure we and the hatred of people all around the world towards the u.s. government when we shut down those eight hundred military bases around the world better for nothing else than securing a network of global domination when we stop dropping bombs on innocent people not just in the.