but we are in a clear sense of who they are we do not have any specific information about specific individuals. or you are confused as i am so who then exactly are the rebels as the pendulum swings what's next in a land where the history of government is imbedded with tribal tradition. and in a land over its head in wars what kind of toll has it placed on america look at the many costs that come. and going to war as part of humanitarian intervention why do some countries get protection while others are left to fend for

themselves. it's wednesday march thirtieth four pm in washington d.c. and christine for sound watching our team will start today with an update on the situation in libya where you could say it's been a pendulum swing in the quest for control in the last twenty four hours we've seen rebels having to retreat being pushed east by troops loyal to moammar gadhafi probably duffy forces have been shelling rebels with mortars and rockets and just how organized and prepared of the rebel forces are well that's starting to become a serious question and day twelve of western involvement there are just policy on the ground in tripoli and brings us the very latest. the fighters have now been pushed back to the city of ras lanuf we are hearing that this is strategically important while the city is firmly in the hands of gadhafi is made now there are

numerous reasons being bandied about as to why the rebels are being face to retreat and retreat so quickly part of that is because gadhafi forces are simply base organized a base with trained of a head base of leadership and this is posing some real dilemmas to the international community in terms of what it should do next when it's becoming increasingly clear that these airstrikes are not that successful while the government here in tripoli is insisting as it has done since these coalition air strikes began that the number of civilians continues to climb and that it hovers somewhere more than one hundred now we do know that there were secondary explosions cost in the town of music which is about two hundred kilometers to the south of tripoli because at an ammunitions dump that was hit in those coalition is strikes we went there was a group of foreign journalists and we saw damage to the hospital as well as to several homes and residential areas the moves of some of the wards in the hospital had been broken in we also saw some bits where there was blood stains and did we

now the patients were evacuated in time but we heard from the hospital staff that some thirteen people were wounded we also reckon we were very a number of news to start bangladeshi and also philippine me and they as you can well imagine are very anxious and very scared and very desperate to get out of here which is prime minister david cameron says that he has not ruled out arming the rebels and this of course is the concern that's been expressed by critics in the international community and certainly here in tripoli some thread un resolution one ninety seven three was approved there is that close that talks about. measures and this is open to interpretation and what we think from the british is that it needed to protect civilian lives when they can justify the use of weapons we'll see here in the similar kind of line coming out of the obama administration they have a saying that they could allow for the supply of. and that they are looking at all options on the table now if indeed there is going to be the supply of weapons to the rebel fighters this poses a whole host of the members and

a whole host of very critical questions number one people do not know who the rebels are there are those amongst the ranks with outcry the leanings extremist leanings movies where police land up in the hands and indeed if they do does that mean this is the very real possibility that the weapons could end up in the hands of gadhafi soldiers and then even more than that if you're going to hand over weapons to fighters on the ground you are going to need to give them some kind of practical assistance and training which begs the next concern particularly here in tripoli and that is the question of whether or not the international community is preparing the ground to send ground forces here that was our view correspondent paula slayer from the libyan capital of tripoli so we want to focus our discussion today on this question exactly who are these rebels to answer that i did some research and went to the talk to people behind the decision to get involved in libya in the first place president obama and secretary of state clinton let's hear what they say about who the rebels are. the people that we've met with have been

fully vetted so we have a clear sense of who they are and so far they're saying the right things and most of them are professionals lawyers doctors. people who appear to be credible we do not have any specific information about specific individuals from any organization who are part of this but of course we're still getting to know those who are leading the trans the transitional national council and that will be a process that continues. so it seems to me we might not really know who they are so are we trust we are trusting know that they're worth helping voting our time our weapons our resources a lot of people wondering just how far help will go will we train the rebels will be given weapons president obama secretary clinton are you ruling out u.s. military hardware assistance i'm not ruling it out but i'm also not ruling it out

it is our interpretation that. nine hundred seventy three. amended or overrode the absolute prohibition of arms to anyone in libya. so that there could be legitimate transfer of arms if a country were to choose to do that cash i just don't feel like i'm getting any definitive answers here so instead let's bring in someone into the conversation who knows what things at least look like from the front lines not in libya but this is a man who's made some tough decisions and has experienced firsthand the small successes and also a large scale horrors of war and even fascinating as a retired united states army officer he was stationed in iraq in the early months of the war he's also the author of this the warrior king the triumph and betrayal of an american commander in iraq. and the let's talk about what's going on

here what have you put this in some practical terms the intervening the airstrikes the support of the rebels what will come out of this well christine for having me on. i think right off the bat we need to have some very clear military objectives probably some very good follow on objectives and an exit strategy i don't think anybody feels comfortable with the. reasons right now. you know will we look around to what else is going on in the world we can point to things here at home of course unemployment the economy the breaking down of infrastructure but you know we can't ignore what's going on in these other wars that we're involved in just yesterday in iraq a targeted and sophisticated attack in to create this is of course the hometown of former dictator saddam hussein but fifty people were killed including a journalist. so then we see that we have what we're seeing in libya which i mean frankly at times it seems like elise what's going on in the ground you look at it

looks like gangs of how heavily armed people shooting at one another how do you think the u.s. is handling the balance of involvement in some very very different conflicts. well we're in we're into the which are all uphill you period in iraq and you know we have to be out of there by twenty eleven and there's going to be a cause and effect that goes along with that which are all bound up on the flip side i think in libya just from my personal knowledge from two thousand and three two thousand and four there's going to be a period of time re trying to figure out you know who's in charge who's really genuine who's really interested in the goals of the future of libya and then who's really corrupt and out for selfish gain. and you're not going to gain that from bombing them from twenty thousand feet above the year or less you're going to only gain that from from boots on the ground and and frankly there's not enough out there right now to justify sending american sons and daughters into harm's way and rubia but hey can you talk about you know the the drawdown in iraq iraq the fact

that it should be sort of nearing its and that and i just got to go back to this attack and to create i mean this is this is serious and how do we know that that these kind of things are going to continue to happen there as we continue to you know draw down sure we don't end and you know you have to remember in two thousand and three when we entered lit and entered iraq there was already of level of violence a daily violence that occurred there and and i am certain that when we would draw at the end of twenty eleven those to attack you saw yesterday you're going to see more and more of those kinds of things happening and then it will be interesting to see is the united states going to stand by and watch the fledgling democracy work through that or are we going to have to put you know step back in at some point i want to pick your brain a little bit and talk also about the similarities between these two places you've been to iraq you've been to some pretty tough situations what do you think american people said now about you know the tribal mentality that exists in much of the

middle east and africa yeah well right off the bat it's you know it's it's brother against brother until there's somebody else and then it's brother and brother versus cousin and then next thing it's a village against providence and it's province against. treat so the tribal of the tribal lines run very very deep they cross over into the political and religious views or early lines that are in those middle eastern countries and your own your allegiance is going to go back to the tribe and so it's it's a vastly complex environment for very young leaders to have to make decisions from outside that culture to deal with i mean it seems from the stories that i've heard people who have been. to similar places you've been in similar situations in iraq in the earlier days i think a lot of people were shocked when they saw that you know people live in very different ways their acts in very different ways and or you know in their eyes we act in very different ways and you know any advice or insights as you've been

watching over the last twelve days with and going on in libya. as any of the of any of us that's been connecting for you in terms of. you know what we don't know right now i think we have to be very very careful who we trust. and it was you know we did huge military operations over there in iraq based on the the information from maybe one or two supposedly credible sources and in fact in the aftermath they were never credible to begin with so it's a it's a it's you know no pun intended it's almost a minefield that you have to walk through in libya and determine who we can trust and who we can't but i don't think we are in any position to take the rebel side or take the government's side and insert ground forces i mean that is that if the congress is going to have to take on in the coming days and weeks and even i want to keep you there a little longer but we want to kind of look into this just saying on the topic of libya we should of course bring up the west has formally handed control of the

mission over to nato today but america is that remain heavily involved by continuing to invest millions into the operation for one. second a look at the real toll of the wars that the u.s. is fighting. the u.s. has cultivated in fine if you will events with which it invades nations or one or two or three locations change the list of enemies grows they have it becomes harder to shake even as the costs rack up military spending casualties and the steve world image what is the real toll of america's wars in iraq afghanistan and libya the three currency was a battlefield let's take a look at what they cost and why did they have a thousand people that's the official american death toll in iraq and afghanistan another seventy thousand the estimated number of injured u.s. soldiers. while some one hundred seventy thousand are thought to be suffering from

post-traumatic stress disorder but we're also looking at the number of people that are being killed by u.s. actions and there we're going up into the millions it's estimated that one hundred thousand to one million iraqis are dead with more million displaced aaron emery after tour in iraq is tired of the us trying to run the rest of the world american way of life doesn't work everywhere we've seen this over and over again it failed when we tried to bring it to korea vietnam iraq i mean what we've got going on in libya now it never works. it'll only work of the people want it but if they want it they're going to do it on their own something the west did not allow the libyans the money the u.s. is the proud owner of the largest defense budget in the world we have fifty four percent of federal tax dollars going into the fence and into the destruction of afghanistan and iraq you have to really wonder how crazy this country is and how

total military expenditure could be nearing a staggering nine hundred billion. because war is expensive iraq has cost an estimated three trillion dollars that was enough money to fix. the social security problem in the united states for fifty years there were afghanistan and the other three trillion if we just took two hundred forty three troops children forty three that's all that's really a drop in the bucket for the hundreds of thousands that are up ereka saddam on a c one thirty in florida back home we'd save enough money to fund higher education for all of afghanistan for the entire year those wars not over and done the attack on maybe a kicked off the tab for the first ten days five hundred and fifty million dollars with another one hundred twenty million to be pumped in over the next three weeks are most affected lives they don't it's taken command of the enforcement of the

arms embargo and the no fly zone followed by a monthly allowance of forty million dollars they've said it now nato is in charge nadir is held backwards as usa another less tangible price of war we soaring anti-american sentiment chipping away at a self-proclaimed key to successful diplomacy for generations the united states of america has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom and the united states is losing influence its. looks now not like some small a democratic nation in pursuit of peace but it looks like i would be very aggressive war margaret especially considering the nine states hasn't won a war decisively since the end of world war two and while former soldiers certainly get it if you look at all the animosity towards the us today

it comes from our military interventions and politicians seem blissfully unaware and specific in our party new york. all right i want to bring back into this conversation we just saw the story that i put together about the cost of war not your reaction i'm curious to know what you thought when you first heard this talk that we may be getting involved in libya knowing that we're involved in so many other things right now yeah this is this is a really tough one and i think this story kind of lays out there's a lot of long term consequences when you commit forces to about phil and you have to realize i know we we went under the pretense of preventing a human massacre in benghazi but when you when you put military force into the equation bad things are going to happen on both sides and then there's the innocent civilians as you saw in the first story they're going to want to flee because they're they're caught in the middle. long term consequences of the cost of of the

battlefield. is is is troubling at that at the very least and it's not so much even in terms of the money that we're going to spend you know supporting this it's it's destroys families on both sides and and then innocent people that are it's a very very high cost i think there should have been a lot more consideration taking into account before we introduced american forces into this battlefield and now there's a situation where you could look very weak in this particular region by pulling back and i think in some cases you know i'm not fired up about us being under nato i'm not fired up about the united states not being a leader we have always been a liberating force we should have gone into iraq in afghanistan much harder it should have taken a lot less time and i think we would have had a better formula for success to set us up for future future actions but but right now as you pointed out with the recession and the other things that we're battling

with and the other two front war what we have going on elsewhere this is a tough tough be tough deal to just to come on and come alongside on a mandate and i mean when you say you're not as sites that nato is involved in command i mean. how different is it really i mean the u.s. is certainly a major major part of nato when you look at the weapon they have for the last twelve days that have been used i mean i think it's you know not just the majority of the great majority of weapons of training in everything has come from this country so it's not really that we're ceding control to nato or you know great britain or france for that matter right well i hope so i hope so because it would be really troubling for me to have my son or daughter under the command of a united states commander who's been and is being led by some from another nation we have the best service academies we have the best work colleges we have the best material and equipment and leaders and so it needs to it needs to fall under you know thought under that umbrella i think you were either all in on this thing and we're going to do it right or we're looking at another eight to ten year escapade

as what we've done in the other countries and that that is not the formula for success right now what about this notion that we've been hearing of you know this is not we heard president obama monday night and he said you know this is not about regime change. there's talks also that they're looking to try to give him a place to leave to be in exile a lot of people there though they're on a mission they want to get gadhafi out in whatever way it takes do you buy this that this is not at all regime change. no not at all i think the american people are not stupid and i think you'd be just really it would be really good for for our government and our leaders to just come out and say we want the leader of libya out of power whether he's captured whether he's killed whether he's sent into exile but that's really what we want we want regime change and we're entering a revolution that we know very little about and we don't know and be careful what comes out on the other end and be prepared to take the secular tyranny or the

religious tyranny that might evolve into from this this action i think that's an interesting point it certainly begs the question if gadhafi does get out who will be next i really appreciate your insight and i your experience weighing in on this nathan sassaman retired united states army officer and also the author of the warrior king the triumph and betrayal of an american commander in iraq a base pristine from obama to nato to the u.n. all assert that we're in libya to protect libyan civilians from massacre by colonel gadhafi forces but here we are ten days into the bombing of libya some are asking how humanitarian this an intervention is ours is killing for it has more on the debate over the responsibility to protect. when it comes to receiving international help. not all countries are created equal.

the u.s. and nato are in libya under the doctrine of responsibility to protect responsibly to protect was born out of the failure to respond and rwanda. the failures to respond to holocaust genocides around the world created by the un and praised by advisors close to president obama are to peace states that sovereignty is a privilege not a right you have a responsibility as a sovereign country to not nasser clear other peoples and that the international community can intervene when governments abuse their own people. but critics say r two p. is riddled with pakistan and self interest and even call it as a humanitarian peerless then i know a number of places where they're supporting dictators and also. president obama justified his decision to bomb libya and are too few ground some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities another conference the united states of america is

different. and as president i refuse to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action. but as a candidate for president our two peat wasn't sufficient to keep u.s. forces in iraq quote by that argument you would have had three hundred thousand troops in the congo right now where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife which we haven't done so human rights activists david doesn't go because the turmoil in his native uganda there was jim's with most people were killed you can't win the competition but unlike oil rich libya ugandans waited decades for help and when it came david says it was too late and failed because everybody kept on saying that you know we have to use force. to stop the war and that doesn't work sometimes when people talk things and i think one of the failed a failure critics say is being repeated in libya even as advocates say it will

become the new money for humanitarian intervention. but after the bombs have dropped critics say the intervention isn't over so the rebuilding is a going to be the so-called democracy from morning it seems like the national down for democracy. and so on and so forth it would be mercenaries going in some ground to protect the marshes already agencies and bombing continue in libya repression and violence rages on in syria u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton quote condemned the actions of the syrian government but not in the united states is responsibility to protect their human ford artsy washington d.c. . this is this debate is coming out more and more often and i think ties into the question of just who these rebels are in libya it's difficult of course to study them now in the midst of the fighting but investigative journalist webster tarpley says we can get some clues from history and let's say you talk about this study

that was done back in two thousand and seven point and basically looked into the background of some of the guerrilla fighters crossing the border from syria into iraq talk about what was learned in that study and how it relates to today the story as you say is that in about two thousand and seven the u.s. forces captured the al qaeda personnel files and that critical syria iraq border area and they got about six or seven hundred personnel file so they did a study where did they come from it turned out to be absolute world capital of sending jihadist terrorists according to the u.s. their physician into iraq was the city of dharna and diana of course is about halfway between benghazi and tobruk it's the heartland of the entire rebel area that the u.s. is now rushing to protect they did a study of which country had sent to mars and it turned out that libya was the champion per unit of population and libya beat saudi arabia the closest contender by almost two to one and of the libyans who had gone in again all from this north

east syria in a area. brooke the ones who had gone through iraq e-file of percent of them were suicide bombers they indicated their preference on their on their car and now this is more than just speculation readers of the london daily telegraph on saturday and indeed of the italian business paper in saudi invented quoted order a couple of days before that can find an interview with the commander of ghana his name is her cd and he is a former u.s. p.o.w. . he's looking for flickers here to look in his own records of people who have been held by the u.s. either in in pakistan or maybe at guantanamo bay her cd was captured by the u.s. . as the jihadi was held by the u.s. and he's now the commander of donna he says you sent twenty five fighters to iraq and afghanistan how many u.s. forces did they kill those people that we're not supposed to defend and now you've made a couple different historical connection here another when you talk about president

reagan arming the afghan mujahedeen you say that this is not so far off from what's going on with the rebels in libya right now i think that is coming in from at the ready coming in from egypt how about that connection and why it's significant what it's going on in yemen and it's going on in libya right now the same thing that was the u.s. is too poor to have ground troops so we can send in some air cover but the infantry of the u.s. is now al qaida or libyan islamic fighting group to be precise which merged with al qaeda go back to one thousand nine hundred five the david shayler affair this was a defector whistleblower from m i five who said that m i six had paid a good. kind of organization in libya one hundred thousand pounds to try to kill gadhafi and that was linked to the last insurrection in ninety five ninety six precisely from benghazi and told brooke so if there were al-qaeda is an enemy with gadhafi that making this situation al qaeda our friend absolutely not suppose you

get these crazies because that's the only way to put it psychotics fanatics miscreants terrorists whatever they are you going to give them modern arms you're going to give them a slice of those thirty two billion dollars you're going to give them the oil revenue they'll create a terrorist power that will go wild across the world governments around the world need to ask the united states what are you doing arming and promoting al qaeda fighters in those areas of the of libya the other angle on this is the tribal and bake makeup remover just primarily the whole robbie and the old baby tribes that go with al qaeda that's the libyan benghazi rebel council those people are racists. he hate black people and you've noticed there have been atrocities by the rebels against black africans and against black libyans if you were from mali or from chad and you were in benghazi tobruk you had a very good chance of being slaughtered literally lynched in many cases of the

gadhafi tribes the progun i think tribes being the kid that for the money here were the ones in the with those are not black or very dark they might be massacred if that rebel army gets into western libya we're going to have a genocide of black people presided over by obama and susan rice for years and they wanted to to an extent there's a chance that the rebels the rebels that are getting arms right now with the help of u.s. allies you're saying that there's a chance that as this goes down the road that they could start hanging people from the side of the road just beyond that they've already done it nobody the reporting was all planted against gadhafi but the black africans were lynched by the rebels when they took over in those areas so it's supposedly an intervention to protect civilians and it's preparing a genocide similar to the bay of pigs remember that the cia sent the secret army into cuba in one thousand nine hundred eighty one and they failed just as these libyans had failed allen dulles went to kennedy and said give me airstrikes and

give me ground forces kennedy said no i want in you're fired obama in the same situation has said send in the forces real quick that's i want to ask you about. an obvious sign some reports saying he's been killed some saying he hasn't a powerful force was in america just last month i believe on a tour was greeted by the state army when you think about her he's the commander of the thirty second brigade some kind of an elite unit and we're told the other night that the u.s. submarine shot of birth twenty five or thirty cruise missiles at one hundred one million dollars a pop the headquarters of the thirty second brigade they apparently didn't get it because commerce has been on television a lot of gloating on al-jazeera and on the internet about thomas he seems to be alive and well and fighting back certainly a lot of interesting stuff going on in libya as always great to have you think investigative journalist webster tarpley. and that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we cover and we do have a lot more go to our team dot com.