but can they alone or show that the real headlines with none of the mercy are going to live in washington d.c. it's now day ten of the u.s. and nato battle taking place in libya so we'll continue to update you on the latest from the country and we'll get a fresh perspective on the issue from sally mcnamara and scott horton and i will focus on the latest victims of scott walker and the anti-union legislation yesterday we told you about professors who are being targeted by conservative think tank having their e-mails pulled through the freedom of information act so they

will speak with one of the professors to get his take on what he thinks is really going on and we'll tell you about hunger strikes taking place across the country why it's in the provide food for the poor is on the budget chopping block so we'll speak with one of the people leading this strike and the president addressed the country today but this time he was directing attention toward securing our energy so we'll have details on his proposal and how easing our dependence on foreign oil will just mean more drilling here at home all these stories and much more tonight's show but first our top story. looks like the limited humanitarian intervention a limited scope operation to take a kinetic military operation in libya is no longer so limited that the rebels are unable to make significant advances against gadhafi forces officials are now grappling with the idea of arming the rebels with the u.k. and france and support the u.s. saying it's an option and nato resisting countries like russia and india are also

saying that it could be illegal but it might even go further than that reports came out today that president obama has now signed a secret order calling it called a presidential finding authorizing co-work u.s. government support for the rebel forces so is anybody out there still convinced this is not a war joining me is sally not or is a war excuse me going to discuss with sally mcnamara senior policy analyst in european affairs at the heritage foundation and scott horton contributing editor on legal and national security matters for harper's magazine i want to thank you both for joining me tonight now let's get something clear here right if we look at this entire operation and we look at the fact that it's turned into more than just a no fly zone we also now have some of these low flying. some of our own low flying technologies on the ground which are helping the rebels so it's no longer just about saving civilians i think initially the immediate reason for going in it looks as if the end goal is he was going to fall it looked as if the opposition was going to be totally overrun and we have ten twenty thirty thousand dead bodies on the

street and the u.n. took immediate action they passed the resolution and there was this no fly zone but if you think about it i mean i think of all this was one of his weaknesses he needed to be honest from the start what is the point of trying to restore a stalemate i mean where was that going i think one of the weaknesses of this operation and it's not just obama it's really in general where will be going on what will success look like and i think there is been a bit of a failure to communicate but i think you're absolutely right that it could never happen it would have been crazy to say that i will. check to therese just to get back to the way they were seven days ago we know it's one critique also to say that perhaps the obama administration just didn't have any idea of what they were doing that they went into this operation without any kind of plan but we also like to because the president spoke to the american people on monday night right and he continued along with this stance that this is all for humanitarian purposes all for saving civilians but the washington post actually which reported yesterday that we

had these ac three hundred thirty s. and they say tens flying there apparently they've been holding on to that information for the last week which the government asked them to do what do you say . well it seems to me it's clear that there was tension for me outset between this being a humanitarian mission commander in intervention and intervention on behalf of one side a civil war to advance them and even if you look at the text of the security council resolution it's clear the u.s. u.k. france preserves some space to be a little bit more aggressive on behalf of. the rebels here they preserve space to support to supply them with arms for instance so i think there's always been a contradiction but i have to say frankly i'm skeptical that even at the outset this was really entirely a humanitarian intervention and we have the news from mark hosenball today about the presidential poundings and i think it's this invites attention back to reports

going back ten days and two weeks ago arms supplies coming in to the rebels from the egyptians who gyptian military who regularly acted as a proxy for the americans in the region so i suspect very strongly the u.s. has been supporting the rebels here that is to say it is intervening on one side of the conflict so where does that put us into contradiction with our allies here with nato who are supposed to be a leading this operation with or actually who they're supposed to be leading the operation right the u.s. is. also that we've stepped back but if we've been covertly. already supplying the rebels with arms then how does that come into play i think is a bit of a near miss i'm sorry but i think it's a bit of a mischaracterization to say that this is a civil war i think what we have was this past the superior guy who was murdering people and they were trying to react with their little small arms that they have so i think initially there was a major humanitarian element here and to get to un resolutions i think that

demonstrates that there was not sufficient about the libyan people then i think you get to the next question which you initially started with what max and i'm not entirely sure that the president did lay that out on monday this seems to be a little bit of an amateur nature about this is if it's being made up on the hook i think hillary clinton did a good job when she was on the shows this sunday explaining what they want to do and why they think this is legitimate because the obvious question is why are we in syria why only in iran why only elsewhere i think hillary clinton really is coming and doing the running on this i think the french and the british have also let this fall front and obama has played a bit of catch of i don't think that is a healthy thing when you're the chief of the most powerful country on earth but is it really catching up or perhaps i don't know is it miscommunication or by accident or on purpose i mean we also when talking about these rebels that we are considering arming or who we may already be arming a third party we don't know who they are and this is something that we've also

heard different messages from coming from president obama and hillary clinton i'd like to play a short clip here of what they have to say. it's like ok look work we're stopped gadhafi is good parents. all right that was the wrong clip but since we played that one i do want to ask you do you think that that was a big mistake on obama's part i mean a lot of people said that that was just like george bush's mission accomplished moment that was monday night he reported we've stopped the doppies advance here we are it's wednesday and now we're seeing that it really is becoming more of a stalemate. well i think he really wanted to get out a message there which is that the name period of u.s. involvement is asked and now we're handing that what's on iraq to our eyes take the lead and i'm very skeptical that it that's going to correspond to the facts i think he overstated it and i think it's also clear that this point of supporting the

rebels as opposed to purely protecting innocent civilians is certainly a visual rhyme with n.b.a. alliance particularly with nato i mean we have the u.s. u.k. and france are prepared to take a much more aggressive position other nato members germany for instance turkey are much more strict. standoffish and i think this is one of the reasons why we've seen now the lay and then a nato takeover of command of the operation i was going to take a quick break and throw to story here looking into you know politically financially whether the u.s. really can afford this or t.r.t. the i.c.c. into a canal shows us the price tag of being involved in battles in three different countries or four or five depending on how many counts at once. the u.s. has cultivated in fan of evil events with which it invades nations one or two or three locations change the list of enemies grows and how it becomes harder to shake

even as the costs rack up military spending casualties and esteem of world image what is the real toll of america's wars in iraq afghanistan and libya are the three currency was about all feels the six a look at what they cost five and a half thousand people that's the official american death toll in iraq and afghanistan another seventy thousand the estimated number of injured u.s. soldiers. well some one hundred seventy thousand i 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 were going up into. millions it's estimated that one hundred thousand to one million iraqis are dead wood who are million displaced aaron emery after tour in iraq is tired of us trying to run the rest of the world where and 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 will only work of the people want it but if they want to they're going to do it on their own something the west did not allow. money the us is the proud owner of the largest defense budget in the world and 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 the lord 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 you know what afghanistan and another three trillion if we just took two hundred forty three troops two hundred forty

three that's all that's nearly a drop in the bucket for the hundreds of thousands that are up there right now but i'm on a c one thirty in the back of we'd save enough money to find a higher education for all of afghanistan for the entire year those wars not over and done the attack on may be 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 the most effective alliance nato has taken command of the enforcement of the arms embargo and the no fly zone followed by a monthly allowance of forty million dollars they said that now. nato's in charge nadir is the whole backwards is usa another list tangible price of war waging 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 the united states is losing influence. now in some sort of a democratic nation and trees but it looks like a good receiver will mark especially considering the one states hasn't won the 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 politicians seem blissfully unaware and started churkin our party new york. so clearly there are a lot of questions here especially as to whether the u.s. can afford another war financially and politically but you know scott i was really so taken i was just thinking about the fact that like you said that we may already be arming these rebels i can't get over the amount of dishonesty if really that is

the case and the other thing is that hillary clinton came before congress today or she didn't go for the she spoke to a few members of congress and apparently told them that obama will refuse it to be shackled by any resolutions that they try to pass to try to curtail this new conflict or this new war in libya so i mean how is he acting here he didn't ask congress he didn't even address the fact that he didn't ask congress when he addressed the nation a week after starting a new war and now he's saying that congress is no good he doesn't care to step on anything as they try to stop an. well i think that the ses acted an awful lot like president bush in fact he criticized president bush for using imperial war powers to waging war without consulting congress and advance and without obtaining appropriate clearances but i think the case could be made much more strongly that barack obama and so has done that and he has not gotten an affirmative vote

in congress and a few days before the first bombs were dropped in libya his national security adviser was telling reporters this is a fact essential national security interest he was sending a message that he was not going to go there militarily so i know there has not been consulted function has not been played and we haven't had a park with discussion of the cost issues for instance which are really important here the country should know what this effort is going to cost it and what it's going to do for the military it's not simply a question of whether it's a good thing to go in and protect civilians and libya everyone will agree to that. star do you think this also means the defense cuts are completely off the table now that we've got a head start of the brand new war well i think we've been cutting defense far too much anyway because we have been fighting other wars in iraq and peter to pay paul what we should gather to get done having just spent. over all we have been putting

off modernization in order to fund the wars so you're taking away from the long term to fund the short term that's what i mean by cutting defense you want to call it getting defense but we should always remember here and this is slightly different but when it comes to iraq and afghanistan the u.s. said that this was in our vital national interest and in the constitution you are mandated to provide for the common defense i mean nowhere does it say in the constitution we need a massive stimulus plan no way really does it say we need social security all the other things that we like but it does say that you have to pay for the common defense so i think you're absolutely right that we need to take a hard look about where we're going with defense call it a look in the long term because these things cannot completely unexpected we'll still don't have a lot of warning the things we need for our defense some fifty years and no and the airplanes and all those sorts of things we're going to need them going forward so over the long term we've got a plan what i question whether these things really come up so unexpectedly right now because we don't the u.s. does not have the best history of arming people because often we are people you

know as we might be doing here with libya then those people end up being our enemies later on we end up fighting the same people whom we've armed you know against the same weapons that we've given them so are you making another mistake i mean is that kind of pave the way for a constant war. i think i think it has to be afghanistan gave us everything already but when we went in an arm of the mujahideen and it set off a civil war there and the fact that i would arm today many of them were trained supplied by u.s. taxpayers and u.s. funds u.s. support whether concerns about libya right now as we go in and you start arming the rebels who are the rebels they're not an organized army it's a collection of everybody who it's good are very rude so robbie's what are our views and others who might present a serious threat so this is something as to be approached very very cautiously and i think we are seeing a great deal of caution on this if this was simple and we knew exactly who the

other side was i don't think that would be this debate that we're seeing so i think we are moving cautiously and there's this new russia slate tell me how is it conscious if we say that we don't even know who these rebels are so we again we don't know who we might be arming who we might be helping we've already established that we clearly are picking sides here in this civil conflict how is that conscious i feel like that but you had so much more risk for the future and more stuff we eat is who's the american head of nato command has been in front of congress the past few days and he said there was not a clear picture of the opposition and i think that's honest however i think our intelligence on libya on the ground is far stronger than it's we had in iraq and afghanistan for example and in many other countries libya put down its chemical weapons program a number of years ago and invited less than businesses and so i think our intelligence is likely to be much better there i don't think it's a complete picture but i think we have some ideas and the fact that the president isn't out giving every last bit of information i mean this is the way wolf a goes

you don't want to reveal your whole hand i have confidence that they have some intelligence i don't think is perfect intelligence of course well and also our scott as we learned today really quickly to wrap it up that obama apparently has signed this finding what does that mean that we have cia operations on the ground. it's a yes i may order basically it says that the cia may offer assistance to these were also the door has been opened the presidential findings said that may and i think this goes back three weeks it's likely at this point that action has been taken on those findings we still don't know the scope we don't know specifically received the weapons we're there we're kind of weapons have been provided but i'll tell you i don't think they're looking for a cave forty seven's or any initiative what the rebels really need here are weapons to take out trains heavy sophisticated weaponry and so a very dangerous thing to be handing out in a place like libya of spades and that's something that many analysts have already said could take months if not years to actually arm these people have these things

out of train and also i want to thank you both for joining us tonight but it's a me it sounds like there's still a lot of deception and evolved in this new war that. now standing by this isn't a launch airstrikes in libya president obama nato and the u.n. all assert they were there to protect civilians from colonel gadhafi forces and from what we've seen and discussed many are questioning how much that military involvement really has to do with those humanitarian efforts are to scale and ford 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 the responsibly to protect was born out of the stellar to respond everyone to. the failures to respond to holocaust genocides around the world created by the un

and praised by advisers close to president obama are to peak states that sovereignty is a privilege not a right you have a responsibility as a sovereign country to not massacre of peoples and that the international community can be giovino when governments abuse their own people. but critics say our two key is riddled with accuracy and self interests and even call it as a humanitarian theory list. number of places where they supported dictators and also for which the russian president obama justified his decision to bomb libya and r.t. if you ground some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities another conference 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 said r two p. it 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 human rights activist david don't go recalls the turmoil in his native uganda there was genocide which killed you can't even comprehend 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 corn to stop the war doesn't work sometimes we need to talk and yes and i think on that the failed a failure critics say is being repeated in libya even as advocates say it will become the new model for humanitarian intervention. but after the bombs have dropped critics say the intervention isn't over so who's going to do the rebuilding is according to the so-called democracy like the national guard for mark probert

institute and so on and so forth are they going to be mercenaries going good some are ground to protect the marsh you want to get i've bought and continue in libya repression and violence rages on in syria u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton put condemning the actions of the syrian government but they're not in the united states has a responsibility to protect their ford artsy washington d.c. . still to come on tonight's show republicans in wisconsin are taking on labor professors across the state and governor scott walker and his republican allies are going after a large group of professors who quit spoke about the g.o.p.'s move to take away collective bargaining rights for workers so when we come back we'll speak with a professor from being targeted. to get some closure see a story and it seems so it's more likely is that you understand it and then you've lived something else here's some other part of it and realized everything you saw

you don't know i'm sorry love is a big issue. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right. i think. the the one well. we never got the jesuit good can to safely get ready for the freedom. hey guys welcome to shellings hell on the on

a shelf with part of our guests not to say on the topic now i want to hear our audience just go on to you tube the video response more of a twitter profile of a question that we've posted on you tube every monday and on thursday when the show your response is going to leave your voice behind. we told you this week about the attack on labor professors by the right wing started in wisconsin where the republican party launched

a legal effort to look at the e-mail archives of professor william cronin who wrote blogs and a new york times op ed on the situation in wisconsin then yesterday we learned from talking points memo that a conservative think tank in michigan has made a broad public records requests to at least three in-state universities with departments that specialize in labor they're seeking all emails regarding the union battle ensconced in governor scott walker and for some reason s n b c's rachel maddow out they say that it's just an investigation to see what labor studies professors are saying about wisconsin's union battle that is a really more of an intimidation campaign a return to the dark days of mccarthyism joining me to discuss it is dr merrick masters director of the labor studies program at wayne state university and one of the professors whose e-mails are being targeted dr masters thank you so much for joining us tonight now like i said you're just one of many a professors who are being targeted here and they're saying that they just want to see what you guys are saying what you're talking about when it comes to this labor battle but how do you see it. well i presume they want to prove my e-mail certs

hills and want to own those skills but the fact of the matter is they're trying to find out if we at wayne state and university of michigan and michigan state university systematically attempted to facilitate an orchestrated protests take a michigan i mean in wisconsin. the reality is as bad and that is not the case i've been part of too busy with other things to have any chance to really focus on what's going on in wisconsin although i'm deeply concerned about it. no doubt they want to go through with a fine tooth comb and find out if i'd been in any systematic effort in that regard but would you call it an intimidation campaign when some people like to fight and even gone to far as comparing it to the days of joseph mccarthy. well it could have that effect but i'm not going to let it have that effect everybody has a right to file a freedom of information requests and we're complying with. the general counsel's

office they will be getting the information that they've requested to the extent that the general counsel. deems it appropriate but at the same time i'm not going to hesitate to speak my mind on the issues that are hopefully within the rules that the university said regarding prohibiting partisan political activity so what have you been telling your students if you look at what's been going on in wisconsin or other states across the country if you look at ohio or indiana where we have similar legislation all threaten collective bargaining rights from unions well a lot of people may not know this but i'm professor business i've been a professor of business for thirty years and i think the points in the business school i teach a class in business we go see a sions we don't spend a whole lot of time talking about what's going on wisconsin but i always try and present a fair and balanced approach to everything i do not view the classroom as an appropriate forum to indoctrinate or proselytize students and i don't use it for that purpose but do you think there can be a bit of a great area right because as workers of the state the professors are not allowed

to try to plan and organize political protest on their own but what if one of your lectures so inspired a student that they then choose to you know to that they might throw your name in there they might say that you were there inspiration. sure and i mean there's always a lot of gray area in this area and i think we need to be mindful grad academic freedom exists for a reason and so that people can not use them a day to expressing their views on important public policy issues i believe it's important for people on my staff including myself to feel free to speak out on these public policy questions in the appropriate forms and also to engage in activities to express themselves i have an op ed piece and i'm going to send out now on what i think is wrong with the approach that various states are taking in trying to restrict collective bargaining rights it's not an attack on scott walker or any other governor including brooks knight or in the state of michigan it's really an attempt to address actually what i think are some misguided policies but

i'm just so confused because i guess you could say that was constant is the center of this labeled labor battle your michigan rachel maddow is somebody who just works for a foreign news channel why are you out of all this freedom of information act request well i think they suspect that we might have been behind the efforts to organize and so take the protests that have gone on and what's constant but the fact of the matter is there been a lot of protests in the state of michigan where there are protests in the state of ohio if i were trying to engage and i'd have to probably quit my job and do something else along the lines of full time organizing protesters i got to masses and i thank you very much for joining us and you definitely seemed to be a good sport about this i know that i would be failing if i was in your position i know that a lot of other professors out there are feeling that being unfairly targeted thank you for joining us much. now still to come on tonight's shelf possible candidates for president next year says the.