we have a clear sense of who they are and we do not have any specific information about specific individuals. can you see why some people are confused so who are them exactly are the libyan rebels as the pendulum of power swings what's next in a land where the history of government is invested with tribal tradition. and the land over its head in wars like kind of toll has it placed upon america we'll look at the many costs associated there. and go into war as part of a humanitarian intervention why do some countries get protection while others are

left to fend for themselves. and from wars to an economic crisis to radical polarization who is behind it all one man is blaming a group called the oil and drug cartel and he says what's happening what's happening now harkens back to another dark time germany in the one nine hundred thirty in st joe will discuss. it's wednesday march thirtieth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for is out you're watching our t.v. well start this evening with an update on the situation in libya or chaos and violence in the quest for power and largely a game of back and forth in the last few days we've seen rebels gain ground and get pushed back by troops loyal to moammar gadhafi are his policy or is on the ground in tripoli and brings us the latest. fighters have now been pushed back to the city

of western north we are hearing that this is strategically important oil in the city is firmly in the hands of gadhafi his men now there are numerous reasons being bandied around as to why the rebels are being faced with cheat and retreat so quickly part of that is because gadhafi forces are simply based organized they betrayed or they have basically leadership and this is posing some real die limits 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 course in the town of mr which is about two hundred kilometers to the south of tripoli there 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 beds where there was blood stains and did we not the patients were evacuated in time but we heard from the hospital staff that some thirteen people wounded we also met and we were very a number of listeners thought badly dacian also filipino and they as you can well imagine are very anxious and very scared and very desperate to get out of here with 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 since their u.n. resolution one ninety seven three was approved there is a clause that talks about the syrian measures and this is open to interpretation and what we think from the british is that if weapons are needed to protect civilian lives when they can justify the use of weapons we're also hearing a similar kind of line coming out of the obama administration they're saying that they could allow for the supply of the. griffins 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 with the land 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 even more than that if you're going to have handover 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 i was already correspondent policy clear from the libyan capital tripoli. we want to focus our discussion today on this question exactly who are the rebels they also that i wanted to kind of consult the two 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 better so we have a clearer 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. ok so if things we don't exactly really know who they are well to get some other answers earlier i spoke with a man who knows what things look like from the front lines nathan sassaman was a former commander of ground troops in iraq he told me what some of the key differences are between iraq and libya and why he thinks entering libya was

a mistake. well there were in the bridge of the withdrawal failure 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 withdrawal and 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 are you 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 is really corrupt and out for selfish gain. and you're not going to gain that from bombing them twenty thousand feet above the air or last 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 into harm's way in video when they can you talk about you know the the drawdown in iraq iraq the fact that it should be sort of nearing its end but that we have got to go back to this attack and get to create i mean this is

a serious that 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 live and entered iraq there was already a level of violence a daily violence that occurred there and and i am certain that when we withdraw at the end of swanee eleven those to attacks you saw yesterday you are going to see more and more of those kinds of things happening and then it will be interesting to see if 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 and it's something 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 should know 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 the next thing is the village against robinson and province

against. country so the tribal of the tribal lines run very very deep they cross over the the political and religious views earline better in those middle eastern countries and your your allegiance is going to go back to the tribe and so it's it's a vastly complex environment or for young leaders to happen make decisions from outside that culture to deal with i mean it seems from the stories that i've heard people who have been you know 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 there they act in very different ways and where you know in their eyes we act in very different ways i mean i you know any advice or insights as you've been watching over the last twelve days what's been going on in libya. has any of the any of the been connecting for you in terms of. you know what we don't

know right i think we have to be very very careful that we trust. and it was you know we didn't choose military operations over there and iraq based on the the information for maybe one or two supposedly credible sources and in fact in that 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 really can't but i don't think we're in any position to take the rebel side or take the government side and insert ground forces i mean that is a debate congress is going to have to take on in the coming days and weeks and that was nathan sassaman retired united states army officer and also author of the warrior king the triumph and betrayal of an american current commander in iraq. saying with libya the west has formally handed control over its native today but america is set to remain heavily involved i continuing to invest millions into the

operation artist on a softer target a look at the real soul of all the wars the us is now fighting. the u.s. has cultivated in fan if you will events with which it invades nations or one or two or three locations change the list of enemies grows the habit 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 by going to have thousand of 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 or million displaced aaron emery after a tour in iraq is tired of the u.s. 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 will only work of the people want it but if they want to do it on their own something the west did not allow only opinions money the u.s. is the proud owner of the largest budget in the world we have fifty four percent of federal tax dollars going into defense 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 work is the sense that 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 again it's ten and now there are three trillion if we just took two hundred forty three troops two hundred forty three that's all that's really a drop in the bucket for the hundreds of thousands that are up there right now so i don't want to see one thirty in the floor back out we'd save enough money to fund a 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 punted him over the next three weeks are most effective alliance they don't that'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 that now nato is in

charge nato is held backwards is usa another less tangible price of war we are 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 sort of a democratic nation in pursuit of peace but it looks like oh very aggressive war marked it's especially considering the united 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. the. animosity towards the u.s. today it comes from our military interventions politicians seem blissfully unaware

and this ensure cannot be new york the cost of war certainly allowed criticism but many say this is something with so many layers and potentially so many layers of problems even one man one of those people he's a writer and radio host and joins us from chicago to talk about this. stephen i want to start with something that just came down it turns out president obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert u.s. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust libyan leader moammar gadhafi this is according to reuters do you think this changes the game. not at all surprised about. i'm sure that america britain france have been supporting the so-called rebel fighters and do covertly you know done it over the been at least three hundred british commandos going to go through the at least a hundred eight gyptian commandos of the country and they were four thousand u.s.

marines deployed nearby to come in for a ground invasion and i have no doubt that a ground invasion is planned but if they cannot get rid of gadhafi by the u.s. strikes it is very ill do it is the phone number remains you know you just said you have no doubt that a ground invasion and president obama has said time and time again that this is not about sending troops to the ground you know why you think. well if you're a state or other patients and i must say is a supreme liar. it seems me to listen to him pains me to listen to things that he says about upbringing and humanitarian aid but a few minutes early to be bringing that up is evil to do you know bringing democracy to or actually bringing democracy to understand frankly we will not tolerate the black sea we don't already think of all why on earth recall raided

a place else but there are many people stephen people with you know good information coming their way who say that this effort has indeed helped some of the people people who you know we saw president golfing himself say he was going to come in and slaughter them but what about that argument that there are people on the ground who actually are or say they are thankful for u.s. involvement. well get up you got illiterate in action hence when he was attacked he responded to his back it is not an issue is that this was just again last year the french revolt within the last year. i assume that there's a bit of this paper arrives some of the defectors become over to the imperial side there i say that and we've got the book three countries mainly the us you what has britain and france co-belligerents in this imperial venture nothing to do with

anything else and and these militants seized insurgents as the revolution is an insurgency going on and you defectors and then the so-called leadership. and and they unleash their pets there was no humanitarian crisis in libya and tilly's people began attacking around train incited by the french and british american and that's the way it all began no humanitarian attack at all even i mean no humanitarian threat in terms of what was going on inside that country with the uprising there but you know we saw the kind of violence that we saw. well i read in a couple of articles that the humanitarian crisis began and so america and britain in france are right and basically that's about the way it is because he did it well because even if you're in crisis he was the recipient of syrian crisis. is no

state. absolutely. but i do not support any other nation meddling in the internal affairs in another and as i said. see your resolution one hundred seventy three is an issue legal resolution is highly un show the u.n. charter is very specific article fifty one it says no nation may attack another one except in self-defense and then only until a security council acts this is the purity council has no authorization to violate its own charter and that's what the council did i want to keep you here a little longer but we are going to show a report that one of our correspondents did tell us a little bit about some of the points that you brought up and that is the fact that president obama says that we're in libya to protect libyan civilians from massacre by colonel gadhafi forces many people now asking how humanitarian this intervention

really is this is our king telling for jihad 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 and the doctrine of responsibility to protect their special place for attacks was born out of the failure to respond and rwanda and so they need to tell your story spawn to holocaust genocide around the world created by the u.n. and praised by advisers close to president. r two p. states that sovereignty is a privilege not a right you have a responsibility as a sovereign country to not massacre. and that the international community can intervene when governments abuse their own people. but critics say r two p.

is riddled with pockets see and self interest and even call it as i would say humanitarian period is then you know you go into any number of places where they supported dictators and also. 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 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 so far to peace 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 recalls the turmoil in his native uganda there was jim's have because people were killed you can't you can't put on like oil rich libya ugandans we did 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 that doesn't work sometimes we need to talk peace and i think on that part we feel 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 who's going to do with the rebuilding is it going to be the so-called democracy from the national guard from our senior republican institute and so on and so forth. there is. some ground to which are marching forward as bombings 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 did not involve the united states is responsibility to protect their

human ford artsy washington d.c. and through i want to bring you back into this discussion we just find kalends report a quote she found that candidate obama said about the need and the desire and the argument for the u.s. to get involved she points to what candidate obama said about the situation in the congo and compare that to what we're seeing now. well candidate obama also promised to be a peace candidate and elected president he would wind down the war is if one does not pay extended b.f. down or the so-called rack was a state allowed direct u.s. troops still interact the recent war going on in iraq the region we know the bloodshed happening in afghanistan is daily bloodshed and pakistan and america arrived in front. and center stage and iraqi genocide.

if you go back to ninety ninety one gulf war between biomes between disease between sanctions and two wars the justness of the debt. and put afghanistan began in the us over two thousand and one which you click oh so country together over two decades and identities there was an arrest in a randori and we're talking about upwards of six million people. genocide some countries i feel for the libyan people i feel that america maybe bring egypt to libya and they may not like the just the but the kind of person that america was in charge replacing them will make in your. piece there i'm wondering why you think stephen what happened this is somewhat hypothetical but you know we've seen this pendulum going back and forth in terms of control of the area in libya let's say that the rebels do gain control of a lot of these areas where pro-government forces are now they're probably gassing

forces. obviously they're not going to shake hands i mean i can't imagine a situation in which they would say can say you know what maybe qaddafi is gone let's all be friends what happens if these rebel forces hypothetically speaking start killing the programs the forces does the u.s. and nato then continue to help them. giving feeling brokenhearted forces all along they were pause. in their inner learning got a lesson in the not know nothing is in the daily meal of the daily telegraph in the u.k. . the reporter on the ground running from benghazi saying that the so-called rebel forces terrorizing the entire city of benghazi anybody they suspect is progress be interesting though we're eating them preventing them this watering though and they suing us. approach already beat up the person

by just looking in and deciding i think this may be a bad guy let's get rid of him and these people are killers you don't want these people running the country that was steve in london writer and radio host. one the myths of war the u.s. is also no doubt in the middle of an economic crisis and one man i spoke to earlier says it's due to corporate interests being that above all else and behind it all as a group he says well in drug cartels now there you don't have to love i'm not endorsing it but we do think it's important to hear what you have to say here is part of my conversation with dr matthias rath of dr rath research. you have drawn parallels between what's going on here today in america in two thousand and eleven to what's happened what happened in germany in one thousand nine hundred thirty three we put together some bullet points of your argument and i want to lay them

out and have you then explain them now you say there is a concrete strategy to turn democracy into a corporate dictatorship and evidence lies and things like corporate interest taking over the economic crisis that we saw rising unemployment financing of the takeover confusion preaching hatred deception and politics now you say these events are instigated by the oil and drug cartel who exactly is the oil and drug cartel. well currently we have. major areas of society. in any country being controlled by special interests the two main sectors. and she anything from cars to go. to in your living room. and house human body and these two areas are basically considered market places to

make money and all this vacates special interest accumulating more and more power to dominate those areas and to basically exploiters markets this i'm not saying anything new and it's not a theory that public knowledge my approach to that is the following first of all i'm a gentleman didn't so i know very well what happened in ninety three in the how these things came to pass the time who was behind these when they came to power secondly i'm a medical doctor and researcher and together with our research team we have investigated nontaxable alternatives to pharmaceutical drugs that are frequently toxicants and mainly being marketed because of the pack in season growth of use that provide the return on investment so we have. experienced interest in our very own seal of what it is to be some of some of the

cartel interest groups around the pharmaceutical drug makers that wish to maintain a monopoly on the human body with their merchandise and these are two models where i am coming in and saying wait a minute time to reflect so if you want to reflect and you say this time is the work of the time of the nazis then heard today is that our our health. well first of all i'm not saying that to anyone any politician today in the u.s. or any way out of the nazis i'm not saying that what i'm saying is. it isn't it's naive to think that the takeover of the nazis in germany was done by a bunch of crazies with nukes like the brownshirts there can be huge amounts of money behind them and their economic interests and their bedtime the largest

chemical and pharmaceutical industry in the world was called foreign car charts. which means basically interest group of us by colors and it was made up of. groups and some other chemical companies they financed the rise of hitler they had to be interested to cover the cold congregate in which we actually did during world war two and. define the entire planet as the marketplace and that was dr matthias wrath of the dr rath research institutes are not going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to our to dot com slash usa and check out our you tube paid youtube dot com r.t. america i'm christine for the out thanks so much for watching we back here tomorrow in the meantime you have a great night.