we've tried regime change before and sometimes it's worked and sometimes it's taken ten years and that's being said he's been there done that secretary of defense robert gates so for him is the mission in libya coming down to politics over experience congress wants to know. congress also wants to know the plan how much and how long and from the ghosts of wars past well arming rebels to fight gadhafi now cause the u.s. to be up in arms later. there is no doubt that in general the policy of any one

news organization is lower than it was thirty years ago and why might that be let's start by taking a look at some high profile pay stubs ten to fifteen million dollars contract based through media talent cashes in politics checks out. it's thursday march thirty first four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine frizz out here watching our city. well start today right here in washington where secretary of defense robert gates and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admiral mike mullen testified before congress was the first time they've done that since the u.s. started its involvement in libya are just how important has more on the model nature of the mission and the anger at spring for some lawmakers. twelve days into the u.s. bombing of libya. u.s.

congressman were hoping to finally get some answers but after two hours of questioning the secretary of defense and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff they were still confusion about the u.s. is ending and i think a policy success would be the removal of. the gadhafi regime the military mission is a limited one and does not include regime change. the rebels that we don't have much visibility into into those who have risen against gadhafi each element has its own agenda. it's pretty much a pick up all going to this point and whether the u.s. will arm them discuss our plans if you need it regarding arming the rebels they seem to be getting there but swept but it's in maryland pass the buck on that one deferring to the white house once there was a qaeda decided to bristle and there we would clearly have a problem about how long the u.s. will stay the bottom line is no one can predict for you how long it will take. for

that to happen and whether the u.s. is at war at all these are combat operations were intended to become a bit outburst from the beginning i don't know why this administration has not been honest with the american people that this is about regime change what is clear the cost five hundred fifty million dollars in the first ten days alone and the estimated forty million dollars a month but not how it will be paid in terms of how to pay for this. there is a we are in the discussions with the white house would be very difficult for the department to eat this cost tough talk from the house over president obama's unilateral decision we don't understand what he's doing still. and i don't think he has the support of this congress when was the briefing of the armed services committee there wasn't a year certain you ought to be an expert on what's an active war active war not

gates told congress the president actually did not make his final decision on what to do until thursday night less than forty eight hours before the first two hundred tomahawk missiles were fired it's mullen repeated over and over again that there would be no american ground troops there will be no american boots on the ground in libya who is the person on the ground that is directing close air support missions against his fortunes there's no one on the ground doing the recent press reports at least indicate there are cia operatives on the ground so boots on the ground as i would define it and of other sending troops i guess is we'd all read about it in the newspapers the same time i see that's my concern is that we read about things in the newspaper and then we get to come and ask the questions the u.s. formally handed control to nato today and the operation odyssey dawn and beginning operation unified protector but newspapers quoting vatican sources said that forty civilians were killed in coalition air strikes guaranteeing that there will be

plenty of more questions for top american military brass here in washington and fort artsy washington d.c. so we just saw some tough questions posed by members of congress many of whom feel they've been left out in the cold when it came to making the decision to get involved in libya in the first place so how will that testimony shape what happens next he is the director of international studies i trinity college he joins us now from hartford. hey how you doing hey every day you know on capitol hill today we just saw gates and mullen defending the action but also pretty brutally honest in what is not known do you think there's a clear strategy outlined when it comes to libya if not you know in their testimony then at least inside the oval office. well it's curious to me that they say they don't know anything that's happening on the ground largely because the united states has a very close friend who is running the military operations for the benghazi rebels

from the early nineteenth piece he leads february two thousand and one colonel khalifa there lived in vienna virginia which is a suburb of washington d.c. and seven miles away from langley virginia o'connell a colleague there was an important figure in the movement against gadhafi called the libyan national army protect them did uprising in one thousand nine hundred six which was down and he recognized me i arrived back in. just before the opening of the military offensive in late february early march and is a crucial member of the military brass of the benghazi rebels so it strikes me as rather odd that second you gave him gorton the house i'm so it's his committee and say we don't have either boots on the ground or here is on the ground surely they must be in touch with ok. who i mean amazingly left the baton

feud of chad in early may have been a piece and was able to relocate oh to vienna virginia so certainly they must know more than that they are telling the armed services committee what they say you're talking about one person here i mean it's hard for one person to speak for other than maybe giving a little background to speak for the entire group of rebels and exactly who they are and i think you know secretary gates has been this business for thirty years i think he serves seven or eight presidents he seems the most skeptical and maybe realistic about what's going on kind of like i don't know he knows how this ends i want to get your take on this role both public and private as far as libya is concerned. yes certainly secondly gets from the beginning which is to say from mid february has warned that any armed action against libya is going to end badly in fact he was very much opposed in public to the making of the no fly zone because he

knows what it's going to do in peel secondly secondly good says well aware that even if there are not boots on the ground there in the air which is to see that the united states is using a c one thirty pm craft and he then turned to aircraft what of which are not intended to patrol the skies but we try to able they're flying platforms which can hug or ground troops and fire at them in other words they're intended to be back in field aerial vehicles so if there are no boots on the ground in what's in the air so could you get his own way at the united states's and on one side of the civil war and that this is going to end badly i can feel for him but on the other hand he's trapped by a policy he has to enact i think every day when we talk about boots on the ground and you even song kalends piece one of the lawmakers speaking about you know if cia officers are on the ground that could also make them

a bit on the ground i want to get real quick on the talk about whether or not to arm the rebels a lot of people asking the question who are these rebel they way your prediction on what happens in the weeks to come. well it's clear that the rebels are going to need to be certainly since the nineteen seventy s or seventy since in ninety eight these the gadhafi regime has starved the forces of eastern libya but peculiarly because it's a hard bit of rebellion and has been so for a while so whatever amendments they have they're not going to last forever so if this sunni law is to continue in the west since it has become what it said on the side of the rebels at some point before i am which is why in rep u.n. resolution one thousand seventy three there is a clause b. americans inserted which says that all necessary measures can be used notwithstanding un resolution one thousand seven un resolution one hundred seventy says no arms must be sold but that would not withstanding is an issue it means that

the united states has always been planning to supply the rebels with arms and a lot of that has escalated and i think this is already something that people have begun to consider seriously right is a presenter writer of international studies at trinity college thank you well as washington considers arming the rebels and broadening the military mission isn't ready for the potential blowback artie's gonna touch a contact to look at the ghosts of course past the international community permitted intervention in libya to protect civilians from colonel qaddafi but washington wants to go further than that and is considering arming the rebels by literally denying that toppling pinaki is the objective of its involvement in libya but broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake president obama has reportedly signed a secret order authorizing covert american support for rebel forces seeking to oust

the lead in leader critics of the u.s. taking sides in a civil war war of the consequences we help accelerate the chaos. and in creating more chaos we're to we think somehow we're going to be able to direct the outcome it's the same hubris that has visited the united states and iraq the same hubris that keeps us penya and in afghanistan causes us to believe that somehow we are going to wreck events and the outcome in libya we cannot do that nor do we have the right to determine who the leader of libya should be many fear radical forces can take advantage of the chaos in libya former jihadist moment then of men who renounces all kind of and in two thousand says he has to mates one thousand jihadists are among the rebels in libya one lady and rebel commander has openly admitted his fighters have the links other reports say

terrorists seized libyan surface to air missiles when arsenals were looted nato intelligence reports claim flickers of al qaida and hezbollah have been found among the rebels in libya but maintained there is no reason to believe their presence is significant but a u.s. military study three years ago said levy is made up the second largest group of jihadists in the world right after saudi arabia all of that seems to be discarded as the u.s. is trying to prop up the opposition in libya as some analysts say in an attempt to forge a relationship with them that would be favorable for the united states in the future but experts say as of now the opposition in libya hardly has a defined face or power these people. will not be able to take control over the situation as soon as the current regime. goes off and that means that somebody else will be. tempted to take over the country and

you know the village will organize. the world force in the region not in the country but in the region is unfortunately some say arming the rebels could backfire we've been in a situation in afghanistan one day we help people and the next day they shoot at us if we aren't cautious about military intervention to blow back their charm was johnson and johnson wrote famously about is sure to happen in libya in afghanistan back in the eighty's the u.s. had in their own goal to help the mujahideen fight soviet troops subsequently the same with eighteen militants turned their ripens and training against the u.s. among those of them was osama bin ladin whose group eventual evolved into al qaida beenz kind of strong cia and alice is an operations chief in the 1980's says that then the u.s. didn't see the dangers of arming afghan militants know good and well and what we've

seen with tribal society. you know from its separate tribes and leading to. some reconstruction composed well over two decades after arming the afghan mujahedeen america is now considering giving weapons to another rebel band with an unclear identity simply because of who they're fighting against. gonna check out our chief washington d.c. it is the newest nor the most recent but many are starting to dust off some old memories scratching their head and saying a certain look familiar moammar gadhafi a longtime enemy but sometimes friend of the united states now this country is on a path to arms those who oppose him could resemble a situation in the one nine hundred eighty s. when the u.s. increased funding to the anti soviet rebels in afghanistan back then they were known as the mujahideen years later they became known by

a different name that's how a band is this an entirely different situation or quick history be repeating itself philip giraldi is a former officer with the cia and joins me now to discuss the your take on this is are we seeing some pretty intense historic connections here well it's so it is they always say that history doesn't repeat itself but it sells you certain things and i think that what we're seeing here is essentially we're falling into the same the stakes that we fell into in afghanistan and fallen into these other places which is essentially we're in a situation where we don't really know who we're army and we have people that are claiming to be rebels against gadhafi are claiming to be supporters of democracy and and claiming various things but the fact is we don't really know a lot about these people and what they would wind up doing with weapons that we would give them so there is a there is a very strong possibility you know we will see some repeat of history and i think that fact that you brought up that we don't really know who these people are i think it came as no surprise to most people to learn that there are several cia

officers from this country in libya and they want to know who the rebels are but me ask you this i mean we've been hearing since day one since u.n. resolution one thousand seventy three was signed no boots on the ground from the united states do the cia officers today not wear boots. the other do there's a very very legal distinction between a cia officer who operates on the national security act and i think. forty seven and a military officer. but in reality the difference is not great cia special operations officer is trained exactly the same and does exactly the same things as a special operations army officer in terms of these historic connections a lot of people of course pointing to the situation that we just talked about in afghanistan but some of the pointing to for example the situation in iraq the on again off again a love affair with saddam hussein that we had and also to the support that this country gave to anti-communist militias both in argentina and honduras do you think

it's important to to bring these things up that the government should take a look at really study what went on in these situations when deciding what to do next and libya yeah i think that's precisely what the government should do the government should learn from its experiences and its experiences in terms of of intervening militarily or paramilitary really to make it a lower profile intervention they don't turn out very well and this is this is really the problem with this sort of thing if these things were as surgical and as quick as they were always promoted to be in the beginning i guess most people would support them especially if it's a bad guy like a daffy or of saddam hussein but they don't turn out that way it's really interesting as far as the cia being there again not a huge surprise we want to know who the rebels are from speculating though that they're also there for a very distinct purpose to they are there to assassinate gadhafi their take on this my take on that is that it's unlikely i can't see where the cia people would be

able to get access to goods and he's moving around every few hours is from what i've heard he's he's surrounded by bodyguards it's not a very likely possibility they might well try to recruit somebody that claims he has access to good these inner circle to try to do it but that would be as far as i would go with her and there's been a lot of different explanations given to the public to the process. about why the u.s. is involved in libya in the first place i know we did hear very recently from deputy national security adviser denis mcdonough about our involvement and he said as he said quote we don't intervene based on precedent or based on a certain set of consistency guidelines but rather so that we can advance our interests what in this case our u.s. interests and well the interest is not to be intervening that's for sure the interest in libya if you look at serious national interests for the united states is live using energies producer whoever is in charge and be able have to sell

energy so that's ok doesn't matter what the government is and the and the other thing is you know the basically libya cannot become a base for terrorism libya was not a base for terrorism under. the feet so the question is there's no national interest really here live it was not a base for terrorism under gadhafi at all i mean he's not recently not since he had a long history of not been a jar out of the cold yeah exactly but but in recent history get off the has not been a supporter of terrorism as far as anyone knows but the thing is that you know this is i think what what the president said on tuesday night is basically a humanitarian a nation building a democracy promotion. move on the part of the u.s. government and i find it very difficult to support as a national interest in your prediction on how long this lasts in terms of the u.s. involvement there well i think there will be intense involvement for a number of nonce and i think there will be a residual involvement of europeans and americans maybe for as long as

a year or two certainly we do appreciate having your insight to this as a former cia officer cholesterol the thanks so much thank you very much. and it's not just what what's happening in libya or what's happened in tunisia and egypt remember we just had a huge earthquake and nuclear meltdown in japan and all of this has overwhelmed news channels with a tsunami of costs after years of cutting back on bureaus and correspondents overseas many networks well they're being reminded of the benefits of real boots on the ground news coverage but it does cost a lot more than say armchair political punditry arguing on a sausage are going to take a look at how all of this may impact the media landscape. it's a day when egyptian protesters news pundits are teleporting almost up to speed of light from the safety of their news desks to far away to endanger us polices sirens are now going off led by their journalistic colleagues and with big bucks to be made and spent egypt tunisia libya was going to the world will help us japan

in a tremor after naani and earthquakes i want to err on the side caution for you hear disasters exploding around the world one after the other these past months all great news records my guess is that you're ok forcing us networks to cough up the cash the news organizations are crying because they're saying that the spending their entire budget is gone by march their whole annual budget for covering emergencies and crises with the latest from cairo reports suggest big t.v. networks have been spending as much as two million dollars on each of the middle east uprisings for one network is said to have spent an entire one and a half million dollars in just one day in japan so while this money is ripping a wing at their annual budgets it's certainly not ripping away at the pockets of the star pundits when you talk about someone like katie couric who for five years

reportedly received fifteen million dollars a year you talk about brian williams ten million dollars a year and some reports now if they didn't take those enormous salaries you could hire a hundred one hundred fifty actual reporters traduced search but instead most networks have been shutting down foreign bureaus and kicking out hundreds of journalists many of whom were on the ground and actually in the know a.b.c. news alone twenty five percent of their entire new staff last year begging the question whether the superstars are actually worth more than hundreds of their colleagues and putting a toll on the. information the viewers end up receiving there is no doubt in general quality in any one news organization is lower than it was thirty years ago with a shadow officially cast on what was once top notch news coverage to pay the enormous

salaries to the stars who don't know a lot about the middle east they're not experts on nuclear power they don't speak arabic but there they are jetting over to these countries it's a little silly and we demand is standing by getting filled in on events in an unknown land forces networks to play catch up at top speed but often unsuccessfully as far as libya goes you know we're hearing all this talk about the rebels nobody has really told me who these rebels are they don't seem to know though c.n.n. got to enjoy the highest reading since obama's inauguration after several months of designed you worship bucks for one has been caught cheating yet again please think she blew your egg man a local nightclub on one map with japan's nuclear reactors as well as going so far as to call new york's times square with a lion king ad kairos to rear square and its news coverage in fear of being out competed by others t.v.

networks have to be there or be square the one square that is and while this method certainly saves a buck or two it can cover up the fact that crews check in for a disaster jet back for when the worst is over leaving viewers in the dark about what leads up to and what happens after the chaos as they seem pretty new york. and you now sometimes that's the most important part of the story how it ends but without the drama pictures it does seem cost effective for some of these networks to stay any longer than they have to and as we just saw it's not just the cost of traveling expenses keeping veteran anchors on board with multimillion dollar contracts is indeed going to make it so others will. pushed overboard so how does this change the media landscape for the future well you saw him in the report and now danny schechter is in our new york studio to delve more into this and danny is a filmmaker and longer use that or dot org and danny i don't know about you about it really does seem like so much has been going on in the world and we're just at

the end of march what happens with these media outlets whose budgets have already run dry well they have to change the way they do business they have to develop stringers citizen journalism social media they have to use other outlets than the ones they've traditionally used and also partner with local networks i mean al-jazeera is covering you know libya every day but do you see al-jazeera on american television anywhere no you know we need to find a way to work with colleagues in other countries some networks have been doing that a little bit with your hands in h.k. there covering the crisis there the calamity of their own people in a really moving manner so there are ways to do it but if you just stick to the same old protocols the same old rituals of news coverage you quickly not only run out of money but you run out of ideas what about this notion danny of paying

these veteran hosts these huge amount of amounts of money you know on one hand people like to see faces that they recognize faces that have been in the business for a long time that they trust but on the other hand i mean we're starting to see i mean c.b.s. news is a great example a lot of other people being laid off because they just can't afford to have the manpower talk about this sort of balance of power. well it was reported today for example that katie couric is not signing up again as a news anchor and they're doing c.b.s. probably will be distributing a new talk show that she will be doing in a post oprah environment so she's going to be sort of cashing in by going in another direction maybe staying on sixty minutes but there will be a news new news anchor at c.b.s. to nk or has her there really to brand the newscast so they can get in more revenue and more higher ratings that's their function they've done a good job at that but what gets lost in the mix is the is the more probing and

challenging coverage of this the other day i mean this is bizarre but n.b.c.'s chief foreign correspondent was in benghazi i heard this report on a nightly news and then i saw him later on rachel maddow show he was saying something totally different he was asked about the rebels he said well it was just an been gazi i interviewed somebody who said he's opposing party because khadafi is jewish i mean crazy but you know any kind of nuance any kind of context seems to have to wait for longer form programming or talk show programming because the newscasts don't have time for it if the interesting to you danny that you bring that up i mean these shows are thing to have a different angle obviously nightly news tries to stay more on the balance side but when you get to later in the evening most of the shows have a definitive angle whether it's you know a riley or mad cow and i want to talk to you about one show really interesting show

last night the ad shows an outspoken host well played clip last night from last night's show and then i want to get your response. we have got a willing coalition put together timing is everything the circumstances surrounding this right now present us an opportunity to do justice on a man who the president says his agency killed americans there's no question that moammar qaddafi i'm sure that most of the entire world wants to see more market if you go on but the fact is that ali abdullah saleh the president of yemen is a murderous thug who has been sniper shooting nonviolent protesters and he remains a close friend of the obama administration and the dictatorship of khalifa family in bahrain these are these are this is a corrupt monarchy and the only thing that we get out of them is hosting the fifth fleet there so don't say anything about their violence so here we have the advantage though debating with jeremy scahill from the nation about the u.s. his role in libya if you watch more of that show you thought very out of it about standing by the president's decision to get involved in libya talk about this what

we're seeing here with some of these anchors the obama administration is terrified of losing that's really what the war is about the war is being fought so that we don't lose or it isn't perceived as if we're losing m s n b c and the edge show some of the other hosts there are totally uncritical supporters of president obama so they sort of take the official line we don't think when you say they're afraid of it and losing do you mean losing the election in two thousand and twelve or just losing the war that will loosely losing the election in two thousand and twelve could be facilitated if you are known to have lost the war this goes back to who lost china who lost vietnam i mean this is the kind of. talking point of american politics the fifty or sixty years so of course they're very nervous about about losing privately obama has referred to the war in libya as a to.