as missiles fire in the mid east rapper a low key blast through the western ways of hypocrisy shattering the humanitarian cover for what he said is an unjust war. we tried regime change before and sometimes it's worked and sometimes it's taken ten years and that being said he's been there done that secretary of defense robert gates so for him it is the mission in libya coming down of politics over experience congress or wants to know. also wants to know the plan how much and how long and from the ghosts of wars past

will arming rebels to fight dolphin now cause the us to be up in arms later. there is no doubt that in general quality of any one news organization is lower than it was thirty years ago and why my poppy well let's start by taking a look at some high profile pay stubs from ten to fifteen million dollar contracts main stream media talent cashes in all of the checks out. the mission in libya is now under the command of nato and we continue to see the pendulum swing in terms of who controls the major regions there we know the members of the cia at least have their boots on the ground and there is new evidence that the question of whether or not to arm the rebels there was answered weeks ago when orders. by president obama saying well let's do it what would the implications of

all of this be i want to go now to one of our favorite guests here on r.t. and that is rapper low key he's in london right now. hey there lowkey it's been a while since we've last spoken and a few things have happened you could say including u.n. resolution one nine hundred seventy three and the west involvement in libya there are so many theories about why libya why not elsewhere why anywhere at all i want to get your thoughts on this. personally i believe that the interests work here. the u.s. britain and france is interest in sustaining civil war rather than reaching some type of. time when things can be sort of put back together and the country can be a whole its about sustaining the period of civil war and destabilizing the revolutions which took place in tunis and in egypt i think is interesting that there is such

a respect for these u.n. resolution for the u.n. resolution one thousand nine hundred eighty three when israel has violated countless un resolutions in the united states and britain and france have never even considered military reaction let alone sanctions but ok what benefit does that have for the west for the u.k. france and the united states to have such strife going on in libya to have the civil war as you say they want to keep that going but why. what i think if we can specifically talk about britain for a moment let's look at who was next to david cameron when he went to egypt after the revolution it was his friends from be a e systems this war is costing britain five million pounds per day it's costing the british taxpayer five million pounds per day now all of that money is going to be a systems in terms that every weapon that britain uses will of course have to be

replaced so in the terms of britain having that role that's what that's about also in terms of it being within their interest for it to be destabilized is if you have a imperial presence in libya and also you know it's really are involved in this as well and you know you can just ask the libyans about the history of its early in the region the french are involved we can argue about jury and about the history of the french in the region we can honestly egyptians about the history of the british the libyans also know about the british they used to have a military base there but in terms of keeping. avoiding the possibility of there being three. countries that have genuine revolutions genuine upraising and then being able to unite i think that is something which the imperial powers don't really want to see so you're saying a lot of the world in some ways that this is simply about propping up the military industrial complex well definitely of course but we have to also question why

there is complete hypocrisy when it comes to places like broccoli and saudi arabia and then we have to look at. really who created nurtured the political elites that rule in these places why are saudi arabia. the u.a.e. and britain supporting supporting quote unquote but not crecy activists in libya but fighting against democracy activists in bahrain and saudi arabia doesn't really make sense locally on a personal note i guess i want to ask you to speak for your generation for others like you you know second or third generation generation muslims living in the west you seem and you have seen for many months angry about what's going on do you think that this is a sentiment shared you know by your peers by people like you. i think it's important to also understand that one side of my family is english you know i had.

a great aunt on one side of my family who was married to a man in the military that lived on the british military base in libya as a human being i don't believe it is right for britain or any other country in the world to have any type of military base in libya and believe me if these powers get their way when all is said and done there will be a foreign military base again in libya and i don't believe that is acceptable i don't expect any human being should be asked to accept that and i also feel that if britain is interested in defending itself against terrorism this is really not the way to go about it and involving itself in a war which it doesn't need to be involved in and the fact that david cameron himself since sniper rifles took at their feet in november two thousand and ten really tells you all you need to know about the crissy of the british government

when it comes to libya certainly i would imagine where you are in london as here you know in the united states in washington d.c. in particular a lot of very. graphic opinions strong opinions going on here from the people about what's happening now is rapper loci and partially we're out of time looking joining us from london england. and here today in washington defending the mission in libya defense secretary secretary of defense robert gates and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admiral mike mullen testified before congress for the first time since the u.s. started its involvement in libya are just kill import has more on the muddled nature of the mission and the anger it's current for some lawmakers. twelve days since the u.s. bombing of libya. u.s. congressmen 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 khadafi regime the military mission is a limited one and does not include regime change. who the rebels are we don't have much visibility into into those who have risen against each element has its own agenda. it's pretty much a pickup ball game at this point and whether the u.s. will arm them discuss our plans if you need regarding arming the rebels they seem to be getting their butts whipped but gates and mullen pass the buck and that one's referring to the white house what if it was ok to the side of the missile in there and or at least 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 better force from the beginning i don't know why this administration is not going on this 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 the briefing of the armed services committee there wasn't your sectarian stance you ought to be an expert on what's an act of law act of war or 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 gates and mullen repeated over and over again 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 these fortunes there's no one on the ground recent press reports at least indicate the cia operatives on the ground so boots on the ground as i would define it and if other sending troops i guess is we'd all read about it in the newspaper 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 he has formally handed control to nato today and you know operation odyssey dawn and beginning operation unified protector but newspapers quoting vatican sources said that forty civilians were killed in coalition air strikes here and seeing if there will be plenty of more questions for a top american military for us here in washington for an artsy washington d.c.

from tough questions as you saw 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 how compelling was that testimony and how will it shape what happens next joining me now for more is former senior intelligence officer for the cia dr meal not go away he's also the author of this book are necessary in gage meant reinventing america's relations with the muslim world hey there dr not go away let's start out with this decision to get involved in libya was it a good one or a bad one. i think it was unnecessary war i think the libyan movement started as a dissolute movement demanding the end of the oppression of the regime used heavy weapons against them and it seemed in order to stage the million the west decided wisely to get in by a lender limited what but answer not

a lie we just heard some news that came down today at least forty civilians were killed by the airstrikes by the west in addition there's new information that we really don't know who these rebels are and that apparently the president already decided to give arms to how can this be justified to go in and give strangers who may or may not turn against the u.s. in the future to give them weapons and to come into a country where this is going on in several countries right sort of these are not rebels in the provisionals in the analogy. does not hold this libya is not being invaded by a foreign country and afghanistan run by the soviet union i think arming these opposition groups in order to talk with god is the big goal and it's a limited goal i think that so you think that there is no similarity there or that some of these similarities at least these historic connections between the arming

of the mujahedeen who later became the taliban you know turned against the u.s. you don't think that there's that connection holds any water. no no it doesn't because we are going to just do you know damage done in order to shoot down . an aircraft there are no aircraft that are backing people in libya so that's one reason not to arm them with that article of weapon the one about the civilians who were killed i mean we saw at least forty today killed in these air strikes led by the west what happens tomorrow in the next day if this continues our questions are more civilians killed by going to our city and i think that's what we need to focus on the civilians that are killed by graffitti and just brutality and i think that brutality must stop i think dr knox not only i'm sure you've heard this question being asked several times over the last several days we see what's going on in libya certainly some horrific things that we see but we see that going

on not just here we see it happening in yemen in bahrain in the sudan why has the u.s. chosen this country above the others. because bishop was started in yemen and we are also so well again i didn't want to start it because the forms have not been seriously by hand and i believe that that machine guns i mean and i think in bahrain we are pushing for reform through dialogue and i hope people for any government when live up to his commitment to start a dialogue with the opposition so you think in yemen that saleh is on his way out you think in bahrain things are going to change in a more diplomatic than shin is that what i'm hearing i think so what is what do you think is next i mean certainly there's talk we've heard days not weeks weeks not months and you know we've also had some guests here on our team who say the u.s. the last nato could be in libya for twenty years what's your take on how this

played out and how it ends i was not released so i don't think i think billions is going to regime should be in science i have a more senior people like me i have the energy and i see benjy he is seeing border senior people are abandoning it i think that the end should be inside and so is the game in yemen i think the next would be here yet i think that's what we have to watch was born violent incident but what about this notion dr naca lay that you know the u.s. has a little bit on its plate right now between afghanistan and iraq and a tumbling crumbling economy here at home you think still that this was the right thing to do knowing it now that we don't really know who the rebels are knowing that we don't exactly know how this ends and knowing that even defense secretary robert gates has said this is war and we could be there for a long time. you know we did not bring business about it was brought by the people

and in fact all going to people who wanted a change of regime and then beijing acted very brutally i'm like oh goes on like in asia and egypt where there is you does not respond not to our own there are people in this block of the internet you have got to start if we are going to see a change in that brutal regime all right well certainly you have a lot of knowledge and experience former senior intelligence officer with the cia dr milne aka les also author of a necessary engagement and a lawsuit and considers arming the rebels and broadening the military mission isn't ready for the potential blowback arcade i just a conference a look at the ghost of wars past the international community a primitive intervention in libya to protect city man from colonel qaddafi but washington wants to go further than that and is considering arming the rebels while

officially denying that toppling khadafi 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 believe demeter critics of the u.s. taking sides in a civil war warned of the consequences and 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 in 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

jihadists know i'm benoît men who renounces all kind of two thousand says he has two mates one thousand jihadists are among the rebels in libya one levy and rebel commander has openly admitted his fighters have 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 the u.s. military study three years ago said levy is made up the second largest group of jihadists in the war 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 for 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. liberal 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 so blowback per charmers johnson . famously about is sure to happen in libya in afghanistan back in the eighty's the u.s. had a narrow goal to help them all j.d. fight soviet troops subsequently the same militants turned their raptors and

training against the u.s. among those of them was osama bin ladin whose group eventual evolved into al qaida vince cannistraro cia and alice is an operations chief in the 1980's says that then the us didn't see the dangers of arming afghan militants. and what we've seen were tribal so. you know it's. leading to. some reconstruction. 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 ghana shut down r t washington d.c. for this historic connections exist on many levels but what can we learn from them and to what extent could history repeating itself earlier i spoke to philip giraldi he's a former officer with the cia he's only why he thinks the u.s.

is falling into some of the same patterns mistakes as it did in afghanistan and also as to why as to why the u.s. is so interested in libya in the first place. but there we say that history doesn't repeat itself but it tells you certain things and i think that what we're seeing here is essentially we're falling into the same mistakes that we fell into in afghanistan and have fallen into it in other places which is essentially we're in a situation where we don't really know who we're arming 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 that 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 came as no surprise to most people to learn that there are several cia officers from this country in libya they want to know who the rebels are but me ask you this

i mean we've been hearing since day one since the one resolution one thousand seventy three signed no boots on the ground from the united states do the cia officers arms they not wear boots you know they do there's a very very legal distinction between us here you officer who operates under the national security act of one thousand nine hundred seven and a military officer but but in reality the difference is not great a 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 also pointing to for example the situation in iraq the on again off again 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 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 in libya yeah i think that's that's precisely what the government should do the government should learn from experience. it seems and it's 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 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 doll for you or a saddam hussein but they don't turn out that way it's really interesting as far as the cia being there i guess not a huge surprise we want to know who the rebels are some speculating no that they're also there for a very distinct purpose that they are there to assassinate gadhafi their take on this my take on that is that it's unlikely i can see we're going cia people would be able to get access to good often he's moving around every few hours from what

i've heard 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 things inner circle to try to do it but that would be as far as i would go with whether there's been a lot of different explanations given to the public to the press 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 this 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 are u.s. interests and libya 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 libya's an energy producer whoever is in charge of libya will have to sell the energy so that's ok it doesn't matter who the government is and the and the other

thing is you know the basically libya cannot become a base for terrorism but libya was not a base for terrorism under. gadhafi so the question is is there. no national interest really here libya was not a base for terrorism under gadhafi at all i mean he said and i recently not since quite a long history i know it's an exam or out of the cold yeah exactly but but in recent history gadhafi has not been a supporter of terrorism as far as anyone knows but the thing is that you know this is i think 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 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 months and i think there will be 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 but after all the thanks so much thank you very much and it's

not just what's happening in libya or what's happened in tunisia in egypt remember we just had a huge earthquake and nuclear meltdown in japan and all of that has overwhelmed news channels with a tsunami of costs of course after years of cutting back on bureaus and correspondents overseas and the networks are being reminded of the benefit of real boots on the ground news coverage but it does cost a lot more than armchair political punditry artie's on the stasi it's hard to not break that all of them. it's a day when egyptian protesters news pundits are teleporting almost the speed of light from the safety of their news desks to far away and dangerous places sirens are going off led by their journalistic callings and big bucks to be made and spent egypt tunisia libya you know the locals hey os japan and the tremor of naani and earthquakes i want to err on the side of caution for you hear disasters exploding

around the world one after the other these past months of growth could all breaking news records i 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 in crises joining me now 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 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 week 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 a hundred fifty actual reporters produce church but instead most networks have been shutting down store and 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 that in general quality in any one news organization is lower than it was thirty years ago would 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 then we do it is standing by getting filled in on events in an unknown land forces networks to play catchup 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 dined you worship for one has been caught cheating yet again please think shibuya 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 where the lion king ad kairos to rere square and its news coverage in fear of being out competed by others t.v. networks have to be there or be square the wrong square that is and while this method certainly saves a buck or two it can cover up the fact that crews check in for the.