results michael visibly pulls its own review of the job with secrecy told. the. occur. everybody knows it's blowback with deadly consequences dozens were killed in the worst ever attacks on un workers in afghanistan today by demonstrators protesting the burning of a koran in a church in florida so it's all fun and games until someone gets killed. and the war in libya continues to dominate the news headlines but is our focus there are misplaced with thousands marching on the streets of yemen and we're going to examine what's at stake there there's huma that country's president and america's kovar a war on yemen soil. let's get it done over these rebels let's give them

a chance to fight and when the country goes to war so does the u.s. media we're going to take a look at how wars are good for business and for the press and how journalists seem to be leading the march to war. good evening it's friday april first four pm here in washington d.c. and lucy coffin of any watching arcade. now it's easy to forget that our actions can have unintended consequences and so days like today come along now on march twentieth a florida evangelical preacher decided to make a political statement by burning the koran during a service in his church and today nearly twenty people paid a heavy price for that action they paid with their lives afghan protesters furious over the koran burning stormed a u.n. compound in the normally pieces. the city of mazar

e sharif telling up to twenty people in the worst ever attack on u.n. workers in that country now for a look at the blowback effect of our our actions here at home and policies abroad i'm joined by a journalist who has spent quite a bit of time in afghanistan and yet nile share is a writer for national geographic magazine and he joins us from portland oregon. thank you so much for being here you know i know you've spent a lot of time in this country and i want to begin by sort of looking at where this attack took place this is normally a peaceful city a northern city this is not an area that's normally overrun by insurgents in fact it's a quite a bit of pride in the in the stability in that specific city so what what does it what are the implications for you that some such an action could take place in in that country in that area was to nato and american forces evident a lot of trouble in my certain sure it's scary but of the more peaceful areas of the country i think what we're seeing today is there over the last few days is just a real violent reaction against things that we cannot predict and don't really have

much control over the united states military parent against early qur'an says last year this particular pastor said that he was going to do it because they knew that there would be a backlash in afghanistan and around the muslim world against american and allied forces so that's really what we're seeing today i don't think it has much to do with the taliban or al qaeda yet why do you think there is such i guess a short term focus an inability to really sort of think through the consequences and understand that these kinds of actions really do lead to soldiers' lives being lost workers' lives being lost human people and human beings being killed essentially. well this particular example the church in florida that burned this ground is very small and the news reports tell us that there were no more than thirty worshippers in the church when the qur'an was burned so it hardly represents a very large segment of our population the united states so but because it's so small it make. it a lot easier

a lot harder for anybody to control of course we value free speech in the united states and we would never try to prevent this church from doing this sort of activity but clearly it has repercussions the only united states borders and i don't think that the people in the church were really they haven't been considering that when they decided to threaten the crown this way i don't think it's important to them at all but i don't know doesn't matter if it's a small percentage of the population now because the from the from bill isn't this is some significant and i guess what i want to get to is you know talk a little bit about the globe back that not necessarily be as extreme actions but the broader u.s. foreign policy in the middle east and how that affects both our troops on the ground and the folks that are working in afghanistan this sort of thing even though it is well as you mentioned for instance none of the other you know worldwide media really covered this qur'an burning such a small of it but in the middle east and arab countries in particular does this sort of thing as an echo effect and like the danish cartoons that were published

several years ago and other incidents where we don't in the west don't think it's going to have much much effect that it reverberates through populations who are already under great stress and u.s. military commander snow this sort of thing can happen a few years ago or last year some top commanders were warning that israel's actions against in palestine would actually directly affect u.s. troops and u.s. interests in the region so we know that small effects like this can ripple and turn into tidal waves against our forces and our allies talk a little bit about your personal experiences and from your latest travels what is the general perception by most afghans of the united states family at the foursomes . well there was really a mix particularly the last time i was there i was in the eastern part of the country and the period that the u.s. just to set it recently to pull out of the well i was paired with the perception of

the americans was very it was a very mixed picture some people i would say most people just wanted everyone to people that don't they wanted to be left alone by the americans but also by the taliban it was really sort of a just let us do our whole attitude and i didn't really it wasn't so much focused it as an anti-american sentiment or as an anti nato sentiment it just it that people were tired of fighting and they wanted to be able to get back to their lives do you have the sense that perhaps our presence there is interfering with what's the ability and the country absolutely are tense i mean there's no there's no question that where american troops and allied troops go the taliban will fight against them if our troops aren't there there will be less fighting but that doesn't necessarily mean the conditions on the ground for the average afghan civilian civilian be any better the taliban can be incredibly violent as we all know and it's just sort of a question of which side does the least damage right but of course it's difficult

when we're already stretched so thin and iraq now and libya and us we're be talking about later in the show in yemen thank you so much for your time and a certain left and right are i'll share my pleasure now in this country there are some wars that don't know if the headlines iraq afghanistan the so-called kinetic military action humanitarian intervention war that is libya but then there are the others the quiet on the cleared wars that range safely and yet the radar of the mainstream press of all the u.s. media was busy debating the latest antics of charlie sheen and just one day before our missiles are out of range over libya and this scene unfolded in the capital of the i was . unarmed demonstrators who had gathered as they had for weeks to protest the rule of president ali abdullah saleh were slaughtered in cold blood killed by yemeni forces with weapons paid for in part by you and i with the backing of the united

states sollars regime has lasted for more than three decades first as an ally in the cold war and now as our porton are in a war on terror and a growing civil unrest that rages as we speak today in that country cannot be separated from america's secret war on yemeni soil now earlier i spoke with jeremy scahill who has studied the close relationship between the saleh regime and the united states he's the author of this book here blackwater the rise of the world's most powerful mercenary army and he joins us now from new york i asked him to break down the secret war and explain why our involvement in yemen should matter. what we're seeing unfold in the middle east with what appears to be a contradiction in the way that the u.s. is approaching libya versus saudi arabia orbach rainer syria or yemen is actually a consistent u.s. policy of supporting ruthless and brutal dictators as long as they are doing the bidding of the united states and so while we see this military action that actually

is a war against libya unfolding what we're seeing just a few hundred miles away across the red sea in yemen is that ali abdullah saleh is allowed to snipe or shoot his protesters in the head and is allowed to use u.s. weapons and training to fight his domestic political opponents aid and training that's been given to him sensibly to fight al qaeda forces in that country and you see the defense secretary robert gates saying that it's not the business of the united states to intervene in the internal affairs of yemen the fact is that the united states has been waging a covert war inside yemen for the past ten years and it has been ratcheted up dramatically by the obama administration in december of two thousand and nine president obama authorized two very deadly airstrikes against yemen involving tomahawk cruise missiles with cluster bombs that can shred human beings and the alleged target of those air strikes in december of zero nine were members of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula in reality though one of the strikes killed twenty

one children and scores of others civilians and another strike that the u.s. did killed an important tribal leader in yemen who in fact was trying to work out a mediation program with the members of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula so as long as ali abdullah saleh the president of yemen allows the united states to his country to kill people inside of yemen and he himself will take responsibility for those actions as has been revealed by the wiki leaks cables showing that he conspired with david petraeus and other u.s. officials to cover up the u.s. role the united states isn't going to say much about the widespread human rights violations taking place there or the killing of protesters and. you reference the sort of ideology or their reality of you know the enemy of our enemy is our friend but the fact of the matter when it comes to yemen is that you can't undo history you can't undo the cold war and our support of this regime during the cold war and now that a.q. a.p. . in their arabian peninsula is a stablished in yemen it seems that we can't simply pull out and just hope for the

best so what could the possible outcome be. well i mean i think part of what you have to understand here is that you know americans are very afraid of the power of nightmares you know if individuals have the ability to take down an airplane certainly that's something that's frightening and it's scary but it doesn't represent an existential threat to the united states and so what the obama administration has done is really use a hammer in these operations when they probably called for a scalpel and the reality is that there are really only by most estimates three hundred to six hundred who are members of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula so defense analysts that i've talked to people with from within the cia that the way and the special operations community all question the wisdom of approaching yemen strictly through a military strategy the fact is this is the poorest country in the arab world it's going to actually run out of water in the near future much of the country is choose this drug caught there is very little opportunity for employment and so instead of

the on the targeted killings some would say that the united states has an obligation to try to support the building up of civil society in yemen or some of the intelligence committee call that draining the swamp taking away his reason for being there the fact is that ali abdullah saleh corruption his relationship with the u.s. allowing the u.s. to bomb his country using u.s. weapons and train forces to kill domestic political opponents has contributed greatly to this destabilization there so the united states may have to withdraw its covert forces from yemen if the next government is not pliant as as has been and relocate them to djibouti in north africa which is really becoming the hub for u.s. military operations throughout the middle east but jeremy if you look at these that trouble areas like yemen for example i mean if you build out civil society you're still. promoting a perilous policies but more humane ones and you're involving yourself and i'm faced with right i'm not saying you but i mean that thinking so what what's the endgame for the united states when it comes to these and stabler genes that

obviously do have terrorist implications. but we can't necessarily afford to you know intervene in all of these countries that have potential threats well i mean look the fact is that one of the main motivators for al qaeda is the fact that the united states has supported the corrupt monarchy and saudi arabia brutally ruthless regime their brain as well all throughout the gulf supporting these dictatorships either through civil aid or more commonly through military aid so i mean i think that the whole industry that's been built up the counterinsurgency counterterrorism industry thrives on this much in the same way that these sort of cold war years were probably depressed when they saw the berlin wall come down because their relevance was going to be thrown out the door no more books no more contracts no more think tanks and i think that you know there's a lot of vested interest in keeping these conflicts going for the coin industry well i mean and moving on to the broader middle east i want to ask you if you look at all of these different things and obviously the american people may not know all

that much about our involvement and specifically but this is ministration does so what do you think goes into the thinking in these people's minds when you make a decision to go to war in libya at a time when the outcome in iraq remains uncertain afghanistan remains uncertain and they know what's going on in yemen and the instability there what do you think goes through their minds when they make this decision to you know get involved militarily in a hot war in another country. yeah well i mean i think in the in the case of the obama administration they've really doubled down on some of the worst bush administration policies that we now are addicted to this notion in the u.s. counterterrorism world that we can kill our way out of a problem and we see this war of attrition happening in afghanistan i was just there recently where the u.s. forces are doing all these night raids and killing their way through the command structure of the taliban and they think that they're going to just be able to kill everyone and eventually that's going to bring peace well it's not going to bring

peace it's only giving further motivation for more people to join with resistance groups or insurgent movements you know in the case of libya i think that we saw an incredible reactionary policy put into place by the obama administration i think there was a lot of blackmailing and cajoling that went on at the u.n. security council and the fact is that as much as people in the united states talk about how obama got this legitimacy from the u.n. security council five of the major powers in the world russia china brazil and india and germany abstained in those votes and they represent a majority of the citizens who are represented on the security council so you know this is a part of u.s. policy when it's convenient to use the u.n. security council the u.s. government will use it in the case of the kosovo bombing in ninety nine russia and china vetoed the resolution and said no you can't go to war against kosovo or against serbia over kosovo and so what the quid administration did was to go to nato and use that for quote unquote legitimacy you know the fact is these are all

sort of rogue operations because moammar gadhafi need to be stopped yes he needs to be stopped i oppose what the u.s. is doing not on moral grounds but on strategic grounds i think we're going to make it worse and we're getting involved in the civil war and unfortunately it seems like robert gates the defense secretary is probably the most sane voice in the administration right now he's he started openly saying he didn't think this was a good idea to get involved in libya this way that's fascinating he's on his way out the door but he's been around for a long time he was a gun runner during the mujahedeen wars and. afghanistan has a cia background a special forces background and is the defense secretary but that's a pretty big split i think within the administration and a lot of people are saying that robert gates is actually the most on his voice in this debate right now within the of the discussions taking place at the white house but i had to say i found it slightly amusing that hillary clinton was almost acting as the babysitter when he did the media blitz on the sunday shows but we've been to a lot of these countries you've been to afghanistan you've reported widely in iraq you've been to yemen for this story talk about the blowback factor how are we hurting our policies our image abroad with the kinds of covert and overt wars that

are taking place in these lands right now. well i mean i think that you know the biggest blowback that we saw that's taken place against the united states for a long time was of course nine eleven where we had a very similar situation where we went in and we funded people that we didn't do a lot of research on we didn't know what their world view was because we wanted the soviet union out of afghanistan in the puppet regime there overthrown once again the united states is getting itself into bed with the rebels quote unquote on the ground in libya that are not known quantities i mean i think it's sort of hilarious that the cia has to deploy to go figure out who the rebels are it's like a sort of you know covert world line dating service or something where the cia goes into libya to find out who the rebels are wouldn't have been a good idea to find out who they were before you started spending one point four million dollars per tomahawk cruise missile that you launched at yemen five hundred million dollars already spent and reports that the rebels themselves have been

committing war crimes so the potential for blowback from all of these things killing of civilians in yemen with tomahawk cruise missiles running covert operations in somalia the philippines and then elsewhere in the horn of africa getting involved in a civil war with libya and then continuing to back corrupt dictatorships like the saudis the behind these others i think it gives a great recruitment tool to those who do want to do harm to americans and i think that we need to take a sober look at that in this country our own actions are actually responsible for creating new generations of people we care and we've had a grise as terrorists now jeremy we're almost out of time but i want to end this interview on a more personal note out and i'm a huge fan of your work and you've done so much to bring to light the various injustices that have proper c. is that we've seen in our in our military in foreign policy and in your book blackwater when on the bestseller list of then you're trying to send your work both in terms of blackwater young men and other pieces that are and you countless interviews and some of the most watched news programs but at the end of the day it seems that the tough questions are still not being asked and and the broader system

remains more or less unchanged how do you deal with that. yeah well you know i think that i want to say in response to what you were very appreciate your kind words about me but i think the real heroes of the past ten years of this permanent state of war are journalists that no one's heard of though the autumn better journalists the iraqis journalists arab journalists who really are the ones risking their lives we hear about it when american journalists are killed or captured and tortured as was the case of the four new york times journalists in libya but we very seldom hear about the reuters cameraman who are killed typically when they're killed by the united by u.s. forces so i view the future and the hope i have in my heart regarding journalism comes from this new generation of young arab journalists that are very bravely telling the story of rebellion and repression every single day with very little fanfare or attention paid to them those are the real heroes of of our society when it comes to bringing the truth to the united states and elsewhere and they never get the credit for it and they are absolutely jeremie it thank you so much for

taking the time to be with us today really appreciate it. and from talking about war we want to turn now to an in-depth on how war is covered by the mainstream press right here in the united states and what the pro-war antiwar of these our stance is that you may associate with certain networks if that means the wrath left suddenly to the right and in the case of one specific one it ambiguously leads leans forward and that means now as it turns out most of our cable channels seem to actually like war and as our chief christine for south found out one network in particular not only fights for it but fire speak and speak out against it. it's believed by many to be the most liberal of all cable networks and this n.b.c. pro obama it is clear that it matches what he said about that issue at the very start of his presidency pro-union the conservative rightness country so you're nothing but a bunch of free roads. that's what they say and also understatedly

pro-war. blogger filmmaker and former journalist danny schechter says television makes war possible we couldn't have wars in america if t.v. networks didn't glorify them in some way and make them exciting and give action oriented coverage what i call the elite. iraq. afghanistan and now. yes the u.s. involvement in libya let's get it done let's zero in these rebels let's give them a chance to fight a sentiment also supported by m.s.n. he sees most liberal talk show host rachel now and lawrence o'donnell it seems to me there's a practical war making tactical success that they believe they could have in this

particular country exactly he kept describing himself as sort of acutely aware of the risks and the costs of america doing any sort of military intervention and so you're exactly right i think we have to do it it is a moral decision at this point so you might be thinking well that's just because the u.s. involvement in libya falls under a democratic president but as it turns out and s n b c has had a longstanding love affair with war remember actually banfield oh my god. she became a star reporter covering the world trade center attacks but in two thousand and three. kansas state university. just as the war in iraq was getting started she said about the coverage what didn't you see you didn't see where those bullets landed you didn't see what happened when the mortar landed a puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes believe me there are horrors that were completely left out of this war and that's n.b.c.

refused to let her out of her contract but kept her off air thus muzzling her happen to with former independent governor jesse ventura. you were right then a phone call asking if it was true that he didn't support the war in iraq well you're about. a year before all three years. do you think because my contract said i. don't already knew shows for three years so too did killed the prize winning journalist peter arnett after giving this interview on iraqi t.v. america is reappraising the better. to lead the. lead. and rewrite. the first line just. because of the iraqi resistance when i think d.c. was still up and coming its highest rated show was hosted by this man phil donahue

an outspoken critic of the war and you know i think you know we're all our buddies right just want to charitable him for this is we were when he was doing that he was our us so we had absolutely no more sending our sons and daughters to war to fix that was nato it doesn't seem fair to me that show was cancelled a few weeks before the war started phil donahue was an anti-war voice on m.s.n. b.c. one of the cable news channels and a memo that was leaked as the donahue show was cancelled is very explicit and said we don't want this to be a face of n.b.c. as you. and the states goes into war looks like to stay on board you need to sound more like what i am a liberal i am a progressive what that means that we need to stand behind people who want freedom this isn't bush talk this is totally different from the rackets totally different from any other situation christine for sound r t. and joining me now for more on

this is jeff cohen he's a journalism professor at ithaca college jeff thank you so much for being here it's exciting to have you back on now can the case be made that some networks tend to actually have a bias for war and i'm not saying that you know they want to sincerely bloodshed or violence but that there's a vested financial interest perhaps in covering conflict. oh most networks in this country seem to be very quick to support military intervention but what's funny is watching c.n.n. and some of the pundits this time this last couple weeks they want so much to support the military action but it's been so poorly explained and they pointed out time and time again. i think when you know when your set up piece which had some great stuff in it when you talk about in the send receive being the most liberal channel well it's owned by comcast and general electric general electric and some

major war profiteering nuclear power profiteer exactly what you get in the us media isn't so much a full spectrum what you get in us corporate media is a corporate spectrum it goes from g.e. to g.m. from general electric to general motors to general dynamics and it doesn't surprise me what you really have is the sort of echoes of the two major corporate political parties you know m s n b c is supporting this intervention because it's a democrat in the white house you know fox news o'reilly will support any military in the matter but some of them and they are questioning at box news this same exact thing happened when the united states was bombing serbia and it was under bill clinton and all the sudden fox became dogs and they were questioning their saying where's the congressional authorization and you know it's really silly we have a very narrow spectrum on american t.v. and m.s.n. b.c.

by their boosterism obama in the last couple weeks with a military intervention that's hardly explained really shows how narrow the spectrum is you know and just to talk more about this financial incentive having to talk about the g eight connection etc but it's not just that we also have human factor here i mean journalists have to get excited you know they get embedded with the troops and they develop relationships with the troops they get. you know estimation from their sources in the pentagon and says there's this desire to sort of maintain that relationships and it's this sort of felt the feeling of feeling cycle that just keeps suffer the consequences which is the suffering of the coverage there's no doubt about it the the main instinct and remember i worked at edison the during the time i was a senior producer on the bill donahue what they back from you is rah rah rah for the home team we don't you know when donahue was the only place on american television questioning bush's lies and all the exaggerations and deceptions coming

out of the white house why we had to invade iraq and invade now and they had this one voice and they kept squeezing it and they kept demanding that he tone it down and they gave us who were producers on the donahue show at m s n b c orders that if we go to one guest who was anti-war we had a book two that were pro-war if we were to test on the last we have three on the right at one meeting when a producer said she was thinking of booking like a war she was told she'd have to rewrite lingers for balance so you know they ruin the show then they cancelled the show and it was the top rated show i mean when you talk about m s n b c i remember olbermann who sort of replaced donahue when he was pro-war and when he started over time coming out against the bush administration was very much a fluke the fact that olbermann ended up liking is that was is very much not what management expected or wanted and while he was doing so great with ratings because

there was no place for progressive seagal but his show on american television there was no r t a few years ago or any some of these other options the you know over again went through the roof in terms of ratings and then he opened the door for him out up but i think we're really seeing you pointed out the limits of this sense if m s n b c it's not really a progressive. the chain was more like a democratic channel with a democratic right house authorizing a weird unexplainable who wants a reaction you see so many people would have us and be saying. we're going to call the limits of dissent and unfortunately it is the american people that suffer as a consequence jeff cohen media critic and journalism professor thank you so much now that unfortunately does it for now for more on the stories that we've covered please go to r.t. dot com slash usa and check out our youtube page that's youtube dot com slash r t america and as always feel free to follow me on twitter as well it's lucy kaplan i was here.