her. mother everybody knows it's blowback with deadly consequences at least seven were killed today in the worst ever attack on you and workers in afghanistan by demonstrators protesting the burning of a koran in a florida church wasn't all fun and games until someone pays the price of their life. and the war in libya continues to dominate news headlines but it is our focus there misplaced thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets of yemen today demanding an end to president saleh is rule that state is more than just his regime we're going to

discuss america's covert war on yemen soil. let's give it a good look 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 the conflict seems to be good business for cable news and how journalists may be leading the march to war. good evening it's friday april first eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy captain of any watching. now it's easy to forget how our actions may have unintended consequences until events like today's come along now on march twentieth a florida evangelical preacher decided to make a statement of burning the koran at a service and his church today people paid with their lives for that action at the end protestors furious over the burning stormed a u.n. compound in the normally peaceful city in mazar

e sharif killing at least seven employees in the first ever attack on you and workers in that country and earlier i spoke spoke with neil cher who is a writer for national geographic magazine about the blowback effect of our actions here at home and our policies abroad. pedo and american forces have had a lot of trouble in buzzard sharif in one 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 can afford dictum don't really have much control over the united states military parent against burning korans last year with 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 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 where 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 makes it a like east a lot harder for anybody to control of course we value free speech in the united states so we would never try to prevent this church from doing this sort of activity but clearly it has repercussions be on the united states borders and i don't think that people in the church were really they haven't been considering that when they decided to threaten their own this way but i think it's important to the middle where the and on that doesn't matter if it's a small segment of the population now because the formulas and the process of

significance and i guess what i want to get to is you know talk a little bit about the globe 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 are working in afghanistan to sort of. even though it is small as you mentioned for instance and none of the other you know worldwide media really covered this qur'an burning such a small bit but in the middle east and arab countries in particular there is 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 but 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 him 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 have been turned into a title way of sequenced 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 and the appian force of this. well there was really a mix of particularly the last time was there i was in the eastern part of the country and area 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 leave them to go and 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 own thing and i didn't really it wasn't so much focused it as an anti-american sentiment or as an anti nato sentiment but just that the people were tired of fighting and they wanted to be able to go back and sometimes do you have a sense that perhaps our presence there is interfering with stability in that country

absolutely it does i mean there's no there's no question that where american troops and our 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 will be any better the taliban can be incredibly violent as we all know so it's just sort of a question of which side has the least damage that was neal shades are left and right are. now in this country and there are some wars that do make headlines iraq afghanistan the kinetic military action humanitarian intervention war that is libya but then there are others require a quieter under cleared wars that rage safely beneath the radar of the mainstream press and what the us media was debating the latest antics of charlie sheen and just one day before our missiles range over libya this scene unfolded in the

capital of yemen. was. was. was. unarmed demonstrators who had gathered as they have pulled. weeks to protest the rule of president ali of journalists 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 all his regime has lasted for more than three decades first as an ally in the cold war and now is our partner in the war on terror but the growing civil unrest in that rages in yemen as we speak right now cannot be separated from america's secret war on yemeni soil the close relationship between the saleh regime and the u.s. is the subject of a major new investigation by journalist jeremy scahill in the nation magazine also the author of this book here the black blackwater the rise of the world's most powerful mercenary army and he spoke to us earlier from new york i asked me to

break down the secret war in yemen and why americans should be paying for this conflict. 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 rain or 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 sniper 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 has two very deadly air strikes against yemen valving 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 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 here. you reference the sort of ideology or the 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. in there 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 we are. well i mean i think part of what you have to understand here is that 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 poor members of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula so defense

analysts that i've talked to people with from within the cia the a 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 in 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 forces from yemen if the next government is not pliant 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 outs that was society you're still. you know promoting and perilous policies but more humane ones and you're involving yourself in that i guess you're 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 unstable regimes that obviously do you have terrorist implication. yes but we can't necessarily afford to intervene in all of these countries that have essentially threats well i mean look the fact is that one of the main motivators for it is the fact that the united states has supported the corrupt moderate here in saudi arabia brutally ruthless regime there. 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 warriors were probably depressed when they saw the little 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 vested interest in keeping these conflicts going for the recording industry i mean moving on to the broader middle east i want to ask you know if you look at all of these different things and obviously the american people may not know all that much about our involvement and yelled 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 get involved militarily in a hot war in another country. 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 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 and 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 it 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 of 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 and you know 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 clinton ministration did was to go to nato and use that for quote unquote legitimacy you know fact is these are all sort of rogue operations does market often 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 a civil war and i'm fortunately it seems like robert gates the defense secretary is probably the most sane voice in the administration right now he's he's sort of 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 and he's been around for a long time he was a gun writer during the mujahedeen wars and. afghanistan has a cia background and special forces background and is the defense secretary but

that's a pretty big squid 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 with 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 but this story talk about 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 overthrowing 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 and figure out who the rebels are it's like a sort of you know covert world online dating service or the cia goes into libya to find out who the rebels are would have been a good idea to find out who they were before you started spending one point four million dollars per tomahawk cruise missile but you launch at yemen five hundred million dollars already spent on it 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 up dictatorships like the saudis the biharis and 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 soldier look at that in this country our own actions are actually responsible for creating new generations of people we care we categorize as terrorists now jeremy

we're almost out of time but i want to end this interview on a more personal note a huge fan of your work and and eve done so much to bring to light the various injustices that have caucus states that we've seen in our in our military and foreign policy and in your book blackwater went on the bestseller list of the new york times and their work both in terms of blackwater yemen and other pieces that for 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 the broader system remains more or less unchanged how do you deal with that. 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 but the uninvited journalists the iraqis journalists the arab journalists who really are the ones risking their lives we hear about it when american journalists are killed or captured or tortured as was the case of the four new york times journalists in libya but we very seldom hear about the reuters cameraman who were killed

particular 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 well and they have to be absolutely sure jeremy thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today really appreciate it. turning from war itself to the way that wars are covered by the mainstream press if it's no big secret that the cable channels come with a bias some lean to the right others to the left and then there's even that one that leans forward whatever that means but as it turns out most cable networks share one thing in common a love of war and artie's christine for south found out one network in particular not only fights for it but fires those who speak out against.

it's believed by many to be the most liberal of all the cable networks and there's 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 countries i say you're nothing but a bunch of pretty roads. 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 merely. iraq. afghanistan and now. yes the us involvement in

libya let's get it done let's all of these rebels let's give them a chance to fight a sentiment also supported by n.s.a. n.b.c.'s most liberal talk show host rachel maddow 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 can't 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 do you 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 as n.b.c. has had a longstanding love affair with war remember owsley banfield oh my god look behind us she became a star reporter covering the world trade center attacks but in two thousand and three. cans of 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 as n.b.c. refused to let her out of her contract but kept her off air thus nuzzling her happened to with former independent governor jesse ventura. then a phone call asking if it was true that he didn't support the war in iraq. or they paid me throughout three years they. collected. anything because my contract i don't care you don't already three years so too did kill it or prize winning journalist peter arnett after giving this interview on

iraqi t.v. and there it was really crazy the battle so let me. read it and read right. the first line is. because of the iraqi resistance when anthony c. was still up and coming its highest rated show was hosted by this man phil donahue an outspoken critic of the war you know i think you know we're all now everybody's right just want to charitable help where this is we were when he was doing that he was our us so we had absolutely no no we're sending our sons and brothers to war to fix that as i say don't does it was a 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 cast is very explicit and said we don't want this to be a face of n.b.c.

as you know. state's goes into war looks like to stay on board you need to sound more like this look 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 talking this is totally different from the records totally different from any other situation christine r t. now earlier i spoke with jeff cohen who is a journalism professor at ithaca college he's also the author of this book here cable news confidential my misadventures in corporate media now i asked him if some of the networks have a vested financial interest in covering conflict here's his take. well 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 the you know when your set up piece which had some great stuff and then when you talk about m s n b c being the most liberal channel well it's owned by comcast and general electric general electric is a major war profiteering nuclear power here 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. 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 intervention but some of them like an idiot question box news the same exact thing happened when the united states was bombing serbia and it was under bill clinton

and all of the sudden fox became dobbs and they were questioning in there saying where is 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 it's really shows how narrow the spectrum it you know and just to talk more about the financial incentive to have any talk about the genie connection exciter but it's not just that when we also have the human factor here when journalists get excited you know they get embedded with the troops and they develop relationships with the troops they get you know from a show from their sources in the pentagon and so there's this desire to sort of maintain that relationship and it's this sort of self a feeling of a fading cycle that keeps. because i thought just the suffering of the past there's no doubt about it but the main instinct and remember i worked at emma said

because the during the time i was a senior producer in the real donegal what they expect from you is rotten rot for the home team we want you know when donahue was the only place on american television questioning bush's nies 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 him and they kept demanding that he tone it down and they gave us who are producers on the donahue show at m s n b c orders if we booked one guest who was anti-war we had to book two that were pro-war if we book two just on the left we have three on the right at one meeting when a producer said she was thinking of booking michael moore she was told she'd have to have three right wingers for balance so you know they ruined the show then they cancelled the show and it was rated show i mean when you talk about m s n b c i remember there were men who sort of replaced he when he was pro-war oh and when he

started over time coming out against the bush administration was very much a fluke the fact that olbermann ended up like he is it 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 progressives to go but his show is on american television there was no r t a few years ago or any some of these other options the overman went through the roof in terms of ratings and then he opened the door for maddow but i think we're really seeing you pointed out the limits of this sense if m.s.m. b. c it's not really a progressive channel it's more like a democratic channel with a democratic white house authorizing a rearward unexplainable military action we see so many people at m s n b c thing. root root root for going to the ball the limits of dissent and unfortunately it is the american people that suffer as a consequence jeff cullen and media critic and journalism professor thank you so

much all right well that does it for now for more on the stories that we covered please go to our team dot com slash usa and check out our you tube page at youtube dot com slash r.t.m. america as always feel free to follow me on twitter as well it's at lucy coughing up one word or breaking. the.