lick your regarding plates on our t.v. place while slick. new the latest in science and technology from around rush limbaugh the future. show that the real headlines with none of the mersey are going to live out of washington d.c. now there's a new battle that we need to keep an eye on the human rights battle between the u.s. and china well both sides are engaging in a tit for tat argument and the case of p.f.c. bradley manning is inhumane treatment is on everyone's minds last could this finally push obama towards a more humane option for manning then shifting our focus back to libya attempts to

reach a ceasefire have been stalled the issue all sides are disagreeing on is the removal of gadhafi as the trouble continues to mount the war torn country we have to ask ourselves once again what has obama gotten us into and there are new reports of u.s. soldiers being killed by drones in afghanistan but does it take the death of an american rather than afghan civilians to get the conversation started on the use of drones in war zones or will the u.s. continue to rely on unmanned aerial vehicles to do all their dirty work and while the government shutdown battle might be over the war over the debt ceiling and the budget has just begun the g.o.p. has already announced of the debate over the debt ceiling won't be an easy one all critics are warning that not raising the ceiling will be catastrophic for the country so find out who will be at fault if congress can't come to an agreement and that will have the latest from the economic meeting at bretton woods over the weekend parties lauren lyster will join us to discuss who was there and what was said amongst the famed financial figures we'll have details on all that and much

more tonight show but first our top story. a letter signed by more than two hundred fifty of america's most eminent legal scholars has been written to protest the obama administration's treatment of bradley manning the army private charged with leaking documents to wiki leaks now the letter once again details the inhumane conditions. manning's detention nine months in solitary confinement twenty three hours a day unable to sleep as he's questioned every five minutes if he's ok and evidence of being forced to strip naked at night all of that without a conviction and the letter not only contests that his degrading and inhumane conditions are illegal unconstitutional and could even amount to torture but also takes a personal jab at obama's own background of being a constitutional law professor once an eloquent moral leader and now a commander in chief whose fundamental standards of decency must be questioned on top of that lawrence tribe who taught constitutional law to obama and served as

a legal advisor to his justice department until recently is also one of the signers so the timing couldn't be more interesting as the u.s. released its report on human rights violations around the world to which china fired back mentioning wiki leaks but could even this still not get the president to speak joining me to discuss discrepancies co-founder of voters for peace and the executive director director excuse me of come home america kevin thanks so much for joining us tonight are you and i have spoken on the subject many many times about bradley manning's treatment and nothing has changed yet but do you think that this letter more than two hundred fifty of the greatest legal minds in the u.s. might finally push obama. pressure is mounting there's a lot of things going on in addition this letter and this letter was signed by some of the top legal academics in the country or the top law schools in the country are represented and what they call awfully end is to for the department of defense to defend their position openly and that it can stand up in defense in the light of

day and changes conditions and that's a pretty mild request a pretty reasonable request and some of the parlance is not clear yet so i think there it was a good one and it was a powerful people and come you know same time as the human rights report by china which really outlines in great detail so many problems in american culture with while asian rights and come in the same time there was in the u.s. reporter and human rights the investigator of human rights violations and torture for the u.n. denied access to bradley manning it's all building to a a crescendo of serious pressure and i hope president obama does the right thing. should this also be embarrassing for obama the fact that he is a former constitutional law professor and now he's being called out by all these legal experts even by a man who taught him constitutional law i would say that and the enemy and also who was one of his advisors yes until lately i think that that would probably make me feel a little barest if i was in his shoes it should be embarrassing he has gone from

being a constitutional law professor issue to the torture and she's he's recognized it will now see him as someone who was torturing an american veteran an american soldier you know and he's doing it by leading a due process there's been no convention he's being tortured pretrial it's doing inversion of the constitution these are such clear cases it's not a debatable point there's somebody in solitary confinement for nine months pretrial constantly around guards with are you ok lynn are only allowed to get out one hour go into another room in chains to figure eights as exercise work even your aides this is clearly i think they say nearly torture i'll use no doubt this is torture and where president obama is going to be known as a torture and she is a long history put in the context you let all the torturers go free in the bush administration he kept answering the lawyers who covered for the torturers with

phony little moments he refused to even allow as a partner just as to destroy our or he would publish a lawyers who used their legal license to cover torture he did nothing about the cia agents are destroying evidence and torture he's becoming the torture again united states it's become very open very plain it's pretty and it's very embarrassing it's time to take some action now if you count p.j. crowley and now you look at laurence tribe that's already two people from the obama administration that have essentially broken ranks or defected over this issue but then again it's only two people do you think. you know the others within the obama administration honestly agree with what they're doing here or is everyone just his character speak out because if we look at p.j. crowley as the example he was forced to resign directly after he made his comments and peter querulous the very same cation when he when he finally did resign he made some comments that have become very prescient he said that in this current world we live in an information travels the globe quickly and people in other countries see

what we're doing and the chinese come out a couple weeks later with this report that includes point of the treatment of bradley manning as evidence of human us human rights violations and this is not only embarrassing to president obama it's embarrassing the united states obviously we don't mean we say we talk about the markets in freedom and justice our constitution does not mean what it says when we when we're protected from clinical punishment when we're not punished more for trial obama and this this administration is showing the united states to be essentially a hypocrite and p.j. crowley predicted it and that's one reason he left he knew this would undermine our image in the world and we have to think about this in light of so many other things and one avenue grab scandal torture going on while it widespread new reports from the from the red cross on torture in afghanistan reports recently there have been not cover the united states of four thousand pictures of u.s. soldiers you know posing with afghan civilians have been killed this is really

embarrassing and american people don't know the worst of it as a nation of four thousand was four thousand pictures or barely been discussed in the u.s. media and yet the rest of the world knows very well about the afghanis know very well about it so this is quite embarrassing mr is not there president obama you know puts his actions where is where it was he campaigned saying he was in favor the rule or use in favor of transparency and his administration be different from president bush's so far it's different it's worse. of course that new scandal they were talking out with the afghanistan killed and something we have covered here on this program which has not gotten a lot of play in the u.s. media because when it first came out that there were all these pictures people were asking if this could be the next abu ghraib or think of the worse but somehow it's got a lot less media attention here i want to ask you one more point on this letter because you know what the cosigners do here is they say that it looks like there's a pattern within the obama administration that they're really trying to deter other whistleblowers but at the same time they say that if bradley manning is convicted

of a crime that he should be he should be convicted right that he should be punished so are they not really supporting was laura's here are they kind of locking in line when it comes to work there with what their view is on it well i'm sure to your two hundred fifty people who signed on to something you have just kind of you know present different perspectives and so it's maybe not as strong as some of the signers would like it to in my view we need to be recognized now if not only man is guilty of what he's accused all he did was expose war crimes and other misbehavior by government officials from the lowest rank military up to the secretary of state hillary clinton was turned to diplomat and american officers into a nest of spines spine illegally on u.n. representatives in one and york city spline and you'll mess around the world gathered personal information she is taking that kind of stuff so from the bottom of our foreign policy so the top foreign policy is barely news guilty of what he's accused he's exposing is a need to be discussed and debated and we want to be the country we see ourselves

or we need to face this stuff debate it and change it because we're not behaving in the civil affairs and we're speeding as the lone superpower bully innocent and so that's not an image america wants for itself all right i want to thank you very much for joining us and stephanie not an image that i want for america the country that i live in a man and i am a citizen of and i do hope that finally maybe this will make obama have to take a more pronounced stand on the issue thanks so much thank you very much. i was much more to come on as monday evening small budget battles here in washington grabbed headlines all week and the u.s. is still involved in a war in libya and african union says that offer has accepted a ceasefire proposal but it's not really the case of course for swift fellow the university of virginia center for national security law joins me in just a moment and the u.s. a loves to use drone strikes around the world how could the first incidence of u.s. troops being killed by a drone finally bring more questions about our reliance on these unmanned machines

or discuss what i'm weinstein from mother jones. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right now and. i think. either one well. we haven't got the shows there can say so get ready because the your freedom. rachel martin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture a. new

web site with twenty four seven live streaming news channels what to do about the ongoing financial hardship unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never find mainstream news. and so let me listen to a. person on our team to watch to say. hey guys welcome michel ancel on the ellen show with part of our guest stop to say on the topic now i want to hear. just go on to. the twitter profile of the questions that we post on you tube every monday and on the first day of the show

a long response to. your voice. all americans have been fixated on the government shutdown threats and the tit for tat between democrats and republicans let's not forget that this nation is still involved in a war in libya a war that's reach a stalemate and carries no clear answers as to what the outcome may look like over the weekend a delegation of the african union arrived in tripoli with a cease fire proposal which they said omar could off the accept it now proposal included an immediate cease fire the delivery of humanitarian aid and the protection of foreigners but the rebels are having none of it between one and two thousand demonstrators gathered outside the hotel in benghazi where the african union delegation met with opposition leaders who said that no cease fire can be agreed upon unless it includes cut off these removal so as time takes by and civilian lives are put into jeopardy in libya the more the hostilities go on we

have to ask ourselves what has obama gotten us into your discussions with me is christopher swift fellow at the university of virginia center for national security law mr thanks so much for being here tonight could be bought for starters and off he supposedly accepted this ceasefire from the african union but then after that his forces started shelling this. this morning on monday morning so i mean does anybody out there really think that you can come to some kind of a logical agreement with khadafi that you can get him to sign on to something it will actually comply can offer he's done a very good job of keeping his promises when they benefit we saw in the early bush administration when we caught him red handed with nuclear materials and nuclear technology and he responded by giving it all up and we had a normalization of our relations so when it benefits him yeah you'll cut a deal and yes he will inforce the deal but as soon as it stops to benefit him as soon as it's contrary to his interest i mean. it's reasonable to assume that he's going to move in another direction but with this kind of cease fire not benefit cut

off he of course one of the reasons that the rebels don't mind of except is because they look at the african union with a lot of skepticism and the african union wasn't on board with the un in terms of a no fly zone and african union you could say these are quite often these allies here a very very much are and they are because within the african union there's a very very strong norm against any kind of foreign intervention there's the legacy of colonialism these countries countries and their leaders really don't like western powers fooling around in you know in the regions they used to control during the dark ages so you know it's fair to say it off he has allies in the a you it's also fair to say that at this point a ceasefire would benefit everybody including nato by giving them the chance to regroup and reassess but let's look at what's going on here with the a you could be is brought in essentially a group that's favorable for an outcome that looks more like what he wants some more all the rebels are meeting with the european union the e.u. and the e.u. generally speaking is more favorable to what the rebels are not so both of these

groups are forum shopping when they're looking for a mediator or a particular peace plan and they're both doing it with the understanding that the war can't go on and i have to start talking about talking sometime well the war is at a stalemate right i think for most people could probably agree over that and as you said the ceasefire could also benefit the rebels they could benefit nato and the rebels would have more time to regroup here but in large part from all the reports that i've been reading especially when it comes to the rebels in the east the civilians the majority of them have gone home it's now these special operations forces it's now the military guys it's now more of the professionals that are fighting against put up these forces and have they're still not getting anywhere yeah i would say yes i would say it's the professionals it's a bit of a stretch i'd say it's much more the hardcore and this is something that happens whenever you have a normal rebel movement there's a lot of enthusiasm about throwing overthrowing the state as little susie as we've got to getting back of a dictator. as soon as people run into the war they realize how difficult and

unpleasant it is and they realize that they're just not trained for it the difficulty with the rebels is while they have control of the skies by and through nato they don't have the two things that you need to move an army the first is unit cohesion and the second is a logistics train their unit cohesion is down big cohesion is down because simply they're not a trained organized fighting force they never worth they're getting better but they can't compare with their adversaries in that regard and second they don't have the capacity to move manpower money food material fuel the kinds of distances we're talking about i mean libya is the size of alaska that has a population smaller than new york city there's a lot of desert there it's not like they can get off at the rest stop on the exit on the way to tripoli we also heard last week of course that even though it would be ideal even though it wouldn't be favorable the u.s. could consider putting troops on the ground something that we've been told since day one from the obama administration that that won't happen so how long could they wait you know how long will this stalemate have to go on until they would make that decision to put troops on the ground i think that decision is premature i think

that outcome is unlikely that said i think it's very likely that the longer this goes on the war certain senior generals are going to signal our intense or discuss our planning for such an eventuality one because they have a duty to provide the president with those options but to it's a really clever way of getting people to go shopping today you know i also think that it's perhaps because we're there to protect civilians that's there that's the line that we're being told without being told that we're there to take it off and and help the rebels overthrow them but get the longer this entire conflict goes on the hostilities the more the civilians are the ones that are suffering there have been reports of children dying of course when it comes to getting any type of food or water you know access to those things it becomes more difficult by the day well let's ask who we is in that question we is not just the united states the we is the united states the european union which is really in a leadership position on this. much more than we are with much more of support standby and support role and also the united nations so there are

a whole bunch of different institutional tools that can be brought to bear here whether or not that means that there will be u.s. forces on the ground i can't tell you exactly i think it's unlikely i think it's more likely that you're going to see some sort of you when you worry you sponsored humanitarian intervention and some of those guys are going to go when you know armed and ready to help with that many take the form of a police units rather than a military unit it could happen in any number of different ways the more likely we are to have negotiations the more likely we are to have some kind of boots on the ground those aren't necessarily going to be u.s. troops i very quickly are reading out of time but want to play a clip of tom brokaw interviewing the the prince of side here and we'll play it very quickly i just want to get christopher's response one of the obama's for the united states and the west to. they don't have a place for could after you go. would he be welcome in saudi arabia if he were to do so i believe. there was no.

mention of. god here. it's almost comical but it's sad because he had a point. because we have a point that nobody wants him but he also has a huge ideological difference with qadhafi been cut off he comes out of the pan arab movement he then became apparent africanized he's changed his convictions as many times it's changed his mind about what he wants for dinner the saudis have a completely different outlook on what the broader muslim world should look like to have nothing to do nothing to do with a guy like this so perhaps that reminds us that the saudis aren't always just going to be the go to pay you guys take care of christopher i got to wrap it up i want to thank you very much for joining us later to see thanks. and b c reported today that military officials told them that two american servicemen were killed in afghanistan last week and a mistaken drone strike it's believed to be the first case of its kind when it comes to friendly fire and the news comes out just as the l.a. times released a long investigative report on

a particular drone strike on wrong last year are between fifteen and twenty five cancer billions lost their lives including women and children that's the dark reality of drone strikes and as long that's happening more often thanks to our increasing reliance on the unarmed technology but it's also really a reality that the pentagon tries to keep away from america's eyes through freedom of information act request the a.c.l.u. found out earlier this year the pentagon while keeping individual reports on each airstrike keeps them classified and they don't even track the overall number of civilians killed so it's a day's tragic news all the debate over the precision and the morality of drones once again heat up joining me to discuss it is that weinstein from mother jones thanks so much for joining me tonight now considering that there now has been this case of friendly fire of u.s. servicemen being the victims of a drone strike unfortunately do you think about what it's going to take it's going to take american lives to be lost to get this debate to heat back up again to see more think rationally hearings more investigations. it's

a fair question i'm not really sure at this point what it would say to really ask some tough questions back home you know the irony is one of the reasons that we rely so heavily upon these drones in afghanistan as well as pakistan let's not forget that the cia is funny a lot of chairman of drone operations in pakistan is because we're trying to sort of exalt excel or its results and try to get the countries to a point where we can pull out more american troops and i think the general consensus among the american public that's paying attention which isn't very large at this point is that's got to be a good thing right so i'm not sure if anything's really going to move public opinion it's not my whole thing is to have believed that this is the first case to be honest nobody even knows which in itself it's sad and considering that the military now has become known for and number of cover ups you know a very high profile cover ups too if you have to take a guess you really think this is the first time that this is happened. i do you

know i think in terms of drone strikes in a friendly fire incident this is probably the first that's the sort of thing that you're not going to see covered up very effectively to be perfectly frank there are too many people in the chain of communications that are involved in drone operations that i think you probably would heard something if if there was a another incident preceded this one. however i think a related question really needs to be asked is why aren't we doing a better job tracking and be more diligent on the civilian casualties that we know that we actually cause with these strikes and there's a wide divergence in the numbers there and you know frankly to men and peter bergen who tracks at least the pakistan drone strikes me america's foundation are usually relying on open sources newspapers try and find some consensus in the numbers it's really hard to do with what military gets us i'm totally with you there the fact that you know as they also found out of the pentagon given even keep an overall tally of how many civilians are killed the drone strikes to me there's

a huge conflict there if you consider the fact that we're supposed to be winning hearts and minds especially in afghanistan. yeah that's that's one of the big ironies here is you know general petraeus is running the afghanistan war is sort of on the horns of a dilemma here he's considered this great counterinsurgency groups counterinsurgency is call it based on you know making friendly with local populace and trying to reinforce with will and constructs you know civil military relations rather than destroying things but also the pressure i think the message to sort of accelerate an end to the war is got us relying on the stand off weapons like drones that are flown by people at creech air force base nevada where the fog of war sort of reigns and it's very easy to make mistakes and very hard to sort of assess the damage afterwards and of course that brings you know a lot of questions about morality to somebody firing pushing a button from thousands of miles away when they kill people and if you you know if you also read through some of what the l.a.

times reported on and you look at the language that's shared you know over the radio communication when they make the decision to actually shoot off a drone it really sounds like they're playing a video game some time but darpa right now is supposedly working on some new technology so that they could have one man on the ground that would have a direct link cities around you know who could also call in a strike from perhaps a closer distance to make it easier so they don't have to go through this long bureaucratic process do you think we really should be making it easier to fire it around. i think we should probably be reevaluating how we use the is offensive weapons look let's be honest in terms of the difficulty rain and some of the challenges that we face in afghanistan the reapers and the predators these unmanned aerial vehicles and time again as great. augmentations to the way that we gather intelligence there are their eyes in the air in places we can't get people necessarily to see the research relying on them to actually commit and such

operations to actually do ground attacks and coordinate the sorts of attacks when a bunch of different assets in a bunch of pictures military service and stepping on media air force sometimes they need lines. you're asking for some trouble and i think that there is a sort of a free flow of. air force customers who are in nevada and other places like this they want to do their best job but often their best job is not counterinsurgency based it's not building villages based it's finding the enemy takes aim and destroying it and that's not necessarily a skill that we really need to eat at this point in afghanistan and very quickly and of course there's been some rumors flying around the general david petraeus might be taking over as head of the cia these days if you look at the way that our wars are conducted the lines are constantly blurred between what the military does what the cia does we know that they also. executive lot of drone strikes we know that general petraeus is a fan of drone strikes so if it were to come true if he took over the cia do you think that we would just see our reliance on drones increase. well i don't think

that there's much question that even beyond general petraeus can. get gets more and more these things something that fans contractors certainly are interested in and something that congressmen who are serving constituencies that want to bring troops home certainly are interested in and i think that general petraeus has certainly certainly shown a willingness in the last year to rely on more of the straights and since the cia is running more and more of these operations specially in pakistan although it should be pointed out the wall street journal just reported the other day to pakistan really wants us to stop it's an open question but i think the e.u. you're likely to see in the short term probably more of the same and i want to thank you very much for joining us despite that's looks like the drones are here to say thanks. yeah. all right it's time for show and tell on tonight's program last week we told you

that fox news is ending its regularly scheduled glenn beck program and now the one of fox is familiar faces is stepping away from the spotlight we want to know who you think should replace back in his five pm time slot so here's what some of our viewers suggested alberto marquez tweeted his idea to us saying static static that might generate more sponsors than he currently has we also heard from bill agree on facebook someone more sane and reasonable like charlie sheen miles lacy suggested newt gingrich granted he's not conservative swine but at least he does have some intellect rattling between his ears who doesn't rant and rave and lance w. meyer sound off saying how about ed schultz for glenn beck's old spot a different more reasonable perspective like news would ever go for that obviously our viewers are quite creative and i think it's safe to say that we're all very curious about who's going to fill the excuse but until we find out here's our next topic of discussion for you at home earlier in our show we told you that the u.s.

and china are engaged in a tit for tat over their human rights records i think most people would agree that china is not the best example of protecting human rights we want to know if the u.s. should be getting involved in their business publishing information about their not so admirable record so let's know what you think do you think that the u.s. should publish human rights reports on other countries or sure they stick to fixing their own problems first you can respond to us on facebook twitter and you two and zero zero sponsors just might make it on air. now coming up must be lonely way up there in alaska too long out of the spotlight so sarah palin decided to cheer on the burgers that's coming up in tonight's two all time award and a last minute deal was reached to avert a government shutdown on friday night but is washington about to see another ugly partisan battle over raising the debt ceiling limited directional reporter a talking points memo joins me person in sight when we return.