if you don't work to bring justice or accountability. right to know what my government would you want to know what i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as the charismatic version of american exceptionalism. in here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today in the big picture.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman we're continuing with our special coverage of the death of osama bin laden i want to turn to what this means for all of us here at home in the wake of bin laden's death interpol issued a media advisory calling for extra vigilance by law enforcement authorities to a heightened terrorist from al qaeda affiliated or al qaeda inspired terrorists as a result of bin laden's death they are part of homeland security on the other hand is not raising any terrorist warnings claiming there's no credible evidence to suggest an attack the taliban has promised to avenge bin laden's death claiming they will carry out attacks in pakistan and america what's new so what dangers still exist now the bin laden is dead and now the bin laden history will america finally begin to heal in the right way after nine eleven here offer his take on

what the future of counter terrorism and muslim outreach is in america most. i'm joined by activist author and former california state senator tom hayden. welcome. thomas nice to see you it's great to see you again too sir is here you ok great is this a game changer american counterterrorism operations. i hate these sports analogies but certainly it's profound moment especially for the families in new york the younger generation that came of age with nine eleven some of us who've been around longer. need to apply some historical memory here it seems to me it is the it comes down to this is a triumphal moment for barack obama for the cia and it could be the one moment in his presidency when he has the political credibility to announce

a substantial withdrawal from afghanistan and iraq on the grounds that. that the bin laden's threat is gone and we will know within days or weeks how many troops the president is willing to withdraw otherwise. it seems to me we will have learned that is no intention of a significant withdrawal and the the victory here the political victory will be for more secrecy more cia operations. more trillion dollar wars and. new explanations for why we are in afghanistan so we'll see you know big moment well and i'm curious just given what you just said to what extent do you think that president obama will be making that decision or his administration will be making a decision based on internal pressures things like you know lobbying the the the

military complex notion of complex nana versus external pressures like boaters you know people contacting the white house and calling and i was of congress and saying ok we've got him let's get the hell out of the area. well i was on the phone with congresswoman barbara lee's office today and there may be some statements and letters from members of congress that are there about one hundred one hundred fifty who want to get out of afghanistan in the house of representatives but the rest are are lingering to see what the president wants and he he's a very he's shall we say sphinx like you never know. what his. his plan might be but it seems to me this really enhances the viewpoint of those on the inside who want to make a substantial drawdown of american troops starting this chill live from afghanistan

and get all the troops out of iraq by december and then campaign for reelection on having ended two quick meyer's have been put away bin laden and. i don't think he's going to get out of pakistan just politically and i don't see how he does that but he certainly could make a dramatic move now without being accused of being soft on terrorism he could make a dramatic move against the preferences of. the tray a standard triss. and i don't i don't even know what the republicans would have to say about it i think there's stymied for this moment it's a it's a critical moment for his presidency absolutely agreed and let's hope he makes the right decisions i made thanks so much for being with us tonight and thank you tom for your great commentaries and all and years of service work under one thing is

for certain back home president obama will see a nice little boost in his poll numbers and that means republicans are going to try and knock him down in less than one days since the news broke of bin laden's death and already the right wingers are going crazy and the republican congressman steve king tweeted wonder what president obama. one thinks of waterboarding now. waterboarding i don't you know wonder of waterboarding and nothing to do with bin laden's death likely republican presidential candidate rick santorum had this to say about president obama's big yeah take a look. through . this. new president obama hates freedom and of course the birth of his grasping for straws it was only a matter of time before the doctors spoke up that's right right wing whack job andrew breitbart published an article on his website today suggesting that he won't

believe it until he sees bin laden's body with his own eyes and other words he won't believe bin laden's dead until the president releases the long form corpse so this is what we should expect in the coming days in the american political scene from our more on this i'm joined by robert parry investigative journalist and editor of consortium news jamie weinstein deputy editor of the daily caller dot com robert jamie great to see you go into thanks thanks for joining us. maybe we should given this this graphic on if we can pop it up on the screen just cancel the two thousand and twelve elections this is here it is president obama sorry it took me so long to find a copy of my birth certificate i was too busy killing bin laden i mean you know it's this is his moment is it not but it deserves to be was it was a you know from what we know a very courageous decision have very dangerous decision to to send american troops supposedly into pakistan without notifying the pakistani government it turned out to be the right decision and a good decision and one he should be praised for and he deserves credit for it and

frankly i've seen a lot of the right praise him for this on hannity today. praised him for that to the hilt for this and i think people on the right see this not as a political issue but one of americans and i think rightfully is praise for what it for x. . excellent operation robert i was i was looking at just the top of raw story ten republican you know it's damning with faint praise basically writes i'm not going to want to say too much favorable to obama that's not the way it's going to cope but it is it's possible to look at obama's presidency as almost two plus years of sort of cleaning up messes that george w. bush a left behind bank is a rest of the two thousand and six two thousand and seven beginning of the housing collapse right well it was with the wars in afghanistan and iraq but obama's been trying to deal with and here you have one of perhaps the biggest mistake that bush made or one of the biggest in his presidency which was not dealing with that with

the with osama bin laden but tora bora in the fall of two thousand and one after the invasion of afghanistan we are he was where the cia went in and begged president bush to provide a thousand marines to block the escape routes for been modern and he turned them down so the modern was able to escape that provided as you pointed out one of the major reasons that the u.s. was unable to attack iraq because the idea was that. the son of bin laden had some relationship with saddam hussein which wasn't really true but it was something that could be sold because the modern was still out there i mean for now that now that we know about him you know from from the historical record the people who were there were talking to george bush before even the supreme court appointed this president in two thousand that his plan was to invade iraq you know had three members of his cabinet now to write books say i mean the first cabinet meeting that was the first topic you brought up in the nine months before nine eleven i mean every what point does the right say ok you know we're going to just talk about

something else let's talk about donald trump's hair our is that why they're also taking it well it's ridiculous i saw your preamble i said i saw your preamble this was about bypassing social security this whole starting wars going to george bush inflating ran on in the seventy's waiting if we're going to be in iraq is i mean this this is all i mean not. bush believes that the in a post nine eleven world the greatest threat was terrorist timed up with weapons of mass destruction iraq was a state actor that had the access to build weapons of mass destruction but there's absolutely no word about why they don't question it is no question that they really dodged the tora bora and no one's going to do that right at the moment i have a slightly military campaigns are about all the time. churchill said said the troops to the dardanelles in the last two are that people think that if you don't praise him for it i'm not for all i'm saying is that we know now based on memoirs that have been produced including by bush that there was this case where bush goes to rumsfeld and says we've got to refocus on iraq this isn't this is we're when mom

is holed up in tora bora we're always fails rumsfeld then contacts general franks and says you got to freshen the invasion plan for iraq franks was in the process of dealing with the tora bora case so there was a direct and i honestly don't think i mean even if you're so you have people in the pentagon some people are dealing with iraq while they're in tora bora i don't see a direct connection there but we. couldn't let me let me answer time your question about waterboarding and if so you know bush had nothing to do with this that's going to exactly clear at this point what we know is that a piece of the intelligence came from k s m clean shaikh mohammad who was water boarded and it's very likely that a piece of that information it's actually in the meantime says it you know that information again of the name of the courier great come from great shaikh muhammad and it came during the stockholm syndrome style interrogations where you make friends with the guy you get him to talk this is explicitly an hour in the press at this moment as we saw the i look at that time but i don't know if this was clear is going to write the government is that if there is this came not to go no useful

intelligence came out of waterboarding not true at all robert it's completely not a real artist tell you some sort of not. you know he's part of the bush team and he's you know he's not a pretty credible person but the problem is that there are a lot of what bush. did was intensify the hatred of america in that part of the world with no denying that the polls are quite clear no one can argue about why the u.s. went into iraq and i don't think it was something that bush was doing to get this solved social security or something i do think it was something that he had in mind in the muslim world no i don't think that's exactly the case i don't think that's why i think i think the saturation level of hate before bush came in was was there i don't think bush. created this hate that didn't exist before it's really intensified in the polls if i could sometimes live in laughter and he joins when you mean how would you go out with if you're if you're from going to start referring to invading afghanistan i'm talking about iraq five million refugees we

have two and a half million internal turn happening next to refugees in iraq and if your brother or sister had been killed when i was perfectly brother and sister was put through. by saddam hussein i mean these you can play these games that i was not popular but the fact of the matter is that you know life was going on in iraq by and large as long as you didn't get in politics this is in most countries you want to do it in the winter and in honor of wonderfully democracy you could be in any country you want but you know we're going to i don't know he sounds just like you're suggesting you could you can play four stories on both sides here saddam hussein was committing horrors as well you know the kurds seem to have a better life today and iraq has a chance it never came for the right even for it so now we commit atrocities and were aged four and so on it's a good thing to try but the point is you can invade any country pretty much you want if you go if you want to find something really nasty about a country a lot of them have been arguing for the invasion i'm just pointing out that well you know you're who he is and he's trying to play this game that america committed all these atrocities in iraq you know five million refugees on the other hand they

removed a dictator who committed his house united states invaded iraq under false pretenses the kind you were agree with i mean i do think he was always right a lot of bush was claiming that there was not even there were not even weapons there he was claiming weapons of mass destruction with a right as ever you didn't say to the world the u.s. the u.n. inspectors were in there not to not sign. finding between friends when we do anything to get we're going to find him russia i know russia today i was in russia believe it they didn't get it they don't want to have every intelligence director in the world and tommy franks went to jordan and egypt you know what they told him he would be careful they're going to use weapons of mass destruction against you be sure you have the lawsuits the boy is that we have to grab point that some of the we have there we have to wrap this up for us i'm sorry we only might have to go on i'm sure for a long long time but robert jamie thank you very very much for the clown show right now right is suggesting that osama bin laden was actually killed by george w. bush ten years ago his body has been kept frozen so now as to why bush would kill for have this political pros present for president obama you got me but it's all

over the internet i guess it's not supposed to make sense between the crazies and the internet the stories only get one more bizarre. coming up the muslim community in america continued to endure racial profiling government policy analyst for muslim public affairs council one hundred battell discusses this matter a half. into the only new treatment in isms do not come to bring justice or accountability. i have a right to know what my government's through if you want to know why i pay taxes. well i would characterize obama as the charismatic version of american exceptionalism.

in the decade since nine eleven muslims in america have had the toughest adjusting to life and that or that the so-called war on terror in recent years the nation has developed an acute case of islamophobia inexplicably trying to ban shari'a law in places where it's never even been mentioned preventing mosques from being built and borrowing an idea from joe mccarthy and use the power of the united states congress to investigate multi-generational all-american muslim communities for extremism in

other words we've gone a little crazy. i was. a member of the m.b.a. . will. but world news that bin laden is now dead finally ease the pressure on american muslim communities would cool our islamophobia if favor for more on how this news was received by muslims in america what it means for the future of the islamic faith in our nation i'm joined by our one hundred twelve government policy analyst of the muslim public public affairs council i wonder welcome back to the program thanks for having me back here tom ridge have you was how is the muslim community in the united states reacting to this or is it too is too soon to really get a good giggle i think that for some you know it's an overwhelming feeling but i think by and large what we clearly show is overwhelmingly that there is a sense of relief that bin laden has been brought to justice and the fact now that

this guy who has had a two year two decade career of lawlessness murder and mayhem has now finally been taken care of is is. to what extent within the muslim community the united states was been logged viewed as a cartoon character as it were thrown as a genuine danger as as awful here in terms that was reflecting poorly on the rest of us i mean what we what was the general perception i think that there was a mix of a number of these things i think that people did see him as a genuine threat because he was a reckless individual and someone who contorted the teachings of islam in order to really sort of justify his political means he tried to pick himself as a preacher with a qur'an a really what he was supposed to politician with a gun while he was also one of those and you know that that genie that right out of

the bottle back in the early part of the twentieth century. arguably deal with the devil as it were between the two houses soudan minister. is a right. who is kind of that generation's jerry falwell on steroids i'm talking about jerry falwell saying. to let it happen because we allow gays to exist and certainly was a puritan s.t.l. . and i'm wondering to what extent there may have been some some genuine. hard right religiosity but nonetheless religiosity there in the motivation might be rubbing off around the world that we have to concern ourselves with just like here in america we're having to deal with abortion clinics mean crazy christians absolutely i think certainly that there is an element there of religion being contorted and being used in a certain way in order to justify and that certain people have a specific outlook on how they view religion and the world around them but when you

also makes that particular view with ongoing geo political events you have a very very toxic sort of brew idiology and narrative that spews forth and unfortunately had manifested in the two decade terrorist career of osama bin laden . are we still going to see pastors burning korans and fighting the building of mosques in america and europe and well i think that the that the miser or some deny and i think has certainly broken the back in many ways of his very very toxic narrative but i think that there will still be people even here in the states will try to use and drum up as much here as possible now whether they have as much of a leg to stand on time will tell but at the same time i think it's going to be a little bit harder now because the figurehead and the icon of international terrorism and the bogeyman for a lot of people frankly is just no longer going to be there the. taliban or

some element of the taliban as an issue to an official announcement that they're going to avenge his death. we know that for example julian with wiki leaks not to conflate him with obama or of. but just you know he had bad years or years apply. the stuff out there if i get arrested it goes everywhere there was speculation that the osama bin laden had something like that the fact that he had had a dirty bomb in europe that might go off or he killed what do you think the chances are that there could be some sort of significant blowback as a result of this and and and what do you think the probabilities are that the obama administration will handle it will rather than hysterically as the bush administration handled nine eleven how they handle it i think it's something that's that's going to be seen and that's going to be a very very big question and i can't provide an answer on that but i certainly do think that in the short term because al qaida and the taliban all these other

people have that same ideological ilk feel like they're in a corner they're trying to lash out in some sort of a way because they're getting very very desperate their message has been broken and so now what they're trying to do is in order to salvage themselves in some way in keep themselves relevant they're going to try and create even more mayhem death and destruction in the short term but i think that if handled properly it'll go go out very very quickly but that again is provided if our politicians and our policymakers handle this properly we'll have a whole lot more for this and mr obama for that mr bush to do the revealing my political bias. thanks so much for being with us i appreciate it and great work my pleasure as president obama said in his statement last night bin laden was not a muslim leader he was a mass murderer of muslims indeed al qaeda has slaughtered scores of muslims in many countries including our own so his demise should be welcomed by all who

believe in peace and human dignity and of quote let's keep in mind the president's words and begin healing the moon's american crazies have inflicted on muslim communities across our nation. so i was some of them on is dead what does this mean yes it is a victory in some sense it will boost the morale of soldiers in combat around the world may provide some solace to people who have lost loved ones on nine eleven and it will certainly boost president obama's reelection chances in two thousand and twelve i won't argue there is some reason to celebrate america today we did get it in line is officially dead and his myth is under strain now taking a step back from the party from move on and reflect on the costs to our nation of

george bush's wars and the dangers still lingering as a result of our so-called war on terror and all our blunders in the middle east we need to regard this event in history i just have a tory as moment frankly but instead as a teaching moment from this point on we all need the promise that this will never happen again never again will we let a president of the united states to store a crime into an act of war never again will we let a president of the united states and gauging war without a congressional declaration of war as the constitution requires as a result of george w. bush is of session with being a superhero the united states of america has launched two full scale war efforts in the middle east we've been initiated countless secret war efforts in yemen august van and other parts of africa filled the sky about the middle east with an arsenal of unmanned drones retrofitted guantanamo bay i was under those of suspected terrorists cut the ribbon on covert prison facilities around the world mostly to

outsource torture operations constructed the biggest domestic spying apparatus in the history of our nation. and revamped how we all fly in planes around the country by the way i was at the white house correspondents dinner saturday night no church for no scanners and i didn't have to take off my shoes to be in the same room with the rocking michelle obama but to get on an airplane and we spent trillions upon trillions of dollars to do all these things from the very real wars to the very phony security theater in our airports and we think we're safer today because one guy could not issue a few years back another guy couldn't ignite his underwear and a third guy couldn't light off a couple of propane tanks with fireworks in times square given how frequently terrorist acts happen around the world frankly we've been very very lucky that our nation has only been hit a dozen or so times since nine eleven and that all of those were homegrown terrorists mostly right wing consumers of right wing t.v. and radio christian religious extremist driven to murder by their own fanaticism or

crazy people who could easily buy an automatic weapon and if you're thirty shot clips but in terms of international terrorism it's pretty clear we aren't at all safer than before nine eleven despite the fact that we haven't actually suffered another attack of that nature unfortunately because of bush's wars more people around the world support the idea of killing americans than ever before but the most troubling thing about this decade long saga is that osama bin laden ran around free long enough to see his vision succeed. since the primary purpose of terrorism is not to see how many people you can kill but instead to see what kind of radical changes you can elicit from your enemy in response and then how you can use those radical changes to convince more people to join your cause i hate to say it but i think osama bin laden won at least part of round one our nation is vastly different

than we were ten years ago morry more reflective of the bush cheney world view small and frightened and angry and as a result the jihad is the industry is booming no pun intended yappin laden is dead but sadly he was the least of the problems facing america to confront the rest of the problem and finally close the book on this last decade was one thing we need to do right now if we want to make sure that america snatches victory from the clenched hands of bin laden's dead body that's now somewhere in the depths of the north arabian sea there's only one option left on the table and that mr president is to end the so-called war on terror for good ground troops home and tell the pentagon instead of the teachers in pennsylvania that they have to organize a bake sale to raise money to continue their operations. and that's the big picture for more stories and for more information on the stories we've covered visit our website tom harkin dot com slash r t and also check out our youtube page at youtube dot com slash w. picture r.t.

and this entire show is available for free podcast items and don't forget the marker see begins when you show up and get back to your it soon are. in so that only a military mechanisms to do the work to bring justice and accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay

taxes. well i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. a telemarketer broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. if if.