these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. operations room today. and it's round two of the economic crisis clash the government shutdown may have been averted but with less than a one week left until the u.s. hits of the debt limit the pressure is on to reach a deal that's political politics to get in the way of political action lawmakers be able to avert another meltdown. was a surrogate for khalid sheikh muhammad but the vast treasure probe if you will of the culture it was a good program it was a legal program it's not torture so he's basically saying that the united states should keep using methods like waterboarding to get information we're going to explore what some called enhanced interrogation techniques and what others call

torture. you really want to go out and we stayed there for the really that's not democracy that the iraqi people are ready for american troops to permanently have new why is it that the united states insists and overstayed his welcome. welcome back it's tuesday may tenth i'm lucy catherine of good reporting here from washington d.c. and of course you're watching our t.v. now the obama administration has paid a lot of lip service to the importance of democracy especially when it comes to some of the uprisings that we've seen in the middle east but as our. reports the united states is willing to support self-determination abroad as long as a doesn't get away with strategic goals it will. she is the country clothed in stars and stripes success arrived with a nobel peace prize winning president and hearing that big d around the world let

us be clear the united states of america stands with the people of tunisia and supports the democratic aspirations of all people from tunisia. to egypt. to libya. washington has said the will of people must determine the fate of their country. but in iraq where america claims to be transplanting democracy a renewed sense of nationalism has united thousand against the us we're not supporting the democratic aspirations of people in iraq we haven't been for it for eight years now and in the iraqi people that wanted us out and we stayed there for their own good that's not democracy. anger over us occupation that critically george w. bush upon his head in two thousand and eight washington drafted an agreement promising all american troops would withdraw from iraq by the end of this here in

today's more peaceful iraq critics say the pentagon is stepping up pressure to overstay its welcome and cement its push right. is pushing for a military presence after the summer to tell the level around twenty two thousand troops while the white house is talking about ten thousand troops so actually there is an agreement there is a tacit agreement that the u.s. will stay in iraq forty seven thousand u.s. troops still remain in iraq where america's embassy looms large and control over iraq's oil sector is perceived to be ultimate truth because in this eight year war at the very least in order to deny china or any other perceived intentional rival control of valuable resources the idea. ingrained in the thinking of these new strength. just see washington d.c. we're still very much an hour is that we must control the middle east be closed.

experts say the u.s. wants to remain in the region to keep an eye on syria and continue right of the development in syria go to the extent that there is and follow the regime we don't know what kind of regime or maybe that could be brought us really maybe it will be something even worse you cannot withdraw at this juncture you cannot leave the vacuum iran will just take advantage of it but from the perception of american interests meanwhile the perception of america as democracy remains somewhat distorted has it been used as a tool to achieve a geo political gains in financial interests for all washington in the end listen to the voice of the people were enough forty nine artsy new york well joining me now from warfare in our washington d.c. studio is michael o'brien he is the author of america's failure in iraq spent quite a bit of time as a contractor for the defense department in iraq and also divisor to the iraqi

government. it out in the wake of the death of bin laden we've heard a lot about the war in terror a lot about bin laden a lot about a few understand but not so much about iraq a conflict that continues to go on with the with talk now coming out from the administration that perhaps we may want to keep our troops there a little bit longer than originally intended what's your reaction to that and how wise or he is with us once well lucy the fact is that promises were made during the campaign we're going to get all these troops out i feel without a real grasp of the reality of the situation former ambassador to iraq. a cracker when obama made his announcement of storing the troop withdrawals he actually said well these statements don't match the reality of what's going on in the ground in iraq and he was right the i was over the year and it was six and seven the height of the insurgency. and all of this goes you really have to go back to the invasion of zero three the reasons for what's another topic but the invasion of march zero

three not really not enough soldiers to do the job right no where near three to one ratio when you're on the offensive. end but then the dishpan thing by paul bremmer of the iraqi army the iraqi national police with the stroke of a pen destroyed destroying the entire infrastructure of their of their security of the country and my job was over there on the iraqi ministry defense side to help rebuild the iraqi army that stuff's not going to happen overnight it's going to take decades to rebuild to rebuild the iraqi security infrastructure the ministry defense and the and the ministry of the of the interior so what happened was when when all these things occurred the insurgency obviously just blew up sunni versus shia no one was there to mind the store and not enough american soldiers donald rumsfeld rejected the idea of several thousand u.s. military policemen in the post invasion plan because he said we don't we don't need

a post invasion plan that that will be necessary and then general. george casey was over there for well over two years telling the president everything's great we can pull out any time mr president well houses are being found with sixty decapitated bodies i'm a mile of a mile away from his office while i was there i'm bringing all these things out through to highlight the fact that iraq is is years away from being ready to manage its own security ten days after barack obama announced the start of with troll this this july ten days later general bob occur the chief the chief of the joint iraqi general staff said. we would the americans can't leave until twenty twenty one and then what do we do i mean we have this conflict in libya where in yes it's a nato conflict but of course the united states makes up the bulk of nato where we don't seem to have an end game there are things in afghanistan are not necessarily

going to way they were supposed to be going and i think that things are getting worse and yet we're still involved in iraq and not to mention conflicts covert operations in yemen pakistan and elsewhere so how do we move on from there i mean if we're in tangled in these places how do you get the generals and the president to make the next step nobody everyone's afraid to make the tough decisions and not applaud my book but to plug my book i really believe you can do this with our reinstituting the draft but that again that's a political hot potato if you say that the d. word draft but people feel strong freaking out because instituting the draft would get people to react to war policy it's too negative people the american people were ready for the number why would institute in the draft somehow change the circumstance were because we need more we need more soldiers we need to increase the size of our military it's too small we've got we're in all these conflicts as you described we have to make a decision either pull out entirely or add more troops and really

start cleaning cleaning things up perfect example was the surge. and i'm sorry i'm talking about it's really add more troops than clean things up i mean isn't that only going to perpetuate the the policies in their reactions that are so strong against the united states right now i mean who is the united states necessarily to come in and say hey this is how i'm going to rebuild this country exactly so what's the alternative one of. and do you think in light of the bin ladin's that of course the non-christian hocker reason why we went into iraq but somehow in the bush administration all of this got merged in worth and much then to one third of the reason for invading but do you see anything changing in our counterterrorism policy that would allow for us to withdraw from these conflicts where in iraq i'm speaking personally of bin laden's death it was a shame that we didn't get him nine and a half years ago when tommy franks essentially let the guy escape over the border in tora bora over the mountains into afghanistan. but we should have gotten the guy

a lot sooner i don't think it's a moral or psychological victory personally i'm not shooting any cheers for bin ladin oh no order no longer you know would be with us but what was a change i don't really know if it's going to change much of anything and again you know you said it very well you know you kind of ran down all the different conflicts that we're in and ice and i was talking about the draft increasing the size of our military that's the alternative to just pulling out decisions that have got to be made no one wants to make the tough decisions and as a result we just rags on and on and on and the scuse me the comparisons to viet nam you know during viet nam i was a teenager tour in viet nam my father fought in viet nam i was at west point during the last years of the vietnam conflict. limited engagement robert mcnamara's theory

of limited engagement and limited warfare what in the heck is that war you can't fight it limited you either go full tilt boogie you go all the way or don't go at all and everybody's afraid the politicians the people running the show are afraid to make that decision all the way you know just. you know toward a free world of course it does seem a little off now the confluence situation on the ground is perpetuating the possibility of u.s. forces staying there because we have the arab awakening and now some generals want to strategic foothold in the region and so ok now we seem to need to stay in iraq much will. the military industrial complex you know generals without wars and you know are going to slaughter ya there without wars general colonels don't major general and for you some lawmakers don't get elected and personally are out of time holding it so much for being go thanks for having me that was michael o'brien the

author of america's spell you're in iraq now immigration and bin laden's death may be dominating news headlines but with less than one week until the united states runs up against this fourteen point three trillion dollars debt limit we're taking a hard look at america's financial health and u.s. economic performance seems to be in a bit of a freefall public debt and deficit continues soar the middle class is more at risk than ever and listen for solutions from washington are frankly the way to be seen now it's difficult to overstate just how serious the u.s. debt situation is but sometimes it does take a fresh perspective to really get the depth of the problem and yesterday my colleague lauren lyster spoke with legendary investor and commodities trader jim rogers and here's how he framed the issue. america's going to have to face the problem that we are the largest debtor nation in the world is getting higher and higher and the rest of the world historians say wait a minute guys we're not going to continue to finance is we're going to continue to

play ball other countries are now looking for replacements for the u.s. dollar there's a lot of movement not just in china but all over the world because everybody knows that the u.s. dollar is now a terribly flawed currency i don't like saying this i want american citizens and american taxpayer we've got to face facts of the two i'd rather be the creditor than the debtor throughout history throughout history you know people have always said look over there with all that money i want to go over there with the assets or you've never heard people say look at all those debtors i want to go there and join those debtors i mean the american press is seems to be more worried about the with which t.v. stars divorcing which t.v. star more than anything else when the rest of the world is sitting here very seriously concerned about us being overextended both politically and geo politically and militarily and economically and yet i don't see many people in the u.s. even noticing it much this caring about it and yet a country like china at our still used to testify an existential threat to the

united states and our leaders to be able to push continued military spending the united states military being the most well financed in the world i want to know what you think this is eventually going to take on the lives of average americans who might be thing had an active need. blister we've got wars going on in three different countries right now we'd like to have wars in four or five more if we can figure out a way to do it we've got troops stationed in one hundred twenty countries around the world that are doing anything he said making enemies for us and costing us a staggering amount of money this is all going to come to an end and unfortunately no country has gotten itself into this kind of situation gets out of the problem without a crisis or a semi crisis we're rapidly more and more rapidly approaching a crisis that's going to be bad for all of us two thousand and eight was bad well wait till the next time around it's going to be even worse well unfortunately worse it may just yet especially as lawmakers seem to him to be pardon me at

a total standstill in the fight over the us debt and yesterday john boehner the house speaker decided to ask for trillions of dollars in cuts in spending in exchange for the votes needed to put that ceiling here's what he had to say in a speech on wall street let me be as clear as i can be without but it's significant spending cuts and changes in the way we spend the american people's money there will be no increase in the debt limit and that cuts should be greater than any accompanying increase in the debt limit but the president has given we're garber talking about billions here we should be talking about cuts in trillions if we're serious about addressing america's fiscal problems but then these should be actual cuts real reforms to these programs not broad deficit or deficit targets that punt the questions to the future. actual cuts in

a what defense the republicans are going to go for that entitlements the democrats are going to go for that one about raising taxes again as deal breaker so go sides are digging in how the heck does this country move forward on the economy here with us to weigh in as investment broker author and financial commentator peter schiff is also the president of euro pacific capital now peter you ran for office if you were in the senate what would you do to move the situation along i mean it seems like both of these sides of dugan and they're not willing to make any concessions that one fortunately i didn't win follow because i was telling the truth these issues. most the politicians like demagogue and i like what john boehner had stated i played that clip on my own show the peter schiff show but the question is is it rhetoric is it is it just talk or cheney actually walk that walk and that he said everything on the table that in exam social security i'm so. is that that's what we

need to do and i think tax increases actually increased undermine the economy further and probably even worsen the deficit maybe we can actually for farm that lose away from taxing income and action but we really need glasses problem by going after the expenditures and he means what he says the republicans can dig in their heels refuse to allow the debt ceiling to be raised and if they do that then the government has no choice but to cut spending i hope they have the political fortitude to do that but i would bet on the theater if they do that and we don't raise the debt ceiling and we do default on the debt or the market reacts even before that happens there will be catastrophic consequences and that would mean there will be no republicans to dig in their heels when twenty twelve comes around i mean aren't there aren't the consequences of playing politics with this sort of thing on the game of chicken and more dire than than the potential outcome in the first of all just because they don't print that doesn't mean we have to vote on the

money we've already been steady cut expenditures all it means is that we can't borrow more money but we don't have to reduce the debt so that the government makes the necessary cost to other parts of the budget that it won't happen but you know let's have an honest conversation we can't pay this money back we're like bernie may not we're just constantly hoping our writers roll over their debt but let's face the issue right now because if we don't restructure the debt we're going to inflate away i mean nobody's going to get their money back nobody's buying treasuries around the world as a prayer of getting their money back they might get their dollars back but they're not going to get you well going in your rose or swiss francs or australian dollars or chinese r. and b. because we're going to inflate this better way it is impossible to pay it off especially when interest rates rise and we're able to service it now because the fed is got rates and zero but when rates rise and inevitably. must in the long

relate to do it the are they going to go we've got no chance of servicing this debt with real money well bernie madoff who mentioned his fun experiment came to a crashing fiery burn when he went to prison for a rod for a lot of the take so what's going to be the equivalent of that for the united states if we don't get the situation under control and fix things that we're clearly not acting out of the moment well if we do not deal with these problems if we try to keep printing money as jimmy i just just said the world's going to take it anymore they're not going to not going to send us their products for our paper and then we're going to have to get used to living a standard of living that is actually based on our own production and we don't have the factories anymore we don't we don't we don't produce all the consumer goods that we used to we're relying on our ability to print import the things that our economy doesn't produce all we produce is government you know big government and big services but that's not what we need to have a high standard of living so we're going to have to. i would have to confront

reality and we're also going to have to deal with much higher interest rates than we're used to because we're not going to be able to tap into the world savings anymore if americans want to borrow money they're going to have to find another american who's willing to loan it to and there's not that many americans with saving and what do you think i'm going to take to change the issue i mean lawmakers are usually looking out for their reelection cycle the president has only so much power i mean could obama be doing more of doing something differently is going to take massive protests by the people what's going to change. well unfortunately you're right all they're concerned about is getting reelected that is what that is washington's problem that's not the country's problem and unfortunately what we need to solve all our problems is bad things and so we never get to solutions get find a tooth we get quick fixes we get stimulus kick the can down the road sweep litter the rug that's all they care about they want to get to the next election cycle without it blowing up well one of these days is going to blow up and there won't be a next election so i hope and i think that's coming i think within the next several

years we're going to have the really comic prices that we didn't have in two thousand and eight that we didn't have a two thousand and two but the problem is every time the government stimulates the economy to create an artificial boom to postpone the pain they make the inevitable bust that much worse so i think we've got to the point now where there is no more stimulus to work there's just overdose any more government stimulus is going to we're going to destroy the current the economy was over to those with hyperinflation. there's reality and then there's also hope when we're talking about reality here do you think that's actually going to take the free will of apology our politicians to change policy or do you think it's going to take the future economic crisis that you're talking about in order to actually change things and by that point what if you wait. unfortunately it's going to take a crisis i don't think they're going to do the right thing until their backs are really to the oil until they realize that we're not going to make it to the next election cycle them out of what they do and finally they might it will do something

in the national interest instead of their own political self-interest but by then doing the right thing is going to that much more painful obvious stuff of how much a sponsor we waited but we're going to have to let interest rates rise dramatically we're going after resource down money up to stop the dollar from collapsing and which means we're going to have to dismantle much of the federal government and us politicians are going to have to be honest with the right to left or right and say we can't keep these promises we can't make the so security payments we can't make the medicare payments we don't have the money we're broke and we can extract it from the younger generations because they will leave the country so they're going to have to have an honest discussion and there is going to be a big economic decline associated with correcting these imbalances because we have been living beyond our means a nation for a long time which means we're going to have to live beneath our means but we replenish our savings and repair infrastructure and have a new industrial revolution and there very quickly before we go you're gonna run again if they're not letting well i'm not planning on running in two thousand and

twelve but whether i decide to run subsequent to that i don't know either is the main thing candidates running in the presidential cycle ron paul i was involved in the two thousand latest economic advisor i was down in south carolina last week for the early republican debate all right and so hopefully we'll get a bigger following this time around they did two thousand and eight and i like to put some of my efforts into trying to help him get elected president that's a lot more i think effective than me being just another senator all right well thank you for your viewpoint as always peter schiff president of euro pacific capital. now if you watched any of the political sunday shows this weekend to me felt a little bit like stepping into a time machine back to the era of president george w. bush this entire week it seems that torture enthusiastic have been back on all of the news channels proclaiming their happiness that so-called interrogation techniques worked to look i think that anyone who suggests that the enhanced techniques let's be blunt waterboarding did not produce an enormous amount of

valuable intelligence just isn't facing the truth those are the passenger geisha of khalid sheikh muhammad but had vast crucial proof if you will of the diligence it was a good program it was a legal program it was not torture and i would strongly recommend that we continue these are not torture he's the techniques that we know work that debate is over it worked it got the intelligence it wasn't torture it was legal i think without the enhanced interrogation methods are authorized by president bush combined with the warrantless surveillance we never would have found where bin laden was hiding because we never would have known the identity location of the courier there despite the fact that numerous intelligence officers white house officials even former bush administration officials said that waterboarding did not lead us to some of them on many on the right have continued with that line of that line of thinking saying that torture has in fact and been dictated and with me to discuss

this issue which went to los angeles to speak with matthew alexander is a former senior military interrogator who oversaw more than thirteen hundred interrogations when he was stationed over in iraq and he's also the author of the book kill or capture thank you thank you so much for being here i know you've been doing a lot of interviews about this over the past few weeks but what was your reaction to sort of seeing all of these older bush administration folks crawling out of the woodworks to vindicate those policies over the past week. well it's really. it's hard to call it anything other than that because the evidence is very clear that waterboarding techniques fail to get the critical information that led to. in the response to that is a lie and that it is not true the idea that it was a courier that courier had a nickname. for reading after it. and it's very good it's like

all the work. very good and i was. it was pretty well known entity that. they had been the one people there making that they got on it or they call it it is their real name the courier which they failed to get. and wasn't learned more than eight years later and what do you think is behind it i mean is it like some sort of interested desire to preserve. these folks personal histories or do you think it's time to avoid potential future prosecution and could we see the actual prosecution of folks who carried out this kind of intense interrogation techniques . so i think it's a little bit well it's actually a. conservative trying to grab some of the credit. from president obama for having killed in something as opposed to the station. seven years i

think. part of it is it can and you've. been. work fine with torture is. in revenge. i was. going to ask them i'm not going. fortunately into the event but more than more than any of what the political debate is doing it's harming you know making up because just. when i mean i think we have out there when i think we have a map you can hear me yeah yeah go ahead just the fact that we're having this debate we're saying just the fact that we're having a debate hoping ok to it they use the fact that we torture people and that we allow that to recruit new members and that's going to have a cost us law and do you see the broader approach to the war on terror changing

drastically under president obama or do you see perhaps some continuation of some of the policies that could be used as recruitment. adverts for al qaeda and other terrorist organizations under obama has anything changed. and you wonder about so that is all. what we have to realize al qaeda will be able to recruit or we're going to what we do to some degree because of those economic already and ignorant but we don't want to give them additional tools. which can either explain their numbers increasing or decreasing and right now our national periods are focused on something back when they should be gone from stopping. well and i'm sure that our active involvement in lots of conflicts abroad doesn't really help necessarily but very quickly i think when you were a senior military interrogator in iraq you were yourself as i mentioned in the

intro involved in well over a thousand tara geishas talk about personally how your perspective on this issue on and on torture changed given your personal experiences. my personal opinion is that american women without course that we are going back again. american interrogator down bang without using them sounding killed in the south over our way that we hear about in an iraqi that you think. we did in world war two do you think we're. i mean we've proven ourselves and just that we're reading it. and i think we we lost matthew but that was matthew i'm alexander former senior military interrogator and also the author of kill or capture now unfortunately that doesn't for this show for more on a story that we've covered this with r.t. dot com slash usa and it's always check out our you to page for all the segments from today and previous months beforehand if youtube dot com slash r.t. america.