but can the alone to show really that the real headlines with none of the mercy are going to live in washington d.c. now to be able to take a closer look at the situation in libya the u.s. has passed its sixty day mark by about twelve days now congress still hasn't voted on it and there's an extra extension coming from nato so let's stop playing the numbers game and ask if anybody out there wants this war to come to an end next to where our politicians priorities are voting on bills for defense spending piracy

privacy and yet there's no solution in sight for our struggling economy so what are they going to say to voters when they start asking where are the jobs and then has rand paul lost his mind a senator who claims to be a warrior for civil liberties recently stated that anybody who attends radical speeches should be thrown in jail or deported what not only is that a violation of the first amendment but i also would love to know who decides what's considered radical take a closer look at his make a flip flop and make a toast in tonight's happy hour site first but our top story. as of today it's been seventy two days since the u.s. got involved in the war in libya that's twelve days over the sixty day limit of the president had under the war powers act before congress could intervene and it doesn't really matter because many critics would argue that america's involvement has been illegal from the start even under the war powers act because libya posed no immediate threat to us so the president couldn't just unilaterally decide to

divert our forces but just for fun since that's the way that our politicians seem to be treating the subject as a game let's stick to the numbers today nato secretary general anders fogh rasmussen announced that nato countries will extend their mission in libya for another ninety days after the june twenty seventh expiration of the current resolution and today the house of representatives was supposed to vote on a resolution demanding an end to the u.s. involvement in libya but it was placed on hold and we don't yet know when about votes going to take place the senate isn't supposed to vote until next week so it doesn't seem like anybody out there is in a hurry to end this war except for maybe the civilians at this war supposed to be protecting and this is what i would call a giant mess here to discuss this with me is lawrence wilkerson retired u.s. army colonel and former chief of staff to colin powell wants thanks so much for being here tonight. what's going on here like i said we can play the numbers game we can say it's sixty days seventy two days ninety days but even the nato secretary

general said today we'll put this ninety day timeline on the map but if our mission isn't completed by then we can also start and stay there to make sure that everyone knows that we're dedicated what's the point of any numbers. move closer to the newsroom with his book on war you should know where you're going before you start you should know how you're going to get out before you were due i don't think we have any idea what we're doing or the united states i think we're praying every night probably on bended knee could offer you will somehow find out why you. there's no indication that he's going to do that so there's every indication this is a civil war it's the sides are fairly evenly split in the air power one side here we are again with that wonderful elixir air power is not a determinant of who's going to win or lose we put troops on the ground and bring this to a conclusion. but it's congress going to say about that and its nato going to say about that what nato country is going to put the troops on the ground well there

has been some speculation over the weekend of course al jazeera port showed what looks like six westerners in uniform away for weapons or actions today but i've been so you know already there british nobody really knows but congress isn't really saying much that's what's what's got me so conflicted about this entire situation is we have a few lawmakers out there people like representative dennis consented she has been trying to pass this resolution in the house and suddenly republicans realize that there are enough votes for this to go through and so they have to put a hold on it what are they so scared of well i think they're frightened of getting away from they want to do what they want to do is keep the military industrial complex or it will be degrees and that's what war does for you like the war and republicans seem to be the war party and so if you're going to if you're going to make some action to strip the president of these war power or you're going to make some changes in there more power you don't want to be a republican when you do it because you might win the white house someday and you

really like that war power but if you want to win the white house is it your best to point out all the flaws of the current administration happens to be seen as a democratic white house that illegally does this war seems to be their strategy this is mind boggling that we're in afghanistan we're in iraq we're in the global war on terror we're in libya we might be in syria tomorrow morning we might be in iran next week what next this is a war nation right now and there's no i see no improvement i want to talk very quickly about numbers when it comes to libya because the entire idea behind the. u.n. resolution is that we're supposed to be there for a humanitarian intervention to protect civilians but the only numbers that are coming out in terms of civilian casualties of course are coming from the libyan government say that about seven hundred eighteen civilians have been killed and about four thousand of them have been wounded and yet nato doesn't want to appreciate they don't want to want to take in those numbers because they say that they can't be verified but i just wonder where does our intelligence come from how

do we have any idea how many civilians were actually protecting i would trust anyone's intelligence on the libyan situation right now particularly with regard to kara's really he might recall that we were saying the view would be and i think this was a good faith effort to do you would be to safe fifty to sixty thousand casualties in iraq when it was probably closer to a quarter of a me and really isn't right it's very difficult to determine it in media res as it were in the middle of the battle so i wouldn't trust anyone here and least of all would i trust the government. in libya right now so if we want to what we start to segue into afghanistan i want to talk about yemen here but even you said that this is this is a quagmire this is a mistake we're doing here in libya you have to have a mission you have to have a call before you go in but we didn't have that but if there are this is goes to get it off you do leave and that's you know if you think about there for a moment that's really an if you will show me could offer you could stay forever.

but what kind of goal is that you going to force khadafi to believe it would be the same in syria if you're going to force assad to leave half of syria's for a saudi half of libya's for gadhafi so we're going to kill that half of libya kill that half of syria these are these are not the kind of goals that presidents should be setting for their own forces but you presidents know it to all american politicians i lawmakers really know how to admit but they made a mistake when they say that you know what this mission isn't quite correctly perhaps it's time that we actually pull out maybe it's time to abandon the mission i feel like there's an inability to realize that this isn't working and i don't know if it's pride and this is variance this is history the most if you look back four thousand years the most common mistake in retrospect the military and civilian leaders sending their military into war made is reinforcing failure they don't say let's stop here we failed and let's leave they reinforce that failure they serve

they put more troops in and sort of look at afghanistan right up against there's not a problem pakistan is the problem we've got reports right now that half of the pakistan military is so i agree with this latest agreement with the pakistani government between the u.s. the pakistani government on the on the either or on the in the aftermath of the bin laden strike they are so angry that the only institution in pakistan other than the warriors of the legal profession but it is fairly solid maybe falling apart what's going to happen in talk i started when the military falls apart starts fighting amongst itself starts fighting itself in a civil war pakistan is on the verge of collapsing and we are still hammering away in afghanistan as if that were the real problem in pakistan we're not you know just there is an ally and we have to mollify them every now and then so real dangerous situation that's occurring over there right now as dangerous as it's been since.

well it's interesting too because right now the a.p. has been reporting that apparently western officials are trolling for a taliban officials before withdraw all or at least a planned draw down start to take place in july they are trolling for some kind of taliban official to speak to they also reported that apparently germany is trying to help us out with mullah omar as press secretary who hasn't been seen has been heard from since two thousand and one and they're trying to make this connection i can't believe that we're still trolling for officials though it do we even know this does this press secretary even exist when the last time anyone saw. this is further exacerbating the problem is referred to in pakistan through because you've got some in the military some of the who have their favorite probably and you have some of the military in the eyes who don't have any truck with the taliban at all and so you're now falling apart. in the pakistani military because of your affiliation with the taliban who were courting and trying to get to come to some

kind of political reconciliation so we can leave this is truly a mess and when you put your finger right on me. it's a missed week and not just with the invasion of afghanistan. as it is today we started this way back. pakistan polls here as part procedure will mean a visible for forty years and it's something that we still keep right on like i said no no way to admit that perhaps i made a mistake perhaps we need to refocus or shift but another place really that is. in a civil war right now at least if you listen to president saleh is yemen and i just wonder you know that i mean obviously there are so many different factions here in the north in the south suddenly is not going to be able to get out of this for he is accepted a number of agreements from other gulf states which all of which he then. well i'm just wondering you know is yemen going to be a failed state no matter if he leaves or not. i think human is

a failed state i think it is a failed state being held together now by the tension between the different factions that you just pointed out and by the united states and its efforts to keep it from falling completely apart but it looks a lot like a failed state to me right now but what's going to happen with al-qaeda and there may be and it's the left course that's that's the number one fear if you ask americans if you talk about anwar locking is that fear a little bit is that overstated because there are a lot of critics that will say that i will say sally really just wanted western money very frankly i think al qaida is overstated for that very reason because using as the bogeyman in order to get us to invest in his government i'm not discounting the threat entirely but i don't think it's anything like what sally is said to us and we bought bad who are quiet and sinker apparently but it also gives us an excuse to stay there and try to keep the country stable saudi arabia's interest in yemen is profound and if yemen is going to go some way that the saudis

don't particularly like the saudis are going to step in and make sure that it doesn't happen if i were doing something with a regional partner right now and i were doing something aimed at yemen that's whom i would be working with be working with riyadh's got its own problems i watched an interview today by professors very astute in saudi affairs and she said something like seventy percent of the people were under thirty and have a college education in many cases and have no jobs just an eight hundred dollars stock came from the government it comes from basically from all revenues this is no way to build a future so saudi arabia is sitting on some tenuous ground right now to the only reason they're holding on to power is their very as we saw with their help for bahrain they're very draconian in putting down any protest or stopping anything that might look like a protest but this is a very fragile environment across the region and we're watching probably as many of our former allies and friends. began to topple and even fall in the next three to

five years as egypt tunisia and others have shown what are we going to do when that happens i hope we're thinking about that over thinking hard about why i'm wondering what you have to say about that because you and i spoke about defense secretary robert gates championing defense cuts many many times and yet he's about to leave his position soon and recently when giving a speech at the american enterprise institute he had a bit of a walk back there and said you know the less money we have the fewer missions we're going to be able to have did he change his mind why the change is mine is it because of all the uncertainty suddenly or did the military industrial complex just when we demanded it needs a job after he retires that's where he's going to go to i don't think that's what got the interview by today it was quite good where he started about he was maybe to hang around even further because he had objected to libya dejected other things even apparently was very doubtful of the intelligence about bin one where he was and apparently weighed in in

a negative way with regard to the season to get which looks in retrospect like a bad one now that looks bad but not having any war lasts right now that means that you're too old to do your job in some ways i hate the sin you leave because he was taking on the military industrial complex he was item by item trying to eliminate those high dollar items we don't need and by the things we do need he was trying to prepare the armed forces for the multi-billion if not multi hundred billion dollar cut in the future which is inevitable we're headed into you didn't ask me about this but i'm going to speak we are headed into this second leg of the recession i don't think we've ever been out of the recession the great recession i think we fudge the numbers with lots of money for the financial institutions which constituted probably two point five to two point eight percent of the g.d.p. improvement and so what we're really looking at now is we're looking at more foreclosures we're looking at more of a lost jobs we're looking at higher unemployment we're looking at a catastrophe bred by the very financially. two shoes in part that we bailed out

several years ago but we obviously are still looking at more military spending let's not forget about it i'm not mother and i didn't ask you about having a better time to be a christian are going to be disgusting than just a moron but i do appreciate your input i thank you so much for joining us thanks wherever you are we got to take a quick break but coming up next the number one issue on americans' minds is the state of the economy but it seems like congress is working hard on legislation covering everything except the current economic crisis so what do we do to get these easy priorities straight christian dorsey of the economic policy institute when we return. we are in a hurry. well . we haven't got the case here to

say it's ready for freedom. hey guys welcome to shellings tell me alone a show we've heard are just stop to say on the topic now i want to hear audio just go out to you tube video response our twitter profile to the question that we post on you tube every monday and on thursday to show the long responses we will be.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then a glimpse something else hears you saw that part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't. charge the big picture. so the secret of finding a job these days the u.s. is well it's a full time job not many people are hiring the few areas that are accepting applications are paying high so it's staggering unemployment numbers staring the country in the face and increasing numbers of homelessness and people without any health insurance we have to ask is this a ticking time bomb artie's being

a part i am has more on the fallout from the this this small us economy. here the golden arches that stretch across the globe from london to brussels to moscow to millions flock to mcdonald's in search of french fries in big macs but what about those in search of a career if i was in dire straits i might go to mcdonald's but the entire time i was there would be looking for something better not to offend but donald's employ i would look for other things first that's for sure i don't know but it's yeah no. i think it's just the worst of it you would see about a job ever. meanwhile just across the atlantic is sima roma we're going to go but a much greater sense of appreciation for the spirit working here i was able to go from person to restaurant manager. the benefits ongoing benefits

of working with people. because it is a secure area and this is secure here in the u.s. where nearly fourteen million people are unemployed a career at mcdonald's has become appealing back in april the fast food chain launched its first ever national hiring day nearly one million people applied for jobs but only six out of every one hundred applicants or higher. mcdonald's created sixty two thousand new minimum wage u.s. jobs in one day but for the past seven weeks more than four hundred thousand americans filed new claims for unemployment this as forty five million americans are reportedly already receiving food stamps qana missed an offer less leopold says washington is ignoring a ticking time bomb we have the richest country on earth who can put its own people

to work that's a disaster waiting to happen that's that by far the biggest threat to american people in the wake of osama bin laden's assassination he wants leaders say terrorism continues to be the biggest threat against americans there is no doubt that there will continue to pursue attacks against us against a country where some forty four million americans don't have health insurance a reported one in seven children are homeless america's double war bill tops one point two trillion and the richest four hundred americans hold more wealth than the bottom fifty percent combined to one thought. and tax cuts for the super rich they've lost their focus they no longer have their eye on the prize which is you have to put the american people back to work back to work in what's being dubbed a make jobs u.s. recovery where a nationwide recruitment drive by a low wage employer still sends ninety four percent of applicants back to the

golden arches q arena porton i am artsy new york. do you want to know what your elected officials are doing right now they're hurriedly passing defense authorization bill to increase pentagon spending there gloating over the reauthorization of the patriot act for four more years with no debate they're doing hollywood's bidding when it comes to copyright laws and they're engaging in a symbolic battle over the debt ceiling that probably won't be resolved until we reach the deadline yet meanwhile more than fourteen million americans are out of work so what ever happened to focusing on jobs and the lesson that might be hard learned come next year's elections when americans remind them that what really matters is the economy join me to discuss this is kristen dorsey director of external and government affairs at the economic policy institute christine thanks for coming back on the show what is congress doing right now i mean can you honestly can you tell me one positive thing at the congress is doing it to really create jobs other than i don't know allowing businesses to continue enjoying all

those tax breaks or slashing abortion funding and all that stuff you know unfortunately anything positive to deal with creating jobs in this country is really left off the table as soon as we made this pivot to being all about the deficit once that dominated talk in congress and from the white house by point we haven't done anything to deal with the enormity of the jobs crisis that you talked about fourteen million people unemployed and if you really look at some other indicators that we have a market that a lot worse shape than the fact that we haven't had any results from congress fully disappointing now i just wonder to we're waiting for jobs numbers for the month of may to come out on this friday but if we just look at the first four months of this year to even if the trend does continue as is how long is it going to take for jobs numbers to get back to normal i mean here's the crazy people it was a really good month two hundred forty four thousand jobs added to the economy it was the best month in five years and if we had the same kind of result in april for

the next five and a half years we would get to the level of recession unemployment. in the fall of two thousand and sixteen it would take another five and a half years from now to get back to where we were before the recession and that's if we have a month that was off the charts better than we have had in the last five years which is highly unlikely that i mean if there's no way to get back down because america going to be a fundamentally different country when we come out if we haven't come out of this great recession what's going to look like what congress continues to think that its response would be to do nothing yes we are we are fundamentally changed but there are things that can be done but it results in congress making the necessary steps to invest in key targeted ways to increase employment there's a lot of needs that are unaddressed in this country it's not like there are not jobs that can't be performed but if congress doesn't put its weight and its resources behind creating incentives to get those jobs done it's not going to happen so what do you when you say incentives you know where are these jobs located

because i think that one thing that has constantly part of the debate a part of the discussion with congress is our tax cuts right we don't want to dare burden any of our businesses with higher taxes because then they're not going to hire anybody but if you look at the trends they're still not hiring anybody no matter how much extra money you put in their hands tax cuts you know we had a decade of tax cuts for individuals mostly high earners and for business is it's resulted in the weakest jobs recovery any economic expansion we've seen in the country's history clearly that's not the answer but what is the answer is congress doing a few things one looking at where their needs in the economy and i can think of a few right off the bat you know we're about to close schools all across this country there are hundreds of millions of dollars in school repairs that need to be done that have been deferred for decades let's get people back to work heal the construction industry and repair and modernize our schools that's just one idea that can really move the dial quickly and we can have

a public jobs program in this country that seems to be something that no one wants that. think about i don't know why it worked very well in the one nine hundred thirty s. and furthermore we've got well they're free everybody hates the word public you know republican never sells any more you know the public doesn't sell but i think joblessness is even worse i think you know potentially moving into a double dip recession is even worse you know we have to get past this idea that public means communist means socialist it actually needs results and it's the only way to get results because right now businesses are content to accrue profits without hiring anybody who's in need of a job well do you think that we are undoubtedly going to be an example of that procession i think a lot of people would say economic indicators are pointing in that direction that this same mistakes are bound to happen again the banks are still big banks they're not only too big to fail they're probably even bigger than they once were derivatives are still completely being on regulated and if you look at just yesterday on the show we were talking about the new standard and poor's home price

index and housing prices are very very very low right now they're you know at their lowest point since since the downturn began you know i don't know if a bill that was necessarily in our future but i also think that's meaningless because if we continue as we are we're going to have such a low growth during this expansion that it's going to feel like a recession anyway so whether it's a good official double digit from the national bureau of economic research who cares to americans it's going to feel like a very painful recovery and certainly i would expect that we would have another official reception reception before two thousand and sixteen you know which is again the d. which we would get a pretty recession levels of employment if we had a month like people every month the next five minutes years the elections are in two thousand and sixteen elections are in one in twelve so what's congress going to do about it because i do think that a lot of people are going to say it's the economy stupid that's what i want to focus on when do you think that americans are going to remember more of the barack

obama killed osama bin ladin that's an easy one to remember or that he couldn't kill whole fourteen million. people into work every poll i've seen says the public still sees the number one issue even post. in the face than one issue is getting americans back to work yet it appears that a lot of people think the president's going to double down on this incredible national security success to say you know i'm a guy that you want to charge but i think great number of americans are skeptical not just the president but both parties in their ability to get you know what they want to argue about deficit and debt issues which are really won't turn issues they are neglecting the here and now and that's something that i think both parties are going to be dearly for next year the republicans who took control of the house that's in jeopardy and the president who was the white house that's going to be in jeopardy as well what's going to happen with this debt ceiling are they just going to continue debating the debating to debating until we get to august second and leave until the mass last moment and pass it or might they not i mean you also see

investors right now betting on the u.s. government default well if you look at past history is any guide with when it comes to the expiration of the tax cuts or extensions of unemployment insurance they will wait until the very last minute before getting anything done and that's not useful at all. should the debt ceiling should have been increased a straight up or down vote on the debt ceiling and come bring it to spending cuts and other things that are part of the debate completely not useful but what we'll see this is my prediction you know as we get close to august second there will be some grand bargain to reduce spending and then we'll have a debt ceiling increase but it will still do nothing to put people back to work. and that's where it's acars and thank you so much for joining us thank you think you're kind of pale and says that she might have to cut her bus tour short and we'll explain why in our told time and rand paul says the people who attended a radical speeches should be put in jail as strange coming from a senator who's normally about civil liberties right have a science or have

a paul spoke at several quotes from radical events i'm still. for the dow to have hawker see if the common interests come up. well. whenever god says they're safe get ready for freedom. of. speech on our behalf.