do you hold me till you hold the camera was the subtle see there's a little school in the stone. you did disposable well that may be how some feel but will any of those men really be held responsible for civilian deaths in libya. and a man who's been a war against the war all along has just won another political contest so why is ron paul still seen as a fringe candidate specially since nearly three quarters of likely u.s. voters seem to agree with him. and archie viewers are asking questions from the

rise of the missouri river to a no fly zone have every reason to be suspicious about the border come from the clear power station so what's really going on here. it's monday june twentieth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for is out there watching our team. we begin with breaking news tonight a deadly plane crash in northwest russia has killed as many as forty people after making a crash landing on the highway followed by a cracked fuselage and the plane bursting into flames. that she won thirty four twin engine plane was en route from moscow to p.s. rolls of out and crash landed just two kilometers away from the runway we are now hearing forty four are dead which means there are four survivors that were taken from the plane taken to the hospital and sure to stay right here on r.t.c. for the very latest on this story. overturning down to our top story this evening

u.s. involvement in foreign wars and the fact that all these decisions continue to be made from the top and overwhelming majority of americans are unhappy about it all conducted last week by polls opinion research found that seventy two percent of voters believe the united states is involved in too many foreign conflicts and should pull back its troops seventy two percent answer sixteen percent saying the level of engagement was appropriate and twelve percent saying they're just not sure it's only frustration now growing as u.s. and nato forces continue involvement in libya but the most recent news that at least nine civilians were killed in a bungled airstrike in tripoli correspondent marina financial is in tripoli and has this report. true she meant that her his extended family used to be one of the biggest in the neighborhood and natives will mean stylish and used by his father

one of his brothers his sister and her own family mohamed shows us the picture of little jumana his niece taken on his mobile phone just days before he pulled her dead body from on the living. room i woke up when i heard an explosion he said the roof fell on me i run immediately see how my family is and many were dead my mother survived another brother is in a coma and we don't know when or if he will recover but how is that not three days been livin in this agreement district in tripoli it's home to many our age income people both from one family this is just a regular city quarter quite densely populated built up area this is what used to be that had its house but three story buildings are reduced in ruins in just moments after being hit in a missile strike home and mohammed's brother who survived says they will never forgive or forget what nato has done to them destroying their lives and homes that

they should take responsibility for their wrongdoing and nato has responded with an apology. intended target during our air strike in tripoli was a military missile site. from our initial assessment of the facts it appears that one weapon did not strike the intended target or weapons systems failure. although officials in tripoli claim more than eight hundred civilians have died in nato raids the nine people they say were killed in sunday's bombardment of the city have become the first civilian casualty is officially acknowledged by the alliance only on saturday nato has also admitted and other mistaken i strike this time on rebel forces neither live in all ports of brag or the number of casualties not been disclosed we hold nato we hold mr cameron was the ghazi missed the going to score any mr obama had already and have a good response about the death of these innocent children and isn't boys and girls

and innocent fathers and mothers who cannot justify this attack would in any case i thought of that incident in. sunday's fatal error occurs in with the rising concerns within nato about his operation in northern africa only eight out of its twenty eight members have joined the mission to protect civilians in libya which raises the question how many would support one to kill them ration option or r.t. tripoli. libya of course simply the most recent effort there are also currently about one hundred thousand u.s. troops in afghanistan fifty thousand still in iraq to mention the more under the radar efforts going on right now in yemen and pakistan this is people the human cost we won't even start on the financial cost to this country well earlier i spoke to r.t. blogger and military analyst james gilberto i asked him about his thoughts about

the growing lack of support for the u.s. forces abroad and what he thought it meant for the country as a whole take a listen shows that the american people are tired of war and we saw secretary gates to say yesterday that nobody's more tired of war than the military families and the veterans that have served there but now it's showing what we've all been saying for a long period of time since two thousand and seven after the iraq war two thousand and eight the iraq surge was the one that the american people are catching on board what we weren't saying which was it's time to bring these open ended war to an end i'm wondering you know why the disconnect here we think about president obama back when he was candidate obama and his primary challenger and his party was hillary clinton and his one thing before it was jobs and the economy before that became a major issue before the financial collapse it was the war and time and time again he faulted her for voting for the war in iraq and a lot of people speculate that that's why he came out ahead i actually it's a good that's a good guess as i figure right so let's talk about that difference between

candidate obama and now president obama who has said he wants to speed up the withdrawal of troops in afghanistan but all we've seen so far in afghanistan is a surge of troops or so there's a lot of talk and a little action here and now we have proof that americans want more action you know what i better be careful not to support president obama or to that because it's really been a big fan i think that there's a couple things that we do have to see with president obama's afghanistan was virtually neglected once the bush administration chose to go inside iraq and as a result of that the obama missed. mission triple down first with i think ten thousand and seventeen and then thirty thousand more troops as a result of that people can debate what they want but nonetheless there needed to be attention given to afghanistan because there's nothing done since two thousand and two for each of these things strategy when tragedy chose was bad the policy chose in the palace the advisers he brought around him i thought were it was a very bad decision counterinsurgency in nation building and all of that and as

a result of this reckless decision i think by president obama now we see we're spending somewhere between ten million dollars an hour we've got five thousand americans killed as a result the war and god knows about a million iraqis and afghans in america is that enough that take you know this is america we have a democracy here we have a system in place in which the will of the people is supposed to be demonstrated by those officials that pay a lack into office clearly this poll and what we're starting to see with a lot of the dialogue are coming out showing that that's just not happening why do you think that those you know read it take a look at the pentagon budget or take a look at the spending that is given the money that's given to these wars that is certainly not in growing what americans are feeling why was which let's start with obama first we had the bank bailouts followed up from the bush administration charts and unpaid for tax liabilities that the bush administration get now and now we've got the military spending and why was that with the american people are most

of influenced by in the polls is finances they want they want money in their pocketbook americans want to work they want their houses they want freedom they want their own identity they don't want the government to be taking everything and giving it to afghanistan or iraq or in some some liberal minded people think that we're doing is actually occupying and killing a lot of innocent people over there so we certainly certainly americans in general don't want to be killing innocent people americans don't want their tax dollars given or taken from them so that's why. it's pretty interesting to just if we think about what we've seen over the weekend in terms of from the lawmakers and politicians kind of taking different stances than we're used to in terms of the hock position in the gulf decision president obama as you've already seen sort of seem seen as hawkish continuing to you know the third in afghanistan the involvement at all in libya that he's in favor of and then we have on people like lindsey graham and i never thought i'd say this. you know now now kind post two

thousand election john mccain saying obama is right to be involved in libya and yet then we also have a lot of republicans coming out saying wait a minute he didn't get congressional approval we should think about this to talk about this this very definition of you know the hawks versus dove is no longer a blue and red issue well that's what i used to say about john mccain he has turned into a whack a doodle his name says he is so old and senile the man really needs to be brought to a nursing home and provided care for he has whatever john mccain says is so irrelevant he's so removed from the troops it's like this rhetoric i support the troops so bunch of nonsense but really what's going on within the discontents is what general bruce palmer said after vietnam and that was general bruce commerce said the american people will not stand for an ambiguous war of an unpredictable nature and which does not and favorable suitable tonight space this is something we heard

forty years ago now so the american people are that's where they're out we've got guys like mccain and lindsey graham who get a lot of money from defense contractors they get a crap load of support from pro-war military organizations and as a result they get to get on t.v. and do they really care about the troops no john mccain does not care about the u.s. military is the largest he does god bless them for his military service but he does not care in the least bit what's going on. i was part one of my interview with r.t. blogger and military analyst jake silver tell. the question of the u.s. led war effort is one that comes up pretty frequently on the campaign trail over the weekend many of the republican candidates for president gathered in new orleans for the republican leadership conference to talk about their ideas for how to move the country forward among them congressman ron paul the only candidate who has said from day one that the u.s. should not be involved in any of the war efforts that we should withdraw our troops

and our money from iraq afghanistan and libya now one time this was an idea that was considered radical on the fringe even and it's one that must be registering more and more turns out ron paul won the straw poll there and while it was barely a contest six hundred twelve votes to the next in line jon huntsman who scored three hundred eighty two perceived different runner mitt romney well he got just seventy four votes ron paul in an interview this morning on the today show says he has a pretty good idea why he has so much support especially from the young people it's endless undeclared unwinnable wars dumped on the young people and also the financial crisis that we have related to the foreign policy it we're dumping that on the young people and that's why the next generation the current young people between the age of fifteen and twenty five or thirty they're with me because they're getting dumped on and that to me is the big issue so really i also talk to

jailbird so about why ron paul should be considered a viable candidate. charismatic guy young people are flocking to him hundreds of thousands of people across america are running into the ron paul camps and you ask why why why did he get twice the number of votes because americans are looking for fresh ideas they're tired of hearing god bless america they're tired of hearing about socialism they really want the idea of freedom and liberty to come apart through a lot of smaller government and that's why he's growing support and people supporting him largely as he said are young people ages. fifteen to thirty five that's just general support base largely and that's about twenty five percent of the population twenty five percent of the voting bloc in the united states people say ron paul can't win i actually think he can and it's not just people when you turn on the television on a lot of these cable networks a lot of these people don't consider him

a front runner despite things like the temple let's take a look i think we have some clips and romney fares the best of the current republican presidential candidates romney remains a front runner and stablish went republican choice forty two percent say romney is the best match up against president obama the rest of the field isn't even close right now romney and it is not exciting anybody and nobody else in it peeled appears poised to challenge romney on these waited forty three with paul eleven who probably hold throughout he won't matter but it it hold. he won't matter says chris matthews venis n.b.c. why does this seem to be the general consensus among so many cable networks he won't matter he is a friend can it still to this day for two reasons that most of the mainstream media and a lot of these terrible schmidt kind of political folks are invested in establishment candidates ron paul's not to establishment he's been there a long time but he's libertarian minded some people is the biggest is something

straight ok mitt romney is like watching a monkey school of football like he's absolutely horrible you have romney care and then he criticized obama for doing the exact same thing romney says in march i don't want to stay there forever he says of the last poll we did need to get out of our fears and i mean this guy is the biggest joke on the republican ticket and barkman and are no better the only person going to people on the on the on that quiet form i think could have anything of substance to offer would be huntsman and ron paul and no wonder they just polled the bias here is pretty interesting i mean you mention this romney romney romney and these are actually polls that are taken the one that was shown the n.b.c. wall street journal poll whoever their polling is obviously different than other people voting in the straw poll but you know there's some consistency to that in terms of people voting for who they would vote for but you're right mitt romney has a record of being a flip flopper let's talk about this is run hard i mean he has consistently said

the same thing but something's changed talk to me about what you think is change in terms of these ideas these smaller government we have the tea party which was born in the concepts you know get pull the troops out last war why do you think that this is becoming more expected. again it's back to the first part we had in this new segment where we talk about what matters most of the american public what matters most the american public is money bottom line it's money wars cost a lot of money high taxes cost a lot of money when you have high taxes and you have wars the republic the the the people on the average. grassroots they're the ones that have to pay for that and they're tired of doing it they've been ten years longest word in history he's the only candidate up there that said yeah it's time to end this these shenanigans but take it let's be honest i mean i've got to bring the fact this is brought up i think this morning in the interview on n.b.c. that. a lot of these ideas people can jump on board with but when you talk about getting government out and you talk about really really cutting back the

involvement of government and also includes a lot of social programs and when you have a candidate getting out there and saying the government should make laws about drug use we're not just talking about marijuana i was talking about heroin that is resonate with people you know it doesn't i criticize i was i was on a program versus a man a few weeks back and and i and this network and i talked about how ron paul supporters have a lot they've got a lot to learn in supporting the legalization of marijuana heroin is not a winning issue ending wars and lowering taxes is a winning issue and that's what they should stay focused on not into. carolyn and shenanigans here one sense or last what they're going to take for ron paul to be not considered a fringe candidate by the mainstream media. start watching r t r i like that advice . and military analyst. so is ron paul's consistent anti-war message against traction is the changing tide of u.s. foreign policy quickly winning over followers here in the us or harvest on the

resident arnett to the streets of the big apple to find out. u.s. troops are in iraq and afghanistan and libya and syria and iran and whether they're going to be enough united states of america this week let's talk about that we think about. americans as being some kind of. world police you know. it better be good or bad. i don't know but troops there if there is something you want to do your resources. secure your resources and that's a little bit different. reason as they are reporting example with mcdonald's we're number one in the world of. the world to do it even the. best. we can do it why is that so important to be number one has to be. the one i want to

think about your take yes i don't think there's any algeria motive. none at all no oil interests no economic interests no no what do we want to accomplish that. just the safety of them to waste the money and the lives of young people did you think this may be another reason that we're doing it and one reason only. i don't think it makes any sense greg think there's a big disconnect between what people in government are thinking and what they think we want and what we're letting them know that we once. had maybe our priorities are the same so you have all these countries. in the middle east where the people are standing up against their government why aren't people in the u.s. standing up against their government thanks a bring our troops home i'd like to think that one day that will happen you know there was an arab spring maybe the america will have its own spring no matter how you feel about the imperialism of the united states the bottom line and let's face

it it's not going to stop anytime soon. all right i want to switch gears now and talk about an issue that a few of you our viewers have been asking us to shed some light on an issue that now many news organizations are talking about at all and this time it involves the fort calhoun nuclear plant in nebraska two weeks ago there was a fire inside the plants that at the time knocked out the cooling system and certain parts of visuals there say it was restored within about ninety minutes but now there is cause for new concern take a look this is the rising missouri river it has flooded the area and experts including the power company says that high volumes of water could pose a threat to the electric system has been an ongoing no fly zone here as well but officials say it has nothing to do with potential radiation that could be released

from the plant in fact they say everything at the plants is just fine now this situation may not be the same at what we've been seeing unfolding at the fukushima nuclear plant in japan but your number there as well several attempts by the government and officials to downplay the threat to say everything was going to be fine which we now know just wasn't true so the point is we should talk about it there is reason enough to be suspicious joining me now is tyson slocum director of the public citizen's energy program and that is the let's talk about this what we're seeing in fort calhoun the flooding around the nuclear plant how much of a danger does this pose would clearly pose a risk because the nuclear regulatory commission which is the agency that regulates one hundred four nuclear power plants states raised the level of concern level for this plant to morse to a critical level so it's clear that regulators in washington d.c. are concerned enough to raise the level of concern but the bottom line here is that

the lack of public information about our nuclear power plants particularly after september eleventh two thousand and one it was designed to keep. critical information about vulnerable energy infrastructure like nuclear power plants away from terrorism but what it's done is keep this critical information away from us so that we the public lawmakers and journalists don't have quick easy independent access to important information about the operations and concerns about these plants and so part of the. problem with this situation has been the lack of clarity in some of the public statements by the operator of the nuclear power plant and by federal officials and so getting more independent access i think is going to be critical but we do have some new information in fact a report just released today by the associated press it was the culmination of a year long investigation found that there is a pretty tight a constable

a close relationship and i bark between the nuclear regulatory commission and a lot of these power companies and the nuclear energy field in the united states this is really what this show this report it was a very in-depth report it showed that when you have things like you know leaky valve clogged up pipes we can radiation instead of the nuclear regulatory commission saying all right we need to figure out how to fix this they say you know what. the rules and regulations they were just too conservative before so lets loose and that make them a little more lax this to me is frightening oh yeah absolutely and public citizen has raised these concerns along with some members of congress like representative ed markey who's on the house energy and commerce committee he's been trying to get more information about the lack of of toughness spy the nuclear regulatory commission on the domestic nuclear industry particularly in wake in light of what's happened in japan now in october the nuclear regulatory commission

actually cited this nebraska power plant for not having adequate safety and security measures to deal with flooding from the missouri river and they put the nuclear power plant on the watch on notice essentially the plant has allegedly come into compliance with those findings but the fact is that the rising floodwaters do pose a risk and from a bigger picture scenario here it does raise the issue of whether or not nuclear power is viable going forward there are a number of risks and do you buy the ministration is committed significant taxpayer resources to build a new generation of nuclear power plants and the question is is this an affordable roup are there more cost effective less risky alternatives like renewable energy and energy efficiency that might be able to meet our energy needs going forward you talk about this new generation of building new plants i think it's really interesting and tell me if i'm oversimplifying as much but these plants most of

these plants were built back in the sixty's and they were built being able to last forty years but under the idea that most of them would probably be upgraded renovated or totally remodeled longer for forty years well now it's been more than fifty years and a lot of them continue to get their permits renewed so this is what i think you know you have a car and you have a bad part on a car you either get it replaced or you get a new car and. that's not happening here that's right and this particular plan that's threatened by the floodwaters in the brusca it was built in one nine hundred seventy three and you're absolutely right your point that these are very complex systems there's a number of critical. components and as those components age the risks get higher and higher and so the question is from a safety and security standpoint does it make sense to start to phase out these aging reactors and the price tag for new reactors is now ten billion dollars or more and the question to american taxpayers should be should we subsidize these or

should we think about some of the emerging technologies like wind and solar and energy efficiency that present far less risk but arguably greater return for the public and you have officials coming out here and thing as you even have leaders of major countries like germany coming out and saying this but the fact is that doesn't seem very likely in the united states for various reasons between the different lobbying groups between the power of the nuclear industry what needs to happen this fukushima need to happen here what needs to happen in order to sort of change the entire type of thinking here in this country i definitely don't want a nuclear accident in the united states or anywhere else and so i hope that it doesn't take an accident for us to recognize the huge risks and costs associated with nuclear power i think it's evident just looking at the situation we don't have a solution for the high level radioactive waste it's true that this calhoun reactor waste is storied in is stored in dry cask in dry casks that don't need as much

water as the plants did in japan but the fact is that when we've got cost effective alternatives like wind and solar available when we have an optimized energy efficiency why are we continuing to pursue expensive and risky nuclear power thirdly an important question tyson slocum director of public citizen's energy program. and as fort calhoun officials continue to assure the public that there are no issues there's proof elsewhere that small problems can explode into bigger ones we're talking of course about fukushima were japanese officials have admitted they weren't prepared for the disaster and have in part of countless coverups about the threat levels there are to shine thomas went to an area near the plant considered outside the exclusion zone where locals are extremely concerned about high radiation levels there i be honest and constant ticking of geiger counters scientists working in fukushima city concerned. i'm in charge of the group

of radiation detection and serving from fukushima university where nothing can be a protocol and process set up by the japanese government is not enough and myself i think i should evacuate from this area because of my job at the university i can't my family and my friends family. officially for who she was city is in a safe area eighty kilometers from the danger point reactor one and a full sixty kilometers outside the bend danger zone but still here on the much higher than normal. just to give you an idea of the consistency right now the background is really quite chilling nine micro records with about thirty times what is more of them except rubble but if you come down here i think we're just a lot like the regular quickly. climbing earlier we got a reading of no i don't know. which is about a thousand times more a little wildly accepted. but in order to claim that fukushima is truly safe

from leaking really usually the japanese government has had to be creative with the numbers but the government. changed the gravitational quantum of time standard the levels from one. to twenty million twenty times. the standards before the accident and now. they raise the. standard so that they can say it's safe but actually the standard has changed the new higher levels mean that fukushima can be classed as being outside of the exclusion zone some say that evacuating the city would be simply impractical given the huge numbers of people affected to try and mitigate the circumstances to some degree a group of scientists have teamed up to find simple ways to reduce the radiation levels.