we're starting this drawdown from a position of strength. so is this obama's version of mission accomplished or is the us going right back to where it started. first there was the turnaround in iraq then came leading the war in afghanistan and now the path to lead the cia america's favorite top brass past as america's top spy. and remember the good old american dream looks like it's still alive and well just not in this country coming up we'll take you to india where despite generations of cultural barriers a rags to riches story is not only possible it's happening.

it's thursday june twenty third four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for now and watching our team i want to start today looking at what lies ahead in afghanistan we heard president obama last night lay out his plan for the u.s. involvement in what is now become this country's longest war in history starting next month we will be able to remove ten thousand of our troops from afghanistan by the end of this year and we will bring home a total of thirty three thousand troops by next summer fully we're covering the surge i announced at west point. all right a lot of focus here on the numbers is it too small is it too large but i'd like to broaden this discussion and talk about what this actually means and for more i'm joined by james carafano national security expert with the heritage foundation in

new york and here in studio out in cocoa beach host of adam vs the man right here on our t.v. all right guys a lot of people calling this you know the beginning of the end when that and will actually be it that still remains to be seen but i want to look at afghanistan itself how different is afghanistan today than it was ten years ago and james i'll start with you. well you i mean you really can't talk about ten years ago because there's been a lot of different afghanistan since then in two thousand and one you had to push everybody out and then the united states basically went to sleep didn't really do anything to capitalize on that success of the by two thousand and five the taliban had built up their capacity and they started coming back then you got kind of war number three which is the united states coming back in two thousand and nine not giving the troops that they commanders wanted only about half as many as they wanted so they pacified one problematic area the country the south they didn't pacify the other problematic area which is the north so now they're turning to the north but unfortunately we're we're cutting troops at the same time we're doing

that so this is the beginning of the end but i don't think the ends going to be pretty honestly and your thoughts i mean has there been noticeable changes for all the resources all the money all the time that we spent there well the main thing that's changed about afghanistan is that as an excuse to justify the liberal nation building welfare program for the military industrial complex it's kind of wearing thin with the american people as we see that that money would be better spent here at home and in terms of what's happening on the ground when that happens and obama is forced by if anything public opinion and political pressure to withdraw troops to spend less money although i think with this latest announcement really an insignificant number of troops he's going to find other places to support his sponsors and keep that government gravy train going so that's why we have more intervention in libya that's why we have bombing in yemen that's why we're looking for all these other excuses for more big government spending it's kind of like keynesian economics you know you got to dig a hole you know even if you hire the guy to fill it up the next day in military

spending you're it still counts if you hire a guy to dig a hole and he sleeps in it i want to you know president obama last night said a lot of different things and i want to play i thought portion of his speech about the position this country is in and can discuss we're starting this drawdown from position of strength. it is under more pressure than at any time since nine eleven together with the pakistanis we have taken out more than half of his leadership and thanks to war intelligence professionals and special forces we killed osama bin laden all right osama bin laden is indeed gone but what about the notion that even if it's true that the taliban have retreated don't they simply just have to hang on for a few more years and that and get back to business adam well that's the whole premise of being in afghanistan to flushing out al qaeda is really kind of ridiculous it's like trying to be anonymous on the internet when they took root in

a dozen different countries bin laden wasn't even killed in afghanistan he was killed in pakistan over the whole notion of foundation that basic concept we're going to flush al qaeda out of afghanistan by keeping the taliban out who harbor them i mean remember those who allegedly attacked us on nine eleven were trained right here in the united states we can't keep our own country from harboring terrorists of the idea that armed nation building and supporting a corrupt government in afghanistan is somehow going to provide for national security is kind of ludicrous to begin with james i'll let you respond to that well you know i would i want to go on the record that adam and i agree on almost nothing and i think everything he says is actually pretty silly but it doesn't matter because we were is this is coming this coming only god who said that the united states is a democracy i don't know if you know this or but it's actually a constitutional republic in that there is a very important difference there so i certainly this agree with you on that. ok adam so if you want you can do all the talking and i'll just sit here and listen

but let me just get my one comment in which is we actually get to the same place i mean i agree that this isn't going to work i mean the president saying we're recission is straight that's irrelevant because what you've done is is you have the enemy on the run in. afghanistan you've damaged them in pakistan and then what the president is basically talking about here is now we're going to walk away and adams right what they're going to do is they're going to build up right back to the capacity that we had before and i'm afraid that if we walk away in the way that the president has outlined in two thousand and fourteen we'll be back right back to september tenth two thousand and one they'll be able to reestablish their base and they'll be able to do another nine eleven thirty and then when you know just across a little on this i mean what's your solution here are you saying then that there should be more troops that we should do another surge instead of starting to withdraw that initial surge well you know this is the sad thing is there is no do over i think the original military strategy would have worked if they'd have gone

in with the numbers that the military had recommended and they conducted simultaneous operations in the south and the north first of all they would have made a little bit a lot more progress much more quickly there were going to lot less u.s. casualties the taliban would have come to a much more pressure pakistan would have been much more compelled to deal with us from a position of strength you know all that's really kind of history now and i and you know instead of monday morning quarterbacking i'd rather hear you know what you wish obama would have said last night and i'll ask a question about thinking about james what do you wish you would have said that you think may have been may have been a better idea a more responsible thing for how to carry this out. well i think if he if he would allow the military to arrange maintain sufficient forces in the country to conduct a real campaign in the north set a strong message to the afghans and to the pakistanis and to the taliban and al qaeda that we were going to create i mean i think this discussion about nation building is silly look we were never there to do nation building it's not about

building a great government people it's about building sufficient capacity in the countryside to take away the ability of the taliban and al qaeda to freely operate in a country that was an achievable goal i mean it's still an achievable goal but i am very skeptical is going to be achieved with the strategy that the president's outlined i'm completely skeptical about the basic premise of this that we're that our military has a presence and even has the capability of patrolling an area and keeping terrorists from gaining a foothold i mean like i said it happens right here in the united states and according to the cia just a couple years ago there were less than one hundred members of al qaeda even operate in afghanistan so i mean if you take the promise of your argument here to its logical conclusion you have to say well we need to occupy the entire world with our military in order to deny al qaeda safe haven and any just reasonable look at recent history shows that the whole premise is ridiculous but it's really interesting to see that the heritage foundation is now supporting such liberal

voices who want to see more government spending we want to see more liberal nation building even though they don't call it that is that to say that there's promoting such a great salesman for this welfare program of the military industrial complex who doesn't know what form of government we have here in the united states let alone what we need to do to make our nation more secure and more fiscally sound and really the great our current defense policy has become a threat to our economic security james and i'm just a he said it's a foundation of supporting liberals let's hear what's your response to that so right so adam you know me i you know i was in the army for twenty five years you know i've studied strategy military history and and i would never suggest something so silly as that so you know that that was a strawman. and you know it wasn't a serious comment look and your other comments not serious either look the fence spending is the root of america's physicals we're spending half of what we averaged on the cold war defense we could take the spent defense spending to zero tomorrow that includes everything not just afghanistan but all defense spending and the country still goes bankrupt in forty years because there are economic policies so

defense spending is not the problem and you know that as well well the real strawman here is your idea that we can even denies safe havens to terrorists on any kind of large scale fundamentally doesn't work the idea of fighting terrorism with with occupations is ridiculous and it's been demonstrated over and over but you are taking the side of obama on this one and that's certainly a surprise from the heritage foundation you know james earlier you were talking let me get in here because there's so much to talk about regarding what's ahead in afghanistan but i know james you were talking about nation building and was it really ever the idea r.t. did an interview with an afghan woman in afghanistan names and joy i should say human rights activists she had a lot of experience from what the people there are experiencing and i want to just play a little bit of what she said and then we'll talk about it. i think that people of the us i don't do what they're can you get my people got their markets never come by a completion democracy never approached by military invasion democracy never crossed

their own i once thought by my stick are quite thumping our wedding parties so i mean maybe this is something that the fellas going to agree i mean that democracy doesn't come by occupation i think both of you guys have said that it's not right or not well i'm against love for democracy and concert democracy by definition is bad for minorities majority is violently imposing their decisions on minorities that's why you know i don't think that that's the best form of government i think that the constitutional republic that our founders gave us is a far superior form of government and i don't think we should be spreading democracy or trying to spread any form of government but we should be peacefully leading by example showing how freedom leads prosperity that was what our country was founded on and our current foreign policy really turns it on its head to say that we have some right or some need or some cause even to dictate any form of government in any other country james go ahead well first of all the united states is an occupying afghanistan i agree with all those comments look the united states does both it defends its interests and it works for freedom and prosperity were.

painted america that doesn't exist i mean exists maybe in adam's rhetoric but look america's done a lot of good in the world and it's a lot of very peaceful things in the world and it's also defended itself when you need to be let's not forget we didn't start this i mean america wasn't attacking afghanistan. two thousand and one guy we didn't start it we should have invaded florida where those terrorists were training now right on that note we got to wrap it up on film i thank so much for being and i certainly important discussion to have james carafano national security expert with the heritage foundation and of course our own adam kokesh host artie's adam versus the nation. well general david petraeus is on track to serve as the new director of the central intelligence agency as previously assignments include commander of the u.s. forces in afghanistan and iraq as well as commander of the u.s. central command now and he has come from the nation hearing going on right now or just about wrapping up betrays that his past work on affect his future job clearly

i have views on the efforts in which i've been engaged however if confirmed when i am in the situation room with the president i will strive to present the agency position. well we're going to talk about what this all means with journalist and former cia officer jack reiss. hey there exactly i guess i wanted to start out by asking you what do you think general david petraeus brings to the table going to the cia well let's face it you know that incredible amount of experience in on the ground experience we've seen a huge change over time it would last ten years really the experience of the military has had that has impacted all of those men and women who've been involved he brings out to the table in a sense that's good but there is a negative to contention we cope with it and that's the fact that you see this sort of worry never winds to the point at the agency could potentially be swallowed up by the department of defense when you start talking about dollars and actual power

you realize just how much bigger he is going to take you back to two thousand and one thousand to two thousand three hundred dollars rumsfeld the secretary of defense and what we saw back then was this effort by the pentagon to essentially swallow not the roles of the state department and in fact the successfully did that in many ways the fear is that some of the roles that you see is which were exclusive the it department defense could be small in a very certain fashion that is a very negative thing. pretty interesting i mean even though he does say you know his his past job will not affect that i think is a very important point that you make about those lines being blurred a lot of people are talking about this overly close relationship between you know the pentagon and the cia let's look now at a little bit at the timeline on it looking back you know the first time we really started to hear about him was in those early days of iraq back in two thousand and three when his soldiers found and killed saddam hussein's sons uday and qusay since

then general petraeus has risen you know to the limelight and i think the argument could be made that he is the most talked about man a military man in at least a decade maybe even a century he's politically savvy you know he seems to be articulate and intelligent both with other military personnel and also president obama. so i'm wondering if you agree with his critics who simply call him a self promoting media star with presidential ambitions. you know it's a great question but you know this is one reality and i find this interesting because i don't care whether you're left or right here is one thing that's true if you have any experience working with the military is this if you get to that level you're a politician never doubt it's anybody who's a president or an admiral you do not get to this big position without being a politician i can take you back to colin powell in the long before that will take you back to us great for that matter you don't mean you go all the way back and you realize that if you get to that level you are a politician you're just

a politician with a uniform on rather than a ten thousand dollar suit there's not that much different otherwise and in fact he simply working his way through that power base just like so many other politicians do dare i say it but it is true things like that have to be part of that job description are to get as far as he's gotten you know let through comparison here leon panetta who has replaced thing when he first came on he was pretty open about his views on torture coming out staunchly against it you know saying we cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances and i say the dismay i think of the bush administration i wondering though these kind of comments i mean do you think general petraeus being an outspoken about this or other things you know i really don't but you know what here's what i've also seen is we've seen leon panetta and others hold back from those very same arguments right i mean the use the rhetoric of saying they don't stand for this and yet at the same time they turn around soon but i blindly support the people at the agency for what they've done wait

a second my response as a former cia officer is i will support those who have done the right things for those who failed to do the right things or for those who potentially may have committed a crime let's find out because that's what i'm standing for so we have seen a shift under the ground of leon panetta and frankly the president of the united states president obama so it's not shocking to. you're going to see a shift from the likes of general petraeus when he moves over to the agency and obviously he will when he moves over to the agency will you see a shift in how you approach is this may be but generally speaking it's rhetorical it's more words rather than deeds and you were thinking before about this blurring of lines between the cia and pentagon i want to go back to that on not just because a lot of people are concerned about it but i want to get your take on it having been on the inside there in the the i know there's always sort of been that you know tough relationship between the fi a and the f.b.i. what do you think that this could mean with these blurring lines having someone

literally cross over from the other side and come to head up as agency you said it could be concerning what should people be concerned about well we have seen this before with hayden and others so i mean this isn't the first time you had other d.c.i. heads of the central intelligence agency who were military men as well so this isn't the first time and i think somebody at this level in the military this is my big concern and by the way you're right there have been problems in the past with the bureau on one side versus the agency but the same thing took place during the first gulf war between the agency and the pentagon so there was always an effort to put all these closer together but the real problem is this the reason you run these organizations separate is because you don't want is you don't want everybody looking at the problem from the very same perspective after nine eleven we found that this failure to connect dots one of the fundamental reasons is that we all look at it from the same perspective your idea that you were working independently if you just had the cia is essentially

a junior partner of the department of defense and big see themselves is that what happens it's the equivalent of giving a lot of yes men around you there i say it that way where you just give people what it is that they want and it's one of the least things that we really need the independence of the agency and other. workers actions that are used absolutely critical rather than say well the american policy is little let's figure out what the correct policy used and then actually you know why is it didn't make everybody come and individually inspired to go out and fight it with the best interests can't help but think about weapons of mass destruction when you talk about this certainly a very easy example to point to thank you so much former cia special agent jack rice. well the ripple effect of the war is of course also playing out in the u.s. economy and the latest news out is not good the number of people filing new claims for unemployment benefits were not yet again increasing by about fifteen thousand between may and june survey periods but there is one place where the news is much

brighter than where the old traditions are being left behind in favor of new opportunities for people it's a place where the fastest growing rate of millionaires but one hundred and fifty three thousand places india and r.t. correspondent for their brings us the story of one man who is on that list despite the situation he was born into. it's who wants to be a millionaire indian style and today in india more people than ever feel like they too have a shot at making it big. need just that he's the owner of every spawn pipes a cement pipe making company worth three hundred fifty million very peace eight million dollars so what makes him different than any other rich indian well he's a dollar the lowest caste in the ancient hindu caste system also known as untouchables for centuries these people were restricted to work such as cleaning

the workers and picking up dead animals from the streets my father my mother they support a lot. of the we are from this cost and how we have. supposed that. so just that made it his mission to get an education he worked on his business during the night and went to college during the day while just the claims that he didn't feel any sort of discrimination members of the dollar community say that this growing up of dollars millionaires and billionaires had to triumph over ingrained societal stereotypes. billet was not allowed to be in the same room as a government. next to the door in a girl it's showed was constant and it was forbidden to fall on an apple gust. jumped up says that these preconceived notions actually motivated him to succeed after completing his education jumped up spending this began to grow and today he sells pipes for irrigation purposes all over western india despite his

accomplishments he still trouble about his journey. of business. in this part this is partly because he is a work. in this factory the millionaires themselves say it's a side effect of india's paul. see that opened up the economy to foreign investment in one thousand nine hundred one since then many businesses including ones led by gullets have thrived. entrepreneurs also say the government's efforts to make quotas for lower caste in schools and government jobs has helped them get an education to improve their lives even though many dollars have overcome their social caste and become successful entrepreneurs most of them still live right here in the slums despite these examples of success many of them feel that the indian society is structured to keep them right where they are there is so much good looking i belong to the. people from. the moments.

in the city. people don't get about us and don't come to see how really but when you get out of d.c. government government should take care of them if they have less money and should give them proper education. but the millionaire is believe that if they can do it then other members of their caste can chew the. prison he can. just do his. using their will power to overcome the odds preassure either r t india. lots of developments being made at a rapid rate and india their figures out show that in less than forty years india will actually overtake the us as the world's second largest trading ship in this country into third place where this is a country deems by many as behind the times india were just on korea's report its

a place where you know several centuries old the caste system and people are actually breaking through it several stories like the one we just saw of people are achieving what we here refer to and the american dream and what about the actual american dream. here in america so they are finding that it's just not realistic anymore i want to talk non-celebrity. she's in colorado and she was also this year's miss colorado actually just returned from the miss usa pageant. and claire you have such an interesting story i know on we've spoken once before and you're certainly not the typical beauty pageant contestant since you were actually homeless just wanted to hear what's been going on with you lately and with your quest to get into a better place. you know a lot of good things. for my mom and i specially friends i was going with you last time the most important thing that i heard for our two new jobs

that i was working prior to leaving for the contents and another important thing that have been we got my mom coverage which was really extreme you considering that my mom is constantly thinking in the hospital. that's definitely a good thing but i wondering you know what i think what if you know what that was just thinking about your position i mean you're educated you're smart but obviously beautiful what about you know other people who may not have been you know as good looking or as well educated as you are and they're struggling to make it to you and you are without a home yet and you know remote interesting think about my thanks to a student that people want to listen to me because i do have the title i have. when i say this is what we're going through we lost our home we homeless struggling i lost my job struggling to find work and you know people are shocked to hear that

but then i think someone thought. it's great to see how many people can afford to help me out but how about those who are in the theme of my situation you don't have the crown in the how can the great intentions and help people realize. they can be prevented what have been some of the most. difficult things for you since you guys lost your home and especially i know your mom has been in and out of the hospital i mean the biggest struggle or has interest been my mom it's it's so hard to see her going through the health care system not helping help and certainly being from one who is constantly ill in. they kind of mistreat the under-insured and really get mistreated in the foot but then it's also hard trying to find jobs you know i'm just saying they're going i have a bachelor's degree you know i'm a good person i have talent skill so to go through that process of trying to get

hired but into being told no it just seems so incredible that like me and others who are talented can't find those well paying jobs. i think that's such a really really important point i mean why are these people telling you know why are they saying you know we can't hire you if you're a question. and honestly i was built by media because there are so many people out there and i don't really understand why it's hard to find if you define work in jobs that maybe aren't glamour and there's nothing wrong with not a job of a job but then when you're coming from a place where you've built like you have the talent to be in. it doesn't leave a hurt on your ego because it's that new calling how come i can't get hired. why am i getting hired you know that under me and when i have the talent to be in the

center and i'm not one hundred percent sure they've built like a lot of it now is the go to is who you know was not necessarily talented people getting the. people who have the capability to network themselves into the ocean so it's is a really interesting time. how people are losing jobs in the struggle to find new work and where i'm sure it's not very comforting to know but you're certainly not alone out there blair griffith miss colorado twenty eleven just back from the c.s.a. . and coming up new in just about thirty minutes we all know money matters because for talks and it has definitely been tense on capitol hill this week as congress has been trying to find a compromise to the debt ceiling crisis and just moments ago tensions came to a head as members of congress walked out of the bipartisan discussion so what does this mean for the u.s. debt i'll have more on this implosion only when thirty minutes well can't get enough of our t.v. well meet the newest member of the family it's called r.t.d.

or our documentary. but. the twenty four hour english language channel was launched earlier today with a little help from president dmitry medvedev from the farthest reaches of the arctic to a close look at russian history r.t. documentary hopes to give viewers an in-depth look at the world's largest country and even russian language lessons only pursued to keep questioning more r.t.d. can be viewed via satellite around the world or at our t.v. dot r.t. racan. and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered that r.t. dot com slash usa also check out our youtube page you tube dot com slash r t america thanks so much for watching a lot more coming up at five o'clock for now and christine for south.