of war is receding fewer of our sons and daughters are serving in harm's way. president obama's decision to bring thirty three thousand u.s. troops home from afghanistan is drawing praise from that country's leader let's talk a little bit about these thirty three thousand troops that are coming out of afghanistan over the course of the next year or so who exactly are they are they combat troops . so it was a little more of a numbers game without of course remembering the obvious conclusion to this whole story which is that the war is going to be just as big as the end of obama's presidency or at least and the first term depending on what happens the point is it's going to be as big as it was when he stepped into office it's still a big giant massive waste of life and money because there is no victorious end of this war but anyway apparently there was only room for a little bit of follow up on that today there was a complete lack of another hugely important story today and all of that was because the lindsay lohan reared her drunken head again lindsay lohan's house party while

under house arrest tabloid headlines probably not the kind of punishment the district attorney had in mind a party though is within the terms of low his probation as long as she doesn't drink anything harder than a shirley temple so where shall we start the young actress more trouble more drama . and i hate to be cynical but i can't say this is entirely unexpected she reportedly failed they don't call test after hosting a barbecue while under house arrest and lo and now could end up back in jail. you know if you expected this to happen which let's face it we all did then why are you treating it like it's breaking news just wondering you know we should be getting or we should be covering today the fact that general david petraeus was on capitol hill for his confirmation hearing to take over as the director of the cia that's right the rock star general the darling of congress who didn't want the president to remove even that minuscule amount of troops that he's going to now gets to hang

up those stars move on over to a very high powered civilian role all while the war in afghanistan is still a huge failure so what kind of a world do we live it when you get to walk away from the longest war in american history which under your watch the troops and civilian deaths rise and in turn you're rewarded with another job i hope i get to ask that question they would have to do a little more thinking and digging into betrays his character and. his past this is a man who is the master of spin and he's got them all fooled congress and the media he did after all even write his doctoral dissertation but what policymakers believed to have taken place in any particular case is what matters more than what actually occurred so not only does he know how to spin the war we also know that he's lied we had investigative journalist gareth porter on this program just a few weeks ago where he highlighted that betray us had given members of captured taliban without actually following up and acknowledging that ninety percent of those people had been released because it turns out that they were no more than

harmless civilians but guess what congress didn't ask about that today we know the media isn't going to either so while the war in afghanistan rages on while we now see a military general take over our intelligence agency which you can only assume means that the cia operations abroad are going to expand and which you yourself have to ask is he going to allow those voices those people within the intelligence agencies the ones that have conducted reports on their own they concluded that afghanistan wasn't going well contrary to the general's words is he going to let those people still have a voice are we going to see any variety and thought those are all important questions to ask this can betray us take the reins of the cia but those are all questions that you're mainstream media will miss. ok so tonight we have a very special guest on the program we're going to spend the first half of our show

speaking to not only is he running for the highest office in the country but perhaps more importantly his views aren't really those of your typical politician former new mexico governor and current g.o.p. presidential candidate gary johnson he joins me now thank you so much for being here governor it's great to be here and you know i'm making the case of maybe i am speaking on behalf of most americans and of course i'm putting that to the test by running for president and it states well first of all i did. i want to let the audience know that i did give you a little bit of a creative task to do before we got the show started because you know we can't all be as if we have to have a little bit of fun so i had you try some pictures could you show us the pictures first of all of of what it is that you think america looks like right now well so i was i'm not going to show the pictures you know you know because i know that because what i had what i had is america in a ditch and then i had america on top of the mountain i thought about a flat tire and a fold tire but depending on who looks at the pictures they could interpret them the other way around that here's

a here's america today on top of the mountain and here is where johnson is going to take us into the into the hole so that's politics what do you think think that america is on top of the mountain right now i don't think i actually guy i actually don't think anybody does i think the biggest problem facing this country right now is the fact that we're bankrupt i think we're on the verge of a financial collapse and that's because we cannot repay fourteen trillion dollars in in debt when our ongoing deficit is one point six five trillion this year last year the year before yours going forward so we need to balance the budget we need to balance the budget and then when it comes to jobs i'm advocating eliminating the corporate income tax and then giving certainty back to business something that i did as governor of new mexico and using that as an example right now because of uncertainty we're not building coal fired electricity generation facilities because of the question marks surrounding c o two c o two emissions how much is it going to

actually cost if you're going to build and produce electricity from coal fired units if we were to remove that certainty there's a couple hundred thousand dollars a couple hundred thousand jobs right there because we need to build new coal fired plants well there's a lot of uncertainty you could say all around are going to be ready to some of your academic policies and what you do but so i'm just curious right you just spoke about the state of the country right now. including the state of the economy the fact they were in fourteen trillion dollars in debt were involved in two official wars one humanitarian intervention the intervention that's really a war we have a couple shadow wars going on why would you want to be president of this country seems like a miserable job to take over right now well i think it would actually be an exciting job and i can't can't hide the fact that i have i as governor of new mexico i thought the job was blood boiling i mean it really to get involved in public policy front line to to be able to understand what was what was happening with regard to all these issues to try and make decisions that were in the best

interests of the citizens of new mexico you know what that was blood boiling that was fun and i think as president united states that same that same thing occurs what are the what what's being prescribed what are the front line issues regarding americans and that those decisions would get made with the notion that they would benefit americans period with politics not playing a role in all of that but the thing is it's not just the president of the united states that makes those decisions right and i think that it's that's very clear right now if we look at the battle that's going on in congress and a lot of people are trying to tell you that they're just so polarized that's why they can't come to any conclusions they can't come to an agreement when it comes to the debt ceiling or the budget cuts and a lot of americans have described washington as broken do you think that washington is broken right now well so what people and not the people don't understand this you elect the congress you know we're talking about hundreds of members of congress

we're talking about one hundred senators well you're only electing one president so when you elect a president arguably you're going to washington as that president so that's obviously very powerful is the most powerful position in the world and in that context as back to governor of new mexico i got to run all the state agencies so yeah i didn't i did not have a legislature that was cooperative at all well. when you were governor you were got the nickname of governor veto because i think you broke not only state you broke national records when it came to the amount of bills that you actually beat out is that the way that you would be a president would you would you veto a way well in the case of in the case of new mexico i really so so my. my belief is that the best government is the government that rules the least my belief is that the best thing that government can do for you and i is to empower you and i as individuals to make the choices that only you and i can make but you

could say right somebody that uses their veto power often that's a bit of an abuse of the executive power then you have one person it's not even the hundreds of members of congress it wasn't so and so if there are very few in the case of new mexico only two of those vetoes were overridden i think the arbiter of whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing was the citizens of new mexico which is a state that's two to one democrat i got reelected i got reelected having done that so to me what that says is is that people really appreciate good stewardship of tax dollars and i think i exhibited that kind of first middle and why us that's what i did i was a penny pincher it was a democratic state and the thing is you're not a typical republican candidate though right let's let's talk about libertarians and here i want to ask you a question because you were somebody who. you were in support of ron paul in two thousand and eight when he was running for president he's running again this time in a lot of people could say well the only problem governor with your campaign right now

is that there's already another ron paul out there do you think that there is room for two libertarians well first of all i'm asked that all the time and ron paul got eight percent of the republican vote last go round so governor johnson what if you split ron paul's vote will if i split ron paul's vote this movement isn't going to go anywhere in this movement i would say is really liberty his problem. it's about freedom and it needs to expand to about forty percent so if ron paul and i split forty percent of the vote then we probably need to sit down and talk to one another but if we're to split eight percent of the vote hey this is this isn't going anywhere and it needs to go somewhere that is i mean you don't think you have any actual a chance of winning the presidency no that's all i'm saying just the just the opposite this needs to go places and i'm trying to take it places and that's not that's not a criticism of anyone else that's just where it needs to go and so there needs to be a broader base of support and if you want to say that stereo speakers are blaring the

issue of the issues and the stereo it sounds a little bit better to people than maybe you can make that argument well what you know at what are those issues that the stereo speakers are blaring because i this is where i wonder how you fit into the republican ticket because social conservative conservatism is still very strong and i think that some of your view is legalizing marijuana allowing women you know the right to choose when it comes to abortions are social conservatives ready to accept that at all well so as governor of new mexico i did not get that social conservative vote in new mexico in the primary that was i've run for two political offices running for governor of new mexico running for reelection as governor of new mexico i did not get that social conservative vote in the primary i won the primary i think i got all of those votes in the general election and when i ran for reelection i think i got all of those

votes in this case am i going to get the social conservative vote among republicans for those that deem those issues as the most important issues no i'm not so nothing's really changed and there looks to be what one hundred twenty six candidates will be running on the republican side so i might be different than all the others when it comes to those issues only one hundred twenty think they only are and i always pay. you know there's only one hundred twenty did it is that if i died now you know that i have that i know and i want to switch to the foreign policy right now because of course president obama did announce last night in a speech what is plan is for a troop withdrawal and i'm just wondering what you what you think about his plan ten thousand troops by the end of two thousand and eleven the end the rest of the surge is out by two thousand and twelve like i said at the beginning of the program at the end of the day the war isn't any smaller than it was under george bush so i thought that initially when we went into afghanistan i thought that was totally warranted we were attacked we attacked back we're at war with al qaeda we're at

war with terrorism and we should remain vigilant to that war but after having been in afghanistan for six months we'd wait out oh we've done it that was ten years ago we should have gotten out of afghanistan ten years ago let we did you get into the white house in two thousand and twelve what would you do we q i would all get out of afghanistan immediately all troops same with iraq all troops i was opposed to iraq from the very start i did not think there was a military threat from iraq i know that a lot was being said about weapons of mass destruction but i thought we had the military surveillance capability to see iraq roll out any weapons of mass destruction and that if they would have done that we could have gone in and address that situation and i thought if we went into iraq we would find ourselves in a civil war to which there would be no end. would you go with speaking of civil

wars would you have gone into libya well in the position that i'm in right now which is running for prez the united states running for that nomination amongst republicans i'm having to issue an opinion on everything that happens as it happens so my opinion on libya immediately after it happened was that i'm opposed to what we're doing in libya a through z. and let's just start out with no congressional authorization to go into libya where in the us constitution does it say that because we don't like a foreign dictator we should go in and topple that foreign dictator where was the military threat aren't we involved in a civil war aren't there five other countries in the middle east right now that qualify for the same intervention as we've done in libya there just doesn't seem to be an end to all this and we're bankrupt we're building roads schools bridges highways and hospitals in all these other countries we're borrowing money and

printing money to do that and don't we have those same needs here in this country. i think that's the question that a lot of americans are asking right now anderson we have to take a break for a minute but then we're going to come back and we're going to have a lot more with governor johnson in just a few minutes. reading your the latest in science technology from the realm of. the future average. twenty years ago largest country. what. began the journey. where did it take.

or back from our first break but we still have more to speak about joining me is gary johnson former new mexico governor and current g.o.p. presidential candidate governor so well that if we do hear again anything about afghanistan and iraq you said you would get all the troops out you've been opposed to libya do you still think though do you think al qaeda is still a threat to the u.s. around the world wherever it may be and its affiliates well you know i don't want to i don't want to mistakenly speak you know i want to i don't want to misspeak so that's what we should remain vigilant toward i don't know where that threat is and i don't want to misspeak to that threat but i don't think it's military involvement in libya afghanistan or iraq but when you say they joined would you be doing what president barack obama is doing right now would that include drone strikes so that include special operations teams that go into into different countries into sovereign nations without their knowledge i wouldn't want to misspeak i wouldn't want to rule that out but but i was just on the basis of libya f.

. anna stan iraq it scares me that we are in yemen i mean that's the that's that's another one of these undeclared conflicts what are we doing are are the consequences of our actions not having unintended consequences we take out saddam hussein in iraq and iran raises its head iran's main concern was iraq saddam hussein this is an unintended consequence whether but you're not ruling any of that out you say that it will and i don't think i would be i don't think it would be going well. i i am advocating a forty three percent reduction in military spending i'm opposed to foreign aid the notion that we're borrowing money to give to other countries. that to me just defies common sense i think military alliances are really key to our ability to be able to save forty three percent forty three cents out of every dollar that

we're spending on military spending and have other countries take up the slack if you will but then i'm really bothered by our involvement in libya and the fact that where they are in a supportive role to nato i don't know if we've ever been in this kind of a role where we seem to be in the back seat completely and not driving the bus i ask you these questions because i think often happens and we've seen this with president obama specifically is that people they will campaign on a certain message and often we see them flip flop and you have to wonder if there is something about being in the position of president if you are if you have more knowledge when you get these briefs every single morning on your desk if power corrupts what happened to the constitutional law professor who now has american citizens on an assassination list so never do so if you put an american citizen on an assassin we know was no one would you know i wouldn't and alona. as governor of new mexico there were words that i had to deliver to get elected it was so i've

lived. my entire life deeds speak action louder than words actions speak louder than words i got elected in new mexico by speaking words i think my actions went way beyond the words i think everybody was taken aback by how the actions exceeded the words which is my resume to this point so all the way appreciate what you have to say and i concur with that what happens to what happened to president obama if there was one thing that we could be assured of electing him it was that we were going to get our get ourselves out of the conflicts that we were in and we wouldn't become involved in any new conflicts and yet this is exactly what has happened but it was also very much about the rule of law you know and if we think about civil liberties and it was about closing guantanamo bay it was about getting torture off of america's record it was about abiding by the law get exactly and so what

happened what happened. that's a very good question i was asking you already having the address why i want to know so so whether somebody who might be writing how i would handle it and how and something might happen when so for me for me to say that i'm going to be different you've heard that before all america has heard that before i would just suggest that my record would in fact bear out the fact that i'm going to do what i say i'm going to do if i don't it's going to be the first time in my life where i haven't done what i said i would do i very quickly this is because this is a topic that we always cover and are sure i want to ask you what you think of wiki leaks do you think that any of the information that they've released has actually harmed national security in america i don't know go after them the same way that the obama administration's justice department is no i would not think that they were the messenger and the it wasn't leaks it would be someone else and i really wasn't surprised that any of the information that was let out now i haven't been

aware of any information that has been let out that has led to a loss of life because of i'm not aware of that if that ends up to well even the wording as you know any military or government officials none of that has has that's my and that's my understanding also right that's why i understand so that perhaps they would be your number one enemy of the state. government needs to be transparent the more transparent the government is the better off we all are you know we fear eyes basically about everything that i read coming out of wiki leaks is just it's just what we theorized was actually the truth and perhaps a little bit embarrassing and a governmental and not only that but perhaps a little embarrassing and i've always conducted myself in office again i've only i've run for two offices in my life governor of new mexico in reelection as governor of new mexico but the idea of transparency is something that i believe in and something that i think i. made made made state government open to the

to the citizens of new. xico president of states let's open the books up let's make this is transparent as possible there's no there's no magic in these decisions let's talk about the economy very quickly to today we saw debt negotiations fall apart with eric cantor deciding that he doesn't want to part of it anymore john boehner saying that he doesn't blame him because democrats won't budge when it comes to getting tax cuts off the table do you think that they should let the united states default on its debt i would not vote to raise the debt limit i think that for all the problems that are going to go along with not raising the debt limit which are going to be significant i think there they will be pale in comparison to the problem that exists just down the road so let's deal with it let's deal with it now and i'm going to the believe that they will prioritize their funding and that they will that they will pay on our debt obligations and that they will make those reductions happen in other areas which i would just argue for as

difficult as this is going to be let's do it now and the whole notion but let me tell me what it is that you think is coming in the future if we do allow the u.s. to default now because we've heard from economists who heard from treasury secretary tim geithner this would be catastrophic well it wouldn't be catastrophic in my opinion it would not be catastrophic it would be catastrophic to not repay our debt that would be catastrophic i don't see us not repaying the debt if we don't if we don't vote to raise the debt limit i see congress passing stopgap measures to repay the interest on our debt and that's the catastrophic part about it in the short term would not be catastrophic for sure where short term and i don't know if it's already have let the people who need to actually collect what the government knows if you will if you want to call that catastrophic if you want to call it catastrophic that we delay payments i think that will be pale pale in

comparison to not having anything to be able to. pay this greece is what's playing out greece is just a portend for what's going to happen here when they talk about the bailouts in greece i think everybody needs to understand citizens of greece are not getting bailed out they they are in a terrible strait they cannot repay this debt and when they talk right now about restructuring greece's debt that's another bank bailout that's a european bank bailout and he's talking of four also about the idea another huge collapse coming united states because we have a bond collapse do you think that you think china is going to stop buying our debt pretty soon what do we do about that well it's not that it's not the china yes i mean that's in essence what's going to happen is that people are going to refuse to buy the debt course what we're doing right now is we're buying up our own debt by printing money to do that and that's that's what's going to precipitate this

collapse also there's no appetite for the debt and at a point the government is basically going to be printing all the money to basically monetize our debt and at that point that's the collapse of the collapses is that our money won't be worth anything will we still receive our social security checks yes we will it's just that they won't buy a thing so as president how do you deal with china well how do you deal with china i'm a i'm a free market i believe in free markets free markets are a good thing how do you deal with china in what context would you be talking about china the fact that they're they're competitive the fact that china might cure cancer maybe that would be a good thing the fact that china is buying up our debt thank goodness that they're buying up our debt what part of china is do you know i did a back of the napkin calculation the other day and i might be close on this but. of the interest that we are paying on our chinese debt the money that they've loaned

us for our debt pays for their military spending for a year. well i still don't i don't i not only regulate not like i not only are not only are we paying for our own military but we're paying for the chinese do we have to readjust to we have to start doing what china wants just so they can keep buying up our debt and do we become enslaved to them in some way or by enslaved to them i would i would suggest that from a job creation standpoint that we should eliminate the corporate income tax by a limiting the corporate income tax in this country why would you start up a business anywhere but this country start up nurture grow business here reestablish this country as the place to do that but at the same time we've seen that some of the largest corporations in this country actually if we're getting close to a break we're just wondering would you mind sticking around for one when i went out there you know seven to ten more minutes with us i don't i don't rate to here then we're going to take a break and as soon as we come back we're going to have more with what gary johnson

here. broadcasting live from our studios and so from moscow this is our tease certainly glad to have you with us to stick with top headlines civilians in libya feel the brunt of violence from both nato airstrikes and bombs and pro and anti-government forces that were in the country hundreds have been killed by the western alliance while rebels and government forces have been accused of atrocities with many people

fleeing for their lives after. being trapped in hostile regions in the country. barack obama faces growing criticism over his plans to pull out over thirty thousand troops from afghanistan next year but some say it's too risky and too fast but others claiming it's not swift enough the french say they're also going to withdraw forces but skeptics doubt nato is planned to have the security over to the afghans in twenty fourteen. and dutch far right politician in europe and wilders is cleared by a court of the speech charges for comparing islam to naziism judges in amsterdam ruled that his statements while insulting fell within the boundaries of a legitimate political debate. and president dmitri medvedev switches on archie's new documentary channel to be bringing stories on russia its history people and culture to the world twenty four hours a day. and my colleague greta joshie will be here in about thirty minutes with

a full look at your news but right now it's straight back to the only on the show. hungry for the full story we've got it for. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers. ok so we're back with more as a special extended interview tonight on the ilona show with gary johnson former new mexico governor and current g.o.p. presidential candidate governor before we were interrupted by the need for a break so we were speaking about tax cuts we're talking about corporations do you think you know how should americans feel when they learn that some of the largest corporations in this country when they learn that exxon mobil the g.e. when they learn the bank of america but they're not really paying their fair share of the time that's what we're so upset about is the whole notion that the government doesn't create a level playing field as governor of new mexico those vetoes i vetoed.