i can be alone show or know that the real headlines with none of them are see me live in washington d.c. now tonight we'll talk about robert gates the legacy as secretary of defense and other shadow wars drones are now being sent into somalia and hundreds of thousands are protesting in the u.k. today against austerity cuts on the streets of d.c. pretty quiet so to compare that both countries and we'll look at another state where the economy is being hit banks a strict immigration laws that are making hispanic populations but first let's take

a look what the mainstream media has missed. oh finally it looks like the casey anthony trial is winding down for that doesn't mean the coverage is to the mainstream media is just savoring the last bit of a case that has allowed them to slack on the job and just let all the cameras roll inside of a courtroom that offense is working its way through its final witnesses casey's mother father and brother among those called back to the witness stand today other testimony day included how they buried family pets and we are in day thirty two i mean potboiler drama continues to bubble over in court as the personal life of her father george once again comes under scrutiny of george anthony's alleged mistress krystal holloway on the stand right now prosecutors cross-examining her the defense has not produced one thing that they stated they were going to give the jury in

opening statements and i think they were i of course we get into this any further kind does break one quick statement who the hell decided that mark berman the last title is that you saw in that clip was a good person to go on t.v. and talk about the trial i don't forget this is the guy who. is accused of planting evidence and basically bungling the o.j. simpson police case like he really screwed up and that's fox news broader talk about casey anthony and you guys must be getting really desperate maybe everybody else is so sick about talking about this that they refuse to come on or maybe maybe you're just getting even more stupid as the last brain cells of cable news teams fade away after devoting their lives to gossip and non news anyway i don't even think that i can begin to explain to you the joy that i feel the thought of this trial going away not flashing on every t.v. screen anymore disappearing forever and again it's not like you can replace it with anything more worthwhile i'm sure there's another pail and story ready and waiting

to be aired let me give you some bad news now you're busy reading t.m.c. for your hard hitting news stories every morning there's a war going on oh no wait actually there's not just one but there are six iraq afghanistan libya pakistan yemen and now we have somalia that's right it's being reported that the u.s. has already launched drone strikes in somalia so never sign of those creeping shadow wars you know that means sorry to break it to you but war ultimately leads to destruction and cigarette so instead of incessantly covering a case where one little girl died as horrible as that is maybe you can find it in you just think of all the soldiers that have died or gone wounded in our wars already how about the civilians maybe you could think of what increasing shadow wars even if it seems are small or the supposed risk to soldiers is much smaller what that could mean maybe you could ask why the hell are we still have so many troops in iraq and afghanistan if your own warfare has become the pentagon's go to also pay three u.s. service members were killed in iraq that means that fourteen troops have now died

this month and out war of ours that supposedly over and that makes this month the deadliest richards in iraq since two thousand and eight and you want to know some totals on the lives lost at this point the report yesterday broke down the sad news that in iraq thirty two thousand one hundred and two troops have. four hundred or four thousand and four hundred thirty have died in afghanistan twelve thousand and two troops have been wounded and one thousand five hundred thirty five and that doesn't factor in coalition forces or military contractors not directly doesn't even begin to cover the hundreds of thousands of civilians that have suffered and died those numbers will probably never be known as our mainstream media apparently those deaths those lives they don't matter casey anthony is the crime of the century but endless occupation and war is not and that's what they missed.

a series of attacks on a luxury hotel in kabul shows how relevant the taliban still is ten years after u.s. troops first invaded afghanistan well keeping that in mind president obama has just announced the start of a troop drawdown that's expected to take place through twenty four was secretary of defense robert gates stepping down what does that future in afghanistan going to look like artie's lauren lyster finds out. the aftermath of a taliban attack in kabul. this week a luxury hotel frequented by foreigners earlier this year taliban gunmen wearing suicide vests stole the guest house used by u.n. staffers. last year another attack on hotels there's murder in your. examples are strewn through the near decade more familiar aftermath we had any pay down here in the south only now americans heard this declaration before news of the

glass was starting this drawdown from position of strength about u.s. plans to begin pulling troops out of afghanistan next month but there are declarations on the ground from afghan activists of military might that's left a different mark democracy never come by a completion democracy in the military integration of all christmas. plus the thought by white phosphorus by muscle car by pumping our wedding parties and in washington talk of winding down war in one country does not wind down talk of tackling the global terrorist threat as the focus seems to shift to neighbors should be refocusing resources on pakistan yemen somalia parts of north africa and other world i've always believed pakistan is more central to what have you noticed a change in the guard at the department of defense with robert gates retiring and former cia chief leon panetta getting sworn in signals this change of course to critics i see no difference between between and robert gates and for afghanistan we

now hear a presidential pledge to pull thirty three thousand troops out by september two thousand and twelve fully we're covering the surge i have now at west point well it certainly sounds like what the american people would like to hear for the first time ever a majority want u.s. troops out of afghanistan as soon as possible fifty six percent while thirty nine percent want troops there until the situation is stabilized you can see the trend is really flip flopped but what is the reality of obama's plans for troop withdrawal well that thirty three thousand he's calling for is a minority of the one hundred thousand american troops that are there that's not including another forty two thousand some nato troops and ninety thousand department of defense contractors meanwhile the u.s. has reiterated a long term commitment to the country there certainly has been an agreement that following two thousand and fourteen there will be some kind of continuing presence . of presence and financial burdens some see as permanent observers believe u.s.

bases are in the forever future travelogue for these a mile and a half there will be a wall and there is some kind of big american construction of every nation depots and housing. and meanwhile violence remains on the dry a u.n. report says it's. fifty one percent in just the last three months. people march with a sharp rise in suicide attacks. meaning this for mil your aftermath maybe here to stay lauren mr t. washington d.c. . all violence isn't only on the rise in afghanistan and fact it looks like america's shadow wars have now increased by one drone strikes have long been reported in pakistan and yemen but now there's news that a week ago and u.s. drone aircraft fired on two leaders of a small e organization who according to military officials are now expanding their mission outside of somalia and working more closely with al qaeda was new leadership in

place and a new counterterrorism strategy we have to ask if today somalia tomorrow where else joining me to discuss this is jack rice former cia officer and criminal defense attorney jack thanks so much for joining us tonight for starters ok so now we find out that as early or i guess as late as a week ago could have even come earlier there were drone strikes in somalia carried out by the u.s. i know it's not really shocking news but what would you call it. well again shocking is absolutely not the word in fact he's was really expecting we've seen this expansion going on now for some time this is not the first set of strikes we've seen from special ops units using predator drones i think part of the problem what really makes this difficult is that it's so easy at least it appears to be easy you know to me you can all of a sudden simply fly over a country running down death from the sky and there's no real political problem because you pull back out but the real problem with it is it while it may seem like

it's a good idea the short term which are also good news intentionally alienating not just tens of thousands hundreds of thousands even millions of people who absolutely one of your side so we're talking it can stand in iraq yemen libya somalia and you're right but list will go on and on and on because that easy concept is something that a lot of politicians really like why do you think that there are other countries on that list where perhaps we already have special ops teams or maybe the you know hearing towards next that we don't even know about who would come to night of of course there are no we can think about what we've seen in the past that was a war between ethiopia and eritrea we have oxidants running in that part of the country right now so we've been seeing these wars are you build up there's always a potential going on right now between what was sudan and others or their sudan we share at one site some appeared in the south on the other and there's

a potential war right here with the chinese involved in a lot of these countries you never know how hard the americans are willing to push when it comes to fix it could you end up there just like we have been on in that region in sudan in the past of course everything is of the tape. not like this administration really think that it needs a legal justification for anything but i'm just curious does this fall under that authorization of the use of military force that they passed after nine eleven. was sadly you're absolutely right it's exactly what it says in part of this is the ability to use these drones to go where it is we believe we might be threatened we've extends to the point where we're actually going after american citizens and what i've talked about this in the past was a lark if this is american citizen or the americans u.s. government has unilaterally decided if you're going to go in and try to kill it american citizen without actually having any due process whatsoever they have

already tried to induce you given what we this american citizen if you contemplate how frightening that potentially is if they are what we do you can do that with an american imagine what they're willing to do at a lower standard just about anybody else that's where we are right and that's your god it was don't think it's because it's the let it soak oh it's better in fact it's a lot of the same but in some cases even more than anything we've ever seen from the bush team and i think a lot of people are starting to realize that as more information comes out about the obama administration's actions as more time goes by as well now i was curious because yesterday the white house unveiled their new counterterrorism strategy and john brennan actually said that for the first time u.s. officials are now able to envision the demise of al qaeda do you think that's only possible are they getting cocky there. course they're going to talk they have no idea we know what's the worst part here is what we're seeing is this expansion in

various ways it's easy to start even if we find that mr gates himself again my former boss when i was at cia was come out saying if any department defense secretary ever said we're going to go back into age or go back into the middle east he needs to have his head examined i believe that's the quote of the problems it's easy to get in it's very very very difficult to get out and sometimes it's very hard just to my eyes just how will your doing yes we are killing people here and there but again the problem that we have is we never know if we're actually creating more enemies than we're actually destroyed and we just don't know bad and i guess maybe only time will find out is when we pull out and watch things all are in our we need in a very bad sense not a good sense oh yes now they're telling us that the parallel we're going to a really good job of making the vision the demise of al qaeda now we're going to see more of these targeted operations all over the world the fall of that is the case of this is the new counterterrorism strategy then why do we still have so many

troops that need to stay in afghanistan do you think the eight thousand that they can be left over when the certainly. well you know that's that's maybe the hundred thousand or maybe in this case we should say about a three to four billion or a trillion dollar question because that's exactly about somebody that we've been talking about you know what it is i think has to be bloody for this has to be interest groups would want this to go look i'm not a conspiracy it never has been and what i'm saying is there are a lot of people who are interested in operations continuing to run it's not just in numbers of u.s. troops that are in afghanistan is the number of contractors and sometimes the old line follow the money i think it is apropos in this case take a look at iraq take a look at it interesting it realized just how much has been spent were dropping five times their g.d.p. just in the country itself does that make any sense know what somebody is doing very well financially here it's not all of the answer but it is certainly a portion of it well if we do follow the money let's talk about your former boss

for a second robert gates who resigned as defense secretary today a lot of people been talking about his legacy and on one hand he came out of course trying to act like the reformer the man who was going to bring budget cuts and then suddenly we just saw this quick flip flop in him the last month or two as he's been making his farewell rounds and suddenly he wants for sustain iraq he thinks that drawing down troops in afghanistan is a bad idea he thinks that cutting too much military spending is a bad idea so what do you think happened to him did he lose a battle to this military industrial complex of this massive money machine. oh i think partially that's true i mean part of the problem is this inconsistency that we've seen again and again i mean you watch it yourself and everybody can when you watch everybody talking about the virtues of the arab spring and all what's going on in libya right now what happened in egypt in all of these places and and how important that is while at the same time we turn around and want to ignore our willingness to support the likes of mubarak in the first place our willingness to

support the likes of the saudis are really just to turn a blind eye to what was going to pakistan and elsewhere and so when we say certain things if our actions actually reflected it and that would be one thing but the problem is what we're seeing from the gates is exactly what we've typically seen dare i say from the americans you say great things we've all that these great virtues of talk about how incredibly important it is and then we turn around and do just the opposite so i guess i have to say i'm not particularly shocked by that what do you think that robert gates was a special case oracle nobody there. i guess i don't know that you are going to believe that somebody can do the right thing but i guess we all have to i mean in you have to at least have some optimism that somebody will look at this and i've been talking about it with high levels of ockham's i'm simply saying somebody can look at this and say now tickly there are certain things we should be doing and certain things that we shouldn't be doing simply because they

are or are not effective that's what i'm talking about you know you've been talking about sort of and we should do every charity perspective of talking about things that you if ective and things that you work on happening that there's at least a little thread of optimism left that exam think it's missing from a lot of people they are going to have a little bit of that that thank you so much for joining us tonight. if you. are so calmly you case these massive protests are planned budget and pension taxes and title comparable situation in the u.k. so that your new ones. get up sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life is if you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know but i'm trying hard welcome to the big picture. of. the world we are broke. and yet.

for five ft six ft. let's not forget that we live in apartheid right leg i think iraq

even want to welcome. us whatever god says here for him safe kids graduate because their freedom. other protests over major austerity cuts spread to other parts of europe today the u.k. teachers and public sector workers and students left their classrooms and offices and head of prepaid at lights and unions across britain estimate that up to seven hundred fifty thousand people took part in a one day strike to protest those planned pension cuts artie's or ever has more from london. down to up with industrial action and also move

discontent starts here as the u.k. braces for a wave of strikes not seen for decades this time it's three quarters of a million public sector workers walking out unhappy with the planned reform of their pensions which they stable see them paying a lot more and getting a lot less we don't think that should be wasted not so much pensions we think a synthesis of security retirement if you talk about withdrawing from the pension scheme because they can't afford to pay the mortgage at the same time as paying for their connections and people are really angry that time and bankers are making the bonuses yeah ok we're being asked to take a punch in the oceans to pay more for pensions the reality is we've got to fight the us we're just using these people do a huge variety of key work from teachers and lecturers to air traffic controllers and coast guards unisons the u.k.'s biggest public sector trade union deputy chief bob avidly says his one point three million members already for prolonged

industrial action we're on a a war footing we've got thirty million pain set aside and we've got a strategy work no but i must strange that's not what we want to do we want to talk to the government and negotiate a sensible package nor the ridiculous package of the approach of the moment that package involves raising the retirement age from sixty to sixty six raising pension contributions by workers and having payouts based on. average career earnings rather than final fowler in the unions admit public support is fundamental to having a successful strike option the government's very unlikely to change its mind about reforms if the public at large doesn't back the unions but that's by no means assured public such work because it will really get very generous pensions and the cost of this pensions is very much under the carpet and the burden falls on for the

next generation with pretty is absolutely essential that public sector pensions reform than even after they are reformed public sector workers will get far better pensions and this present search workers the unions want to apply enough pressure to force the government to change its mind and it's no stranger to you turns it was hell bent on reforming the health service too until it decided to take longer to think about it causing friction in the coalition the government's doing this to reduce the current fifty billion dollar pension bill but it may be cutting off its nose to spite its face that the wider issue here according to the new u.k. pension fund the huge impact that it may take on the me if public back to work is no don't get paid back pensions the work while they may still keep you thinking that if there was a widespread with full pension funds would collapse and that would leave u.k. p.l.o. the very shores of investment just what it needs it more than ever big unions will be threatening that but is the government lists make no rabbit party loves it.

and sticking with this story it's time to make a few comparisons so there's are the images of what's going on in the u.k. that and the other it is what's going on in washington now there obviously differences in the situation we haven't seen public sector workers affected here on a federal level that battle's been taking place in the states but then again our federal government hasn't really done anything yet when it comes to drastic austerity measures so how do we compare and there's also. even worse let's break it down with our guest tonight harrison founder of the blog credit write downs our ever thank you so much for joining us tonight i like i said these are different situations but i think that we can find some similarities in some points to work off of and let's just start with total that both countries are in debt but i think the u.s. is in much worse shape u.k. total debt one point four trillion dollars us oh we're just fourteen point four

trillion dollars so when you break that down that means that per person is about twenty three thousand seven hundred ninety one for a british person and we're almost fifty thousand dollars per person in the u.s. so obviously our problem is much worse than britain's that problem why are they the ones that are acting like this is an emergency and they have to do something about it right away and our politicians are speaking on capitol hill i'm not sure what the stats are in terms of how they break it down but in general if you were to take the aggregate debt that's not held by the government you know in the us for instance a lot of it's actually held by school security and so therefore you know that number would drop significantly i think they're very comparable in terms of the numbers really goes to the the philosophy of the two governments you have this conservative government the u.k. versus a more progressive government in the us and the conservative government believes that you really need to address the deficit. first as i think that

the obama administration the u.s. is much more concerned about the negative effects about you know coming off of the housing bubble and all of the jobs that could be lost as a result of that sort of thought do you think they're really concerned though because it feels like the congress is just at a standstill you know and the obama administration likes to say that that's what they're worried about is job creation and we haven't really seen any action in that sense and finally you know he did a little chiding yesterday to congress and say can you guys not act like children of my children can do their homework while. you but i just don't really know if i even see the effort they're talking about. i don't see the difference of the jobs as well when you look at the stimulus package if you if you really want to think about stimulus which is really what they're talking about first it has to be jobs ok and there hasn't been the focus on jobs. so at the end of the day you know it's one thing to add stimulus to have cash for clunkers. bail out the financial

sector because you don't want a complete collapse but you know we still have nine point one percent unemployment in the spirit so you're right the obama administration hasn't addressed the jobs problem that front so i think that. people are resistant to the concept of stimulus in they see that they need to instead. i think you know if it comes to republicans obviously what they think they need to focus on is austerity but if we use britain as an example they really have been putting their budget to the chopping block where i guess you could say the last two years they've taken on to france now they're taking on the public sector pensions are they really a good example though has austerity actually worked and the u.k. . here's here's the free. if you're going to consolidate its expansion there but basically what they're doing

is the demand out of the economy and the hope is that. it's going to have. expansionary effect but the reality is it's not expected that you know you're going to see a potential double the as a result of these kinds of things and you know we see the sort of on the right in front of us so if you think that us politicians are being honest with americans when they talk about the need to the need for austerity the americans realise that if we actually do that there's going to. even the worst situation in the short term if not even continued in the long term as well or then again can we not just keep spending our way forever we can we have to focus on jobs for instance we were at full employment in the united states so we had five percent unemployment the united states the budget deficit would be in the order of three percent in the economy would be growing and then you could deal with a lot of the issues there i would even say that three percent is

a manageable number i mean that's where we were. right before we had the huge crisis so. it's all about jobs you've got to get the jobs first move to full employment and then you can deal with the longer term issues which are much further out than we have today now obviously we see these pictures here everybody marching in line and we have not seen that here in the us we've seen it on the state tests for us continental tchiowa new jersey and new york where it states it's governors that have been taking on the public sector unions but if we were to try to compare this to the u.s. if they actually started taking the chopping block to federal pensions to social security to programs like medicare did we ever see the same amount of anger on the streets oh i think we definitely would you know if you start cutting sources of curity and things like that people would just start rioting in the streets because you know they feel like we've been paying into the system we don't care about how much we paid in versus how much we're going to get out per se but we've been

promised something you know you're ridin a you know that promise you know people will go and do exactly the same thing that we see here in the united states well i guess we'll have to wait and see but for now they're not hearing a whole lot of anything really everything so much for joining us and i. thought it comes and i we have our thursday edition of show and tell class to seven states have passed tough immigration laws i think effect tomorrow and now the states are facing a worker shortage causing major losses for farmers. internal mirror military mechanisms do not work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american except.