i can only loan a show or get the real headlines with none of the mersey are going live to washington d.c. now it's not going to speak with colonel lawrence wilkerson former chief of staff to colin powell about dick cheney's memoir which it bookstore shelves today should be sure to be parading around during a media blitz or should this man be on trial for some of the actions of a secret to lieutenant colonel tony shaffer about the g.o.p.'s new push to cut u.s. funding for you and bully the u.n. also fred karger is the first openly gay presidential candidate and he's running on the republican ticket for two thousand and twelve so we're going to see why he's

being ignored and if he really fits into the overwhelmingly anti-gay republican agenda we have all of that and more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to. you know every morning i wake up and then for some reason i just had this little tiny tinge this feeling of hope somewhere in the back of my mind that maybe just maybe i can turn on the t.v. and be dazzled by what i see on the news that take these some really tough questions being asked but i doubt only i'm usually disappointed and that hope just gets squashed immediately but i think that this question this hard hitting real journalism question is being debated on every network which we must also add was originally asked by politico business one i think takes the cake for being really really really bad. is rick perry dumb because surrounding yourself with smart people doesn't sound all that dumb to me. or more carefully carrying children in

your q two for the season goes he hanged himself from this first debate now he's been tarred as a racist religious zealot and today political dot com completes the slanderous trifecta with a headline that is player is rick perry. yes that is an actual question that's being asked it's not haters rick perry allows for the lines between church and state to be to blur blurred beyond any defense hey why does he have more executions under his belt than any other governor in u.s. history why does he think that social security is unconstitutional now instead the question is is he dumb you know the thing that i love about this too is the sean hannity over fox tried to act like he was above this but then he decided to come back with this very hard hitting question of his own in response but today the government got caught well they're doing just that i forget what the liberal media is saying they want to know this is president obama swart every liberal that genius

that drives economy is doing and then you say this guy's brilliant and i'm just. so i think look. i that is what it's come to ladies and gentlemen our mainstream media has done self down to the extent that they think the asking of presidential candidate is dumb is a mind blowing controversial take no prisoners style of journalism you know if we're going to try to keep things simple ask basic questions that really only involve four or five words i think i have a better one for you why are we in afghanistan yes i know i ask this all the time but after ten years of war after more than a trillion dollars spent on it and thousands of lives lost i think it's pretty legitimate i think that it deserves to be repeated more times than is rick perry and today is a perfect example of why the numbers just been compiled that show the month of august has been the deadliest month for u.s. troops during this entire. war and the entire longest war in u.s. history sixty six troops have died so far this month this year at least two hundred

ninety nine americans have been killed in total it's more than six hundred americans who have lost their lives fighting this war and that doesn't even include the injured those who have taken their own lives the coalition fighters afghan civilians but the mainstream media is all too happy to just miss this water i don't know maybe take one second to report the number and then move on like it's nothing like it's something that we should just be used to as if it's normal well guess what it's not ten years of war a generation that's now going to grow up knowing nothing but being in constant war and fighting a war globally against terror that is not normal but your kids are going to know that people my age might not even know that everybody just continues to brush the issue under the rug if the media refuses to ask the questions report on the numbers and the facts and ask why the hell people are dying out there that's what they choose from it's.

well as the wars in afghanistan and iraq go on and as our military operations have spread from pakistan to yemen and somalia dick cheney is on a media blitz promoting his memoir entitled in my time a personal and political memoir although it didn't hit shelves until today we've already heard a lot about it thanks to cheney himself saying that heads will explode upon reading it and because of the tit for tat it's now exploded between cheney and former secretary of state colin powell who basically called the book gossip but there's more than just gossip here we see now a notorious former vice president of the image we defend the policies of administration including some of those gruesome of torture and offense that he repeated in a recent interview. in your view we should still be using enhanced interrogation yes should we still be waterboarding terror suspects i would strongly support using

it again if circumstances arose where we are i believe the caveat was it would get into trouble people call it torture you think it should still be a tool yes. i think we have to really ask is if cheney should be allowed to parade around you have media blitz be treated like any other statesman rather than somebody who helped a lot of the american people break our laws and what is that say about our media and our political culture and to discuss this with me is lawrence wilkerson retired united states army colonel and former chief of staff to colin powell lawrence thanks so much for being here tonight thanks for that i think that one of the questions that people can ask is obviously as a nation we have war in afghanistan in iraq libya somalia yemen and pakistan why do we care about just some book that might get released today but i think if there is a lot to be looked at in terms of this book in terms of the media blitz as i called it that's going on around it i mean would you call this as glenn greenwald called

it the fruits of elite immunity that we're seeing i think there's a good way to look at it agree with you the in the face of hurricane irene and sixty six casualties like as yesterday u.s. alone in afghanistan and the you move swar of afghanistan in the right. training book is singularly and significant. but the fact that dick cheney is for hire i mean a lot of people out there would say that former vice president dick cheney and former president george w. bush should be right now on trial that they should be prosecuted for your garden so use potential crimes sure it's a good deal but sort of but the fact that he isn't being asked about many of those crimes or that somebody asked them he says i fully defended and there's not a whole lot of kickback not a whole lot of pushback there i don't think that you can if i can you describe our culture you described our political culture in particular we do not a whole elitist and anyone who achieves the oval office or thereabouts is an elitist by definition responsible we say something like this at least since world

war two we've said something like this help our they do the best they could they raped pillaged and plundered everything else but they do the best they could but still go there because if we go there in the future people. i want to serve or markand or there it is my students will be married george washington and everywhere else i go good students do that and we might serve we see the impunity of these people we see the crimes they commit we see the degradations of our republic that they leave when they leave office and we are appalled we don't vote for that reason we are not interested in our country for that reason so i say we should be taking some accountability with these kinds of cars but one of the people who isn't taking accountability here aside from of course cheney who is defending all of us actions and says that he would do it again he believes in what's happened is our current president barack obama and so i'm just wondering who is it exactly that normalized

you could say and hansen interrogation techniques now we know that of course in somalia and other countries we're using proxy detention and that's a new policy of the obama administration that we're still launching drone strikes what you call shadow wars but there's a lot of surveillance increasingly upon american citizens so he's continued bush policies that's very obvious to everybody i think did he actually normalize those policies because i hope you know them i hope that the president has put a more sophisticated age on cheney and bush seemed to not be able to articulate in any way other than as cheney did in that interview showed oh you know waterboarding strawn i mean that's an admission of the war crime it's a straight out admission of a war crime i think that explains some of his aggressiveness in these statements that come out of the grocery store tabloid exploding heads in washington because he's scared he's frightened this is a man after all we've got five deferments for vietnam he's attacking me and colin powell who served not one but two tours in vietnam a man who wore the uniform for thirty five years training never at the polls to

wear the uniform so he's scared and he scared alternately of the possibility of there being some accountability not necessarily from washington but from an international criminal court but in the meantime we've seen every attempt for some kind of a cow. an ability by international criminal court to be stopped right there in scouting in its tracks also we pressure coming from the obama administration to stop that i feel like he doesn't have anything to be scared of at this point i feel like he's getting off. scot free and i can't explain his aggressiveness you know there was a cycle battery of psychological or whatever. i do think there is some fear there i actually think there is some fear among some other people in the administration too and i think that's one reason why they don't speak out more forcefully about some of the things that happened because the truth of the matter is they were either complicit by omission or in some cases coordination so you get this group think about it in the administration you get this group think around president obama and

you don't want to do anything about it because if you get that guy that kind of might eventually get you and so there's this kind of protective theory that goes along with the old war well let's talk about that here of course you were on chief of staff when powell when he was the secretary of state during the charge of bush's administration and you actually were on democracy now this morning and you said that if they were put on trial you would testify and that you would take punishment do you think that they're so big that you deserve punishment for well i was pretty stupid actually i don't know if that's in the lexicon of jurisprudence stupidity but i had an opportunity when i was out at the cia probably to push a lot harder than i did i got caught up in the same movement that cheney had started by his constant visits to the cia i got caught up in the same ether those around george tenet and his deputies and the hand selected team he had of analysts to brief me and i should've known better i should have been able to break out of that and i should at least resign and as i said this morning i regret that for the

greater good i didn't resign why didn't he i mean i would he were the times that i get here because of the people who want at that point that when you decided not to resign i to make that decision i made the decision principally because i'd been with colin powell for a long time and i felt like i was doing him a service and i want to continue doing that service he needed he needed what i was doing for him and we all tell ourselves that we all rationalize our performance i was speaking of collin powell of course cheney also admitted that he tried to have called paul removed for expressing doubts about the iraq war. and he thinks that the state department didn't serve the administrative action at the hours absurd colin powell called me into his office in august of two thousand and two to ask me if i'd be used to stab and i was working for a master richard dawson on the polls and trying to stay off and i was enjoying it and he said remember if you come in here if you say take few hours and think about this that if you come in here and join me as chief of staff you're leaving you're

leaving when i leave so you're absolutely leaving at the end of two thousand and four because that's what i've told the president you may leave earlier if i decide to leave or if the president decides to remove me because you're my man when you come in to be chief of staff and therefore you can't stay any longer than my departure so he was very honest with me and he had told the president the same thing as early as december of the transition process december two thousand i'm only going to be a one term secretary so whatever vice president cheney thinks he did was absolutely ineffectual in that respect because palin already said he was going to do it i guess if he thinks that he did it it makes and. now i want to contrast and hear what there was in typically powell gracious gentlemen that he is on face the nation on sunday did not except maybe about body language advance this kind of a kid and politically but there was there there was an antipathy between cheney and powell and i will tell you that the conversation of the deputy secretary of state's office and others office often says it went like this those nazis in vice president

cheney's office gestapo and vice president cheney's office because that's kind of the way by two thousand and three in two thousand and four we've come to look at scooter libby they did addington and other people including the vice president himself in that office were writing at times i just want to ask you one quick story here talking about today dick cheney's book coming out today let's talk about the books that are being banned right now this is something that we covered on the show former f.b.i. agent. as the man who right is trying to document the connections the evidence that the cia had about nine eleven and perhaps some of the ways they could have stopped it but that is being. and so how does that affect the way that we write history and what the government wants but out there we look at the way going calls book the interrogator was heavily redacted through some very sophisticated footnoting care itself and that yes it's a problem we we can't ever we as americans basic fundamental american citizens can't get at the heart of these crimes we can't get to the heart of these misdemeanors because they're hidden by

a government and as you just pointed out the government comes in after the government replaces continues the hiding because it does not want these things to be aired in the public venue it simply doesn't hit the u.s. like that that would somehow impact their ability to govern which i think is poppycock. and it's ted this is the version that we do get put out there is only dick cheney's version lawrence i want to thank you so much for joining us let's hope to the people who don't read it if they think you. are still come tonight is facebook responsible for the london riots in italy by british officials think that monitoring social media is a good idea and the g.o.p. has a new target the united nations moves they're making against the new and consistent . internet only military mechanisms to do the work to bring just the sort. i have every right to know what my government would you want to know why i pay taxes.

well i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then something else here's some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't i'm sorry is a big. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right. i think even when the well.

we never got the book says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you're going to have freedom. few. feet.

well this past year we've watched the civil unrest has spread from the middle east to the western world but only the riots in london grab everyone's attention but here in the u.s. we've seen flash mobs form in philadelphia protests in san francisco against the bart police there's also something that's tied all of these things together and that is social media and each of these incidents social media has been used as a tool by rioters by mob members and protesters to help organize the events and now people are praising social media for helping to spur revolutions in arab countries have shifted their attitudes now they're saying that it's responsible for the magnitude of these mobs including people like british prime minister david cameron everyone watching these reflections will be struck will be struck by how they were organized by social media preferred information can be used for good but it can also be useful to so we are working with the police the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites the services where we know they are putting violence disorder and

criminality. of parliament doesn't just suggest monitoring social media activity and that they're also calling on british media outlets to hand over their video footage of the riots to police on hopes of finding more suspects a charge that we should know the british law says that a court order is needed to hand over any unpublished media while the u.s. has a tendency to be more willing to share their video with law enforcement now while there are a lot of questions surrounding whether or not lauren foresman should rely on the media for help the groups are also putting out all the stops for capturing everybody involved in the rights and even asking for help from across the pond bill bratton was the former police chief in new york city and los angeles he's known for his tough on crime approach when it comes to gang violence and while brown has actually started helping out london get it interviewed on n.p.r. he explained why he thinks social media plays a role in the growing occurrence of rights. violence is now facilitated szell should media good news for us at this juncture is it still

a nation stage in the sense of schimmel to how those more together than being beach shots and social media police have the ability to monitor their user for early on identification that something is happening. well despite what he and many others made being violent crime has actually been on the decrease in the us or to the f.b.i.'s preliminary annual uniform crime report from two thousand and ten violent crime went down by five point five percent in the year before property crime went down two point eight percent all while the use of social media increased and you can take other factors into consideration here as well things like increased incarceration rates big sense of role law enforcement play in our post nine eleven world but keeping all those statistics in mind i think pretty safe to say that concentrating law enforcement efforts on social media and censorship isn't the answer in fact i would argue there is not a direct link between violence and social media yes people the utilize facebook and twitter to organize events but those programs aren't actually makes people behave

the way they do right in london you can say broke out over anger towards the government towards social status towards life or disaffected youth but protest against bart police he was a reaction to the scary excessive use of force and weapons so i suggest the government stop blaming social media for people's uprisings perhaps they start looking for ways to fix the real problems which are causing them. illiana ross lexington has added again as the chairman of the house foreign affairs committee the congressman has been trying to cut u.s. funding to the united nations and play some tough restrictions on the international body if they want us to keep putting money in and so as a continuation of this push and in anticipation for a palestinian statehood dr at the u.n. general assembly next month today ross left and introduced another bill this bill would require the u.n. to adopt a voluntary budget model which countries selectively fund agencies rather than according to a set formula it would limit the use of u.s.

funds to only purposes outlined by congress it would end funding for palestinian refugees and withhold u.s. funding for any u.n. agency that upgrades the status of the palace and of the palestine observer mission it also holds all new contributions to un peacekeeping missions until further reforms are implemented and it would withhold u.s. funding from the human rights council until the state department can certify that it isn't including members subject to security council sanctions or a state sponsors of terrorism now this is for the most part considered more of a symbolic move rather than legislation that could actually pass but you have to wonder why mrs ross liked him in the vote such time to these failed measures when let's face it there are better areas to cut spending from and we have to ask what message this bullying sends to the rest of the international community and what it could mean for president obama's foreign policy joining me to discuss this is retired lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer senior fellow for the center for advanced defense studies and impact america tony thanks so much for being here

having me now only on or off like that involved just not to have this this is become her driving mission ever since she took over as the house foreign affairs committee chairman but what do you think i mean i feel like there are some possible reforms comes to the u.n. peacekeeping missions when it comes to the voluntary payments that some people are actually out there willing to debate but it also comes with a lot of threats but i think it's part of the issue i think anybody who's looked at the u.n. would. understand that there are areas to reform commodify and to basically update i mean let's face it the organization has been around since going to war through pretty much understandings which we could do better they can do better we could all come to agreement on what i think this is meant to do and for better or for worse i'm not here to comment on the wisdom of it is to make a point she's saying this for one particular constituency. who benefits primarily it won't she goes this is not going to really go anywhere no matter how much there is no way of force behind it even believe it even if it leaves the house it could it's not going to go anywhere in the senate and senator kerry has already said so

you've got to look at it look at this realistically because this is this a the telegraph but what will come if the republicans get the senate and i don't think so i think this is even too extreme for a lot of the folks in the senate but i think it it's something that should make us all take notice and say there are some things we should look at more risk realistically for the united nations well it certainly sends a you know a very strong message that especially the fact that there's no more funding for us in refugees right that if any other organisation decides to recognize a palestinian state then the us is going to withdraw its funding and i mean let's face it the us funds more than twenty per cent of the right of nations at this point it's a huge factor but i think that you have to start wondering if that's that's hard the attitude at this moment in this is the specific bill it only really honor us like that but this is the same kind of language that we hear from many of our politicians many of our senators even and it's going to come up again at this un general assembly in september this came up in the reagan years too as well as you know why we funded this organization which doesn't make any progress related to the

issues we're concerned about is united states that we fund this attitude isn't attitude for progress because we disagree with you no matter what and if you still just choose to disagree with us we're going to pull your money i just don't well i mean i don't think it's going to happen with that said i think a lot a great deal of the the yanks that we're seeing here comes out of the response to the goldstone report which obviously a lot of folks feel was not fair and balanced let me no matter what side you are now let me say this. you look at the actual situation on the ground which i think is why this is all really going on this is all a metaphor as you pointed out the palestinian issues are being dragged into this i think that's really the crux here look i've got facebook friends who have told me about having these rockets cool over their house and you know in the area we're talking about here so this is a real issue for real people over this metaphor that we're dealing with here is not going to help that situation is going to know it's not going to help you and so this is we're clearly a dialogue over the issues and trying to figure out the path forward is where you go you mentioned president obama his policy i just don't expect in his policy much

at this point in time i think it's just perhaps setting of the message that the republican party you are really in a slump and particularly also didn't like what he did with libya and since i brought in libya because this is part of obama's unilateral multilateral approach where he wants to work with international organizations meanwhile not ask anybody in congress if they want to get involved rastus yesterday on the show to do you think that they moved a little too fast because they already have the transitional national council the t.n.c. talking about how they can't wait to take their seat at the u.n. now they can do business here with the u.s. with american organizations we've recognized in a lot of european countries have but the african union refuses to other organizations out there refuse to because we also see certain you know war crimes or what you could be considered such going on and i think there's going to be a meeting this week with the transitional council in paris try to carve up the business stakes of the country so you know clearly there's there's a mixed messages coming out of this also they've not been a lot friendly in accountability regarding one of the terrorists who conducted the lockerbie attack so again i don't know we're going but i don't feel comfortable

that he's looking at it from the from the outside is looking in which too many questions left unanswered about the way forward there's the means of production which people have to take into account the oil the fact that that's going to be there that needs to be really looked at like we did with the iraqis regarding the sharing of the well i don't know if we have an idea of how that's going to happen so yes i think we're premature an understatement in trying to support these guys. we don't know what the path forward is at this point. all right so libya somewhere where money is being spent on our behalf that we don't get to be asked about we have a lot of us left going and going on and on and on and spending time talking about cutting funding from the u.n. once again let me bring out some defense spending but security spending so what do you think about that lee times reporting yesterday on homeland security spending seventy five billion dollars a year does this need armored vehicle is driving around isn't there a little bit of excess there why this is this is where it's insane i mean the whole idea of spending some out of money at a time when we don't have the money it drives the point home just like who exactly

were protected here just look rationally at the last series of terrorism attacks faisal shazad major hassan i don't think i would vehicles in disneyland's going to help us against some of these homegrown threats that we're seeing right now these guys are not going to go to disneyland as far as i could go with a massive number of books you have to do things to look at people and their writers your i say this profile and look at people who actually may be willing or able to do what you do with threat of attack but the idea of having balance those numbers of of our vehicles or material is not the answer it doesn't deter terrorism it just lines the pockets of folks who want to be an ass creator thirty one billion dollars how does that mean that it's expected to be at least twenty four thousand is making a lot of people a lot of money and profiling if it's them legally i say i agree i greatly do anything much you you think. are you coming up with unique and usually unproductive state department cables turn up on line but how they got there remains an issue and

he's openly gay and running for president as a republican of some of the g.o.p. crowd who want nothing to do with him so tonight brad carter joins us live from los angeles to discuss his campaign for president. in florida where military mechanisms to do the work come to bring justice or. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and here's some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm trying hard welcome.