i can only allow to show where i get the real headlines with none of the mercy me live in washington d.c. now tonight going to speak with colonel lawrence wilkerson former chief of staff to colin powell about dick cheney's memoir which hit bookstore shelves today should be should he be parading around doing a media blitz or should this man be on trial for some of the actions that really speak to lieutenant colonel tony shaffer about the g.o.p.'s new push to cut u.s. funding for you and bully the un also fred karger is the first openly gay presidential candidate and he's running on the republican ticket for two thousand

and twelve and 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 miss. you know every morning i wake up and then for some reason i just have 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 day season really tough questions being asked doubtfully 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 this one i think takes the cake for being really really really bad. it's rick perry because surrounding yourself with smart people doesn't sound

all that dumb to me. more gasoline carrying children in your tutu for the season does he hang 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 speech 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 of the question is is he. you know the thing that i love about this too is the sean hannity over fox trying to act like he was above this but then he decided to come back with this very hard hitting question of his own and response but today the government got 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 genius that

drives the economy. and then you say this guy's brilliant and i'm just you know when i get. i that is what it's come to ladies and gentlemen our mainstream media has done sell down to the extent that they think the asking of presidential terror that is done 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 laws i think that is pretty legitimate i think that it deserves to be repeated more times than is rick perry dumb and seems 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 his 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 is new include the injured those who have taken their own lives the coalition fighters and civilians but the mainstream media is all too happy to just miss this slaughter 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 when your kids are going to know that people lie age might not even know that it's a very big just continues for 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 to miss.

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 and 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 vehemently defend the policies of administration including some of those gruesome of torture a defense that he repeated and 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 had a high value detainee in that was the only way we could get able to keep or 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 immediately if be treated like any other statesman rather than somebody who helped a lot of the american people break their lots i want to say about our media and our political culture in this case this with me is lawrence wilkerson retired united states army colonel and former chief of staff to colin powell and thanks so much for being here tonight thanks for having me and i think that one of the questions that people can ask is obviously as i mentioned 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 he would you call this as glenn greenwald called it

the fruits of elite community that we're seeing i think that's a good way to look at it agree with you the in the face of earth and irene and sixty six casualties like his yesterday us alone enough to understand the impulse war afghanistan of the right. training school kids 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. crimes seriously let's look at sort of the fact that he isn't being asked about many of those crimes or that somebody asked him 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 think difficult you describe our culture you described our political culture in particular we do not whole elitists and anyone who treats 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 they help our they do the best they could they raped pillaged and plundered everything else but they do the best they could. also go there because if we go there in the future people. i want to serve or my counter to that is my students at william and mary george washington and everywhere else i go good students say 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're appalled we don't vote for that reason we're not interested in our country for that reason so i say we should be taking some accountability with these kinds of crimes but one of the people who isn't taking accountability here aside from of course cheney who is defending all of his actions and says that he would do it again he believes and what's happened is our current president barack obama and so i'm just wondering who is it exactly that normalized

you could say enhanced 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 so you could call shadow wars but there's a lot of surveillance increasingly upon american citizens so he's continued bush policy that's very obvious to everybody but he did he actually normalize those policies because my hold on them i hope the president has put a more sophisticated age on what cheney and bush seem 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 and his 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 from vietnam he's attacking me and colin powell who sort of not one but two tours in vietnam

a man who wore the uniform for thirty five years training never had the balls to wear the uniform so he's scared and he scared ultimately of the possibility of there being some accountability i don't know certainly from washington but from an international criminal court but in the meantime we've seen every attempt for some kind of a cow. ability by international criminal court to be stopped right there been stopped in its tracks also we want to 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 i can't i can't explain his aggressiveness any other way so i may be cycle magic or psychological or whatever. i do think there's some fear there i actually think there's some fear among some other people in the administration 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 the 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 might be truly get you and so there's this kind of protective theory that goes along with the oval office talk about that or of course you were on chief of staff when powell when he was the secretary of state during the start of the bush 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 there's something 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 ethos around george tenet and his deputies in the hand selected team he had of analysts to brief me and i should have 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 but i don't see i mean if i were you are the first to cry get your hands on the people who at that point when you decided not to resign i should 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 that way if colin powell of course i think can also admitted that he tried to have colin powell removed for expressing doubts about the iraq war. and he thinks that the state department did serve in the administrative action of our subserve colin powell called me into his office in my office in two thousand and two to ask me if i'd be used to staff and i was working for a master richard dawson on the poles supplying staff and i was enjoying it and he said remember if you come in here if you say take few hours and think about this 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 going to be a one term secretary so whatever sir 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 makes sense. and i want to contrast and we were there was in typical powell gracious gentleman that he is on face the nation on sunday did not except maybe about body language advance this kind of a tip and play but there was the 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 went like this those nazis and vice president cheney's office the gestapo and vice president cheney's office because that's kind of the way by two thousand and three and two thousand and four we've come to look at scooter libby david addington and other people including the vice president himself in that office we're running at times i just want to ask you one quick thing two three 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. agents. is the man who right is trying to document the connections the evidence that the cia had about nine eleven that perhaps some of the ways they could have stopped it but that is being. and so how does that affect the way to rewrite history and what the government wants but out there and look at the way going call this 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 that 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 it feels like that that would somehow impact their ability to govern which i think is poppycock. and it said this is the version that we do get put out there is only dick cheney's aversion lawrence i want to thank you so much for joining us let's hope to the people who don't read it. thank you. i had to look on site is facebook responsible for the london riots or to tell you why british officials think that monitoring social media is a good idea and the g.o.p. has a new target the united nations lives they're making against the u.n. interest in the. internet only military mechanisms if you don't 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 exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok if you don't. chart the big picture. let's not forget that we have an apartheid regime right now. i think. even one well.

we never government says they're going to keep him safe get ready because of the freedom. five. feet.

well this past year we've watched the civil unrest has spread from the middle east to the western world not only the rights of london grabbed 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 mmog members and protesters to help organize the events and our 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 media preferred information can be used for good but it can also be used for 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 and services when we know they are putting violence this order and

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

a nation stage in the sense of similar to how those more together being beach total social media police have the ability to monitor their use it for early on identification that something is happening. well despite what he and many others may think i like 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 of law enforcement played in our post nine eleven world but keeping all those statistics in mind i think is pretty safe to say that concentrating law enforcement efforts on social media and censorship isn't the answer in fact i would argue that there is not a direct link between violence and social media yes people that utilize facebook

and twitter to organize events but those programs aren't actually makes people behave the way they do right the london you can say broke out over anger towards the government towards social status towards life or disaffected youth protest against bart police he was a reaction to their scary excessive use of force and weapons so i suggest the government stop blaming social media for people's uprising perhaps they start looking for ways to fix the real problems which are causing them. now ileana ros lexington has and 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 bush and in anticipation for a palestinian statehood dr at the u.n. general assembly next month today ross left and introduced another bill now 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 palestinian observer palestine observer mission it also halts all your contributions to un peacekeeping missions until further reforms are implemented amp it would withhold u.s. funding from the human rights council until the state department can certify that it doesn't include any 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 elected and devote 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 let

me now they are selected and will just not give this up 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 when it comes to u.n. peacekeeping missions when it comes to the voluntary payments that some people are actually out there willing to debate but that 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 promoted by and to basically update i mean let's face it the organization's going to rush it's going to war through pretty much understandings which we can 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 at that one particular constituency someone who benefits primarily it won't shoot us 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 you could it's not going to go anywhere in the senate and senator

kerry's already said so you've got to look at it look at this realistically does this is this a the telegraph if the republicans get the senate and i don't think so i think this is even too extreme for a lot of 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 boston and refugees right that if any other organization decides to recognize a palestinian state then the u.s. is going to withdraw its finding and i mean let's face it the u.s. funds more than twenty percent of the united nations at this point and it's a huge factor but i think you have to start wondering if that's that's hard the attitude at this moment in this is the specific bill it only early on iran selecting what is the same kind of language that we hear from many of our politicians that many of our senators event and it's going to come up again at this u.n. 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 as united states that we fund this attitude is an attitude for progress as well as if 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 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 if. 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 school 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 help not going to help you and so this is were 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 see this fact in his

policy much at this point in time i think it just perhaps sending the little message that the republican party or early on to something 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 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 seats at the u.n. now they can do business here with the u.s. with american organizations we recognize that a lot of european countries have but the african union refuses to other organizations out there if you ask you because we also see certain you know more crimes or what you could be considered as 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 friendly in accountability regarding one of the terrorists who conducted the lockerbie attack

so again i don't know what we're going but i don't feel comfortable that he's looking at it from the from the outside is looking in we have too many questions left unanswered about the way forward there is 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 wealth 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 of this. right so libya's somewhere where money is being spent on our behalf that we don't get to be asked about we have a we are all selected in going on and on and on and spending time talking about cutting funding from the u.n. once again let me bring up some defense spending but security spending so what do you think about that the times reporting yesterday on homeland security spending seventy five billion dollars a year is this needs armored vehicles driving around isn't there a little bit of excess there why this is this is for 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 and just look rationally i thought the last series of terrorism attacks faisal shazad major hassan i don't think i would vehicles in disneyland 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 can tell with a massive number of books you have to do things to look at people and their writers your i say this profile look at people who actually may be willing or able to do it to do with the right attack but the idea of having boundless 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 a vast 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 done legally i say i've already a great legal right to do anything much of that you. are you coming up with unique confusion on radack if a department tables turn up on line but how they got there coming from

a ship and he's openly gay and running for president asked for public at for 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 two and only a military mechanisms to do the work up to bring justice for accountability. 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 silly you think you understand it and then he glimpse something else hears you some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charged.