welcome to the lone show where we get the real headlines with none of the mersey i can live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to shine a light on ten years of war in afghanistan i said before and i'll say it again why are we still there ten a colonel tony shaffer is going to join us then jobs numbers came out today for the month of september and well we still have a jobs crisis on our hands no wonder occupy wall street is gaining so much momentum that the state department held a hearing in washington today about the keystone x.l. pipeline and reportedly the hearing got rowdy so we're going to take another look at the pros and cons as the clock ticks down on the state department's decision we're going have all that and more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. so today is the ten year anniversary of our war in afghanistan now the longest war in u.s. history that means that as of today we're entering the eleventh year and aside from troop drawdowns to bring our forces down to zero only seventy thousand by fall of

two thousand and twelve there's still no end in sight and so the mainstream media which you know usually likes to ignore this world together they decided hey look at such a big milestone i guess we have to provide some coverage so they send all the reporters in to show how good the training of afghan forces is going. today marks ten years and the war in afghanistan began and it is the longest running war in american history british an enduring freedom began to grow to a decade has been a costly war one thousand seven hundred eighty american troops have died serving in afghanistan how do we safely withdraw our troops while also ensuring that afghanistan doesn't fall back into the hands of our enemies soldiers in the southern afghanistan impact take a province did wake up to rocket fire just proof that the war is still going on in afghanistan and u.s. troop levels there are expected to decrease significantly in the coming months all related experiences today to afghanistan nearly three hundred forty billion dollars

that's almost a billion every month. now here's what really kills me about all of this so usually the war is ignored by the mainstream media entirely don't forget that last year they only devoted four percent of our coverage overall to it but even when they do decide to cover it it's painfully shallow if not entirely misleading because don't forget when they send reporters in they're always embedded they're being led around by military officials and getting what amounts to a propaganda tour well it's also think of what this war in afghanistan represents the beginning of our global war on terror the beginning of a retaliation for nine eleven which is in the last ten years driven our policies and our values to become shadows of what they once were you know we had another war launched in iraq based on lies we had cia black sites prisons a detention facility at guantanamo bay torture on our record extraordinary rendition where other countries did the torturing for us warrantless surveillance of american citizens and now even an assassination list with american citizen on it who was last week killed without any due process so in light of that let me just

highlight two stories for you that i find incredibly disturbing that deal with this endless war on terror and the erosion of the rule of law the first deals with that now executed american citizen i just mentioned. now the administration claims that it has legal proof. it was ok to take a lock out and they had evidence of his operational role in al qaeda in the arabian openness in the arabian peninsula another evidence or proof as ever been made public however then this week came a very disturbing report from reuters detailing very vaguely just how it is that this kill list is formed apparently there's a real life death panel made up of a subset of the white house's national security council there's no public record of the operations or decisions of this panel and there is also no law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it's supposed to operate so basically it's operating completely outside of the law that this panel doesn't investigation they have lawyers that supposedly review the situation and then they present it to

the united states who are the to the president of the united states who either approves or disapproves but nowhere does the president actually have to sign off on this decision so it's meant to make other senior officials look responsible in order to quote protect the president you know visit ministration claims that it has the legal proof and evidence of a lot of these wrongdoing then what does the president leave protection from the law which i don't know maybe one day might come back realize that what's been done is entirely unconstitutional now that's more than just disturbing if you ask me that's just and the fact that congress of the courts have done absolutely nothing to try to investigate this counter it stop it that only makes the situation worse and so here we get to story number two that involves our impotent courts remember how the cia destroyed ninety two tapes which included numerous interrogations has been interrogation sessions of two alleged al qaeda operatives those were tapes that were said to show torture yeah they went ahead and destroyed them despite being ordered by courts and by

a congressional commission meant to investigate nine eleven not to do that so that's a criminal action they want to get court orders they destroyed evidence of their own torturers conduct and evidence which could have been used by the commission investigating nine eleven so then the obama administration's justice department announced last year that it was closing its investigation. into the destruction of those tapes once again letting crimes committed during the bush administration go completely unpunished but then we had just this slight glimmer of hope which we reported to you on this show an a.c.l.u. lawsuit was going for which my at least have found the cia in contempt for its transgressions but guess what happened this week that judge decided to let the case go not to hold the cia in contempt or impose any civil sanctions and you want to know why well because according to this judge it's because the cia issued new rules that should lead to greater accountability within the agency and prevent another episode like that or as glenn greenwald put it today in an op ed in the guardian because the cia promised never to do it again seriously can you imagine if that's

the way the rest of our justice system works why would we have anybody locked up of all they had to do was promise that they would never do it again no it doesn't work that way apparently it only works that way for the cia and therefore you're above the law that the rest of us little people have to abide by now the judge also said that holding a cia in contempt would serve no beneficial purpose. personally i disagree i think that it would serve a purpose i think the whole the government agencies and actors accountable for their wrongdoing up hold the rule of law that at one point used to mean something in this country but now a judge the person that is meant to up hold that law doesn't see the same way and apparently neither as does the mainstream media who in their short term of the war in afghanistan today have decided to have complete tunnel vision not to take anything else about our global war on terror into account see to them the global war on terror only exists when it's convenient when they can defend the administration for an extrajudicial killing of its own citizens but the rest of the

time well hey that's when they choose to base. all right now let's draw our attention to the longest war in u.s. history and the signs that it seems like it's going nowhere do over the last ten years the u.s. has spent an estimated four hundred and fifty billion dollars on this war in afghanistan and those figures probably very conservative over the last ten years nearly one thousand nine hundred u.s. service members have lost their lives and i doesn't even include the numbers of military contractors or the more than five hundred coalition troops that have also lost their lives tens of thousands of civilians are also estimated to have been killed and we currently still have nearly one hundred thousand troops in the country by this time next year if the schedule beginning of which are all goes as planned that number is going to be down to just slightly below seventy thousand but

a full withdrawal well who knows and the fragile yet reversible progress the momentum against the taliban that our military officials claim we have well that's a little hard to prove considering the uptick in violence over the past year according to the u.s. but the denial of those claims from my staff and it seems like there is just no metric. or they can successfully measure progress or failure but numbers aside at the heart of it do we even know what we're doing or why we're fighting in afghanistan well joining me to discuss this is retired lieutenant colonel tony shaffer of fusion are still waiting on tony shaffer but in the meantime can we put in the meantime i think we're going to play a clip we had producer patrice and essentially go out today on the field to see where the demonstrators are at freedom plaza and so we want to know what everyday citizens think about this war. do you think this was a war worth fighting absolutely not we have no right to invade afghanistan we have no right to invade iraq we have no right to be bombing libya we have no right to be

sending drones into pakistan or any other country they think of democracy as a religion and so they're going to just keep fighting and fighting and fighting no not anymore no i have what i can't understand what it is we're fighting against at this point how does it make you feel as a citizen being in the longest war in u.s. history. shameful shameful that and not enough americans are standing up and calling for an end of this size and these occupations well i was part of it doesn't feel like service to me it feels like i participated in damage both the country that we had supposedly come to free and of my own country it makes me feel like we as citizens have no power over where money is being spent and governments making decisions that we don't support these people are waging war killing innocent life every day every day at night time in afghanistan they go out and kill people and nobody says whether this is the right person or the wrong person or anything it's

basically terrorism it feels terrible she can feed feels like we we have become more criminals as a country we as citizens haven't done enough to demand that our government stop this war i'm embarrassed and ashamed of our congress and we stand shame to the president we have to put some people in office that a public servant you know i'm not looking for a job or a paycheck and right now the majority of the people down in our office now are there for a paycheck they don't care about the people these are desperate times we need action and we need it now and we're not getting enough for him he's not radical and i pray that soon president obama will bring the troops home. all right so we've heard of people on the street have to say and very much so they feel like their interests are being represented in all the stations are being made by the people that are in charge but so why are we in afghanistan that's the question

we have to ask those that are in charge joining me to discuss this is retired lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer senior fellow for center at them for advanced defense studies and packed america tony thanks so much for joining us tonight and now i guess if you're having you know here and i've had this discussion many times about the war in afghanistan but here we are reaching get another anniversary here now it's been a full ten years and if you had to give one reason for why we're still fighting this war what would you say it is because we can and it's very simple and i know that may be hard to believe but we are actually engaged in this counterinsurgency because we can actually go to the source and stability which is pakistan and i just heard your last clip and you know i come at this from a completely different perspective but i agree with their sentiments it's time to come home i believe it is in our best security interests and i've said this with you there look i'm not anti war i meant i stupidity and the way we've been gauged this and continue it is insane and stupid because the real adversaries we have to

deal with aren't in afghanistan and one of the notable things that. mcchrystal actually said and the news i think with the last twenty four hours is that we just don't understand the culture that we're dealing with so that's what we really are doing and the other thing i might add is that when i was there in zero three in zero four we had one we'd achieved the military objective objectives we set out to do and instead of actually dealing with accepting that and moving on to other things we've now engaged in what i see what essentially is an occupied occupation of afghanistan and we become the issue where the occupiers which is why we're the ones losing the blood and treasure at this point we don't have to be brought up what mcchrystal had to say at this point because it's true you know that's one of the main critiques out here is that we're now in a country been there for ten years and we fight. finally i still don't understand in this culture that you think about something that would have happened either way or is there something about the way that we send these troops sent right you could say that we send in massive numbers of troops we build a new massive bases like bob graham and i understand that one side they're trying

to create a comfortable environment for these troops right so they bring in fast food chains around america but at the same time you know does that application then completely separate them from the locals it does and frankly you know i've said several times and i talk about this my book operation dark we should look at how we won world war two rather than how we lost vietnam we did this in vietnam and what we need to do is figure out a way to get back into winning we didn't build you know all these big p x's and everything. we can we're staying we didn't stay we stayed in germany because we were asked stay but in other places we left as quickly as possible we don't want to be there long and longer than we have to be and frankly if the other issue we're dealing with here is that the karzai government is something that's an artifact of our making the afghan people are are never in their self governance is one of those critical cultural things we've never got and so this is the issue we need to look at is why are we continuing to go down a path which frankly has worked we won in zero three we were done and all the different attacks which have been planned or perpetrated both on western targets

such as england and us have come from pakistan and this is the elephant a room finally at all mall and mart michael and finally admitted he gave the i.s.i. the pakistani intelligence services cooperated with the taliban frankly we've known this since two thousand and three i talk about it my book and that's why the pentagon had a problem with last years because i talk and very clear concise terms about what we knew and frankly we knew what we know now in zero three we have pretended otherwise and the policy has been one of wishful thinking not really zation we have and you could say that you know that was something that was common knowledge nobody just comes out and says it and admiral mullen actually went out and said it as he was leaving his his position there but if you look at the recent or of course. the fact even had senator lindsey graham going as far as saying that maybe we need a military response to pakistan you know completely forgetting the fact that we already have military in there relaunching drone strikes in that country what would you say that that is coming from this sudden heat up in are they starting to feel

the pressure because now we have a troop withdrawal timeline at least for the surge troops and they feel like they need to put the pressure on. well we've had certain groups certain think tanks in washington which have actually been giving senior policymakers very bad advice there several of which i've actually you know perpetuated this whole idea that we can settle afghanistan and frankly the problem is they've taken the page out of the soviet book which was insane at the time there's a group the readings which i had to read before i went to afghanistan called the bear the bear went over the mountain and it looked all the mistakes that the soviet soviets did in this area and frankly a lot of us internalize that we recognized the folly of trying to essentially modernize a ten century culture and so we've we've just doubled down on this concept that we're smarter than everybody else but we've done the same thing so this is why it's time to take a step back and i've recommended we've talked about the fact we need to find a peaceful forward solution of this i i have put forward the idea of using the

northern ireland style peace process where all sides come to the table and the biggest thing is i would i see it as we the american singapore selves out of the middle right now were the issue were seen as the occupiers and as long as we're seeing like that we will continue to suffer losses and no real progress will be made in the region unfortunately though it doesn't seem like anyone is heating your advice here tony because if you look at it this is something we've covered on our show before is that there's a brand new contract out there from twenty five to one hundred million dollars to expand intentions facility at bagram and that's something that the contract hasn't even been awarded to i want to be awarded until december of this year so does that tell you if this is somewhere where we want to have a permanent presence there are many japan. but tells me that we're moving in the wrong direction. i think again it's goes back to this momentum of the pentagon leadership have been tied to this concept and frankly so many people have time their careers to this course of action is counterinsurgency no one wants to admit that they're wrong and there's folks like me who have known as far back as two

thousand and three who said you know we need to look at that and the anti terror and strategy of how to achieve specific goals and objectives let into our security not not the pakistanis not they are the. afghans and i know that sounds brutal but that's the honest truth we need to focus on how to do that and then it help be helpful the indians lived there the pakistanis been there the afghans live there they need to store through their own issues we need to be helpful in our process we should not be the central issue of that process on seems like nobody wants to hear the honest brutal truth unfortunately and yet now it's ten years and longest war in u.s. history tony thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you. well sort of they are not going away they have an update on the acute growing occupy wall street protests happening across the u.s. and today the u.s. economy added more than one hundred thousand jobs the last month figures were released but the real unemployment rate a lot more the story of what's happening here and that's what's got better consumers.

the closer it's been to the spitzbergen archipelago. for the world's northernmost joshua glenn presides over a ghost. town argy goes to pens a group of village volunteers recruited colors from. where technological breakthroughs save lives. and where people are forced to stay. in the region but you're close so on the.

occupy wall street it's the movement that's gaining steam by the day now day twenty one for the demonstrators who are occupying new york city and aside from the growing numbers of those demonstrators are also some famous faces coming down to wall street rosanne susan sarandon even hip hop artist ali quali gave us their thoughts why people are showing their anger towards big banks and corporations. you talk about economics you took the balancing budgets and stuff like that. it's not just simple mathematics it's simple mathematics is not going to work countries not going to work like that people being greedy of people being hoarded and i'm not i'm not someone who you know i believe in freedom i believe you should be as free to make as much money you should really plus you know what you were part of to if you can do that you don't come out of the way you know so wherever you come from. is

what made you so you know if you come from america then you must give back to me. now as i noted yesterday there are over four hundred cities that are taking a part in occupy wall street in their own style occupy l.a. is in its eighth day but the arrests are already underway about five hundred people are rallying in front of the downtown area while a select few decided to enter a nearby bank of america and have a sit in in their lobby eleven people arrested after that incident and released on five thousand dollars bail zeek bail each september twenty third marked the beginning of similar protests in chicago started with twenty people in from the sears tower but now hundreds of joined that movement as of yesterday occupy chicago teamed up with anti-war protesters who made their voices heard outside of president obama's two thousand and twelve campaign headquarters a smaller cities are also making their voices heard for example baltimore denver and even portland are participating in their own occupy demonstrations perhaps this image out of portland sums up how a lot of americans are feeling right now let's go back to new york and d.c. for a minute while there are plenty of politicians who support the cause there of course

as always a counterpart mayor michael bloomberg has asked protesters to lay off the banks on his radio show today bloomberg called the movement unproductive because attacking the banks with me and destroying the jobs oh really bloomberg how about rand paul two after hearing how bomb addressed the protest paul shared his own opinions about these nationwide demonstrations. as far as the occupy wall street movement you know i see it sort of like a paris mob eyes i see the president's rhetoric of envy and inflaming the public and saying go get yours because rich people don't deserve it i see this inflaming this paris mob that i hope doesn't ultimately result in a lawless this where they say well gosh those nice i pads through the window should be mine and why don't i throw a brick through the window to get home because rich people don't deserve to have them when i can have one. paris mob i think it's safe to say the rand is missing the point here this movement is about getting fair representation for the ninety

nine percent the people who are working hard yet have nothing to show for it let's take a closer look at some of those people to these images and stories are come from the we are ninety nine percent tumblr or people are posting on their own for example this unemployed thirty eight year old survived cancer has been dropped him or health insurance all while looking for a job how about this mother of five she's been unemployed since two thousand and eight and now their unemployment benefits are running out her husband has been taking on two jobs to get by or how about this army veteran he served in iraq for sixteen months and now he's slinging pizzas just to get by those are just a handful of examples of who represents this ninety nine percent look at those people they're not just trust a foreign hippies or use mac products and where expensive yoga pants these are mothers children and war veterans all of whom are doing everything they can to say afloat. now the jobs numbers came out today for the month of september and as we've gotten used to now they don't really give us too much hope so the economy added one hundred thirty thousand jobs more than economists expected but the official

unemployment rate stayed steady at nine point one percent it was barely enough to accommodate population growth even worse real unemployment as measured by the you six which factors in those that are underemployed or discouraged rose from sixteen point two to sixteen point five percent so the bottom line here is that we still have a jobs crisis in this country and it might have something to do with the tens of thousands of people all across the country feeling frustrated and showing it coming out talk to protest and occupy wall street some however argue that their anger is a little misguided and discuss this with his kind of glass conservative journalist kevin thanks so much for joining us tonight by to be here ok so looking at these numbers today i think it's pretty fair to say that more people are dropping out of the job market right more people are not getting jobs and maybe if they do you have work then it's part time it's temporary they're underemployed all of that makes sense as to why people are frustrated and angry and upset right now yeah absolutely people are upset and angry because for a couple of years now we've been having a very in jobs market

a very anemic economy and we just don't look like we're recovering on the plus side the jobs report economists say has a little bit of positive optimism as barclay's pointed out today with the jobs numbers there's something to be said for the global financial instability that is affecting the united states right now and despite that and despite future expectations of contractionary fiscal policy the jobs have come up a little bit and certainly more than expected in the jobs report they also revised the july and august numbers upwards which is a good sign but at this point these these small figures you know and i feel like we're always just pulling it whatever we can to show us a sign of the of a good sign that something is you know is going well here but you're. saying that the occupy wall street protesters are protesting the wrong people that they're directing their anger towards the wrong people tell me why well certainly the ninety nine percent movement is really really a misnomer people in the ninety ninth percentile make over five hundred thousand

dollars a year these people are not on the side of the occupy wall street crowd the people in the ninety ninth percentile not the one percent that they're supposedly protesting against but the ninety nine percent are if anything on the side of the top one percent if you're saying one percent out of the ninety nine percent but the other ninety eight percent are find it all or ninety eight percent you begin with it probably not ninety eight percent you're probably going to bring that number down to about twenty percent the point is i walked by mcpherson square today which is where these protests are taking place in washington obviously at the occupy d.c. brightness and one of the protesters is holding a sign saying you know honk if you support occupy wall street a lexus s.u.v. drives by and honks the guy driving the lexus s.u.v. is not on the side of these protesters but i wonder about that you know because i feel like you have to ask the protesters what i feel that the protesters are actually protesting against here is the fact that they think that their political system is completely defunct sure you may have

a job right now and you may be driving a lexus but that doesn't mean that you have any influence over your own politicians because unfortunately the way the system is set up is that it's the large corporations right it's the big banks the end of giving the largest donations and so then whose interests are the politicians going to be subservient to you know that would be an interesting point but it does not anymore to the point of the occupy wall street movement i don't want to talk about an exact i don't think your message is really them if you're not if you're not getting the message that's because you're choosing not to see and i mean that's what's wrong with low i mean seriously looking at a very wide variety of media coverage of this and ninety nine percent media coverage is probably where you're wrong and that the media is for the most part getting this all wrong i guess i b c is getting a little bit better fox i fortunately has just label this anti-capitalist anti freedom anti american although not to an extent. you know the protesters do have as joe biden said a similarity with the tea partiers in that they're mad at the banks they're mad at the government they're mad at what they perceive to be an unfair system but i

really feel like that message is getting lost with this ninety nine percent rhetoric because you think it's ok right that they agree with the tea party partiers in the sense that they're angry that the banks got bailed out and the rest of america is still stuff that's a legitimate message to bring out and as i said i don't think that message is really coming through in these occupy wall street protests it just seems like they're angry and they're misguided and you know there's a very wide swath of opinion out there that they can't really coalesce around anything concrete and this ninety nine percent thing saying that you know they're allied with the lexus s.u.v. driver against the five hundred thousand plus earner is not exactly the best of it around that we have you know celebrities you have people like susan sarandon or roseanne barr that are deciding to join and they're not exactly something you would call poor or somebody that suffered from their system but you know they still support americans just because you you know go out and hang around the smelly hippies in mcpherson square does not mean that you're really on their side at all you think they are is just smelly and i walked through mcpherson square today and

even those plug but you know the d.c. movement so far has been much smaller but we've seen a lot of coverage of especially occupy new york a reporter is down there and it's not just smelly at these these are every day people of all ages kevin i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and let's let's spread the message that needs to be spread right here thanks for being i think. now still ahead we have tonight's tool time award winner tonight turns fifteen years old and the explain more on that in a moment and of three weeks the u.s. must decide of the keystone x.l. pipeline is going to be built in update on the seven hundred miles across a project that's putting environmentalist's against the white house. during. historic. dianetics.

a decade of the invasion of afghanistan and the u.s. commander that is timely mcchrystal says america's only around hope way towards completing its military goals with the pricing of a simplistic understanding of the country partly to blame. the interim government schools and leave the biggest at a time to give them one of colonel gadhafi is long term a stronghold some are but face stiff resistance. and on go over the route of bias is gaining momentum in you'll president creatures from the occupy wall street protests in the streets of the big apple. as the headlines now let's go back to the i don't to show in washington d.c. . it's time for tonight's tool.