it's going to be lower still get the real headlines with none for mercy or can we live in washington d.c. now if not we're going to talk about the death of moammar gadhafi and how easy it is to go from friend to file of the u.s. and what does our war in libya really say about our current foreign policy especially taking into account obama's decision to send troops to uganda i think you comparable one better than the other machine healy is going to join us for that then and is fair and will talk to us about occupy wall street and the attempts to vilify or co-opt the movement by both the right and the left in figures on campaign donations by wall street he was a perfect example of why this should not be split along party lines we have all that for you tonight and more including because of happy hour but first let's take a look with mainstream media has decided to miss.

so this morning we all woke up to the breaking news that after months of heavy fighting nato supported fighting the new libyan government was saying that moammar gadhafi had been killed breaking news out of libya reports. me is dead but libyan fighters say they have defeated the last forces loyal to moammar gadhafi. that gadhafi died in a trench in his hometown of sirte killed by gunfire one describing him as hiding in a hole another claiming that he was taken out by. a chair or seemingly ended just hours ago larry the pictures being circulated reported to be more market apia tripoli and the celebration so what appears to be the end of this is a huge day for the rebel forces the revolutionary forces in libya. now initially of course the reports were still unconfirmed so we saw the media take

it slow remain slightly skeptical until confirmation came out about skepticism of course is restricted to whether it was true he was dead or not it wasn't skepticism as to ask you why nato would still be in striking convoys in search of the original mission as authorized by the u.n. resolution was to protect civilians not to try and take it off the out not asking if this was truly regime change it was brought about by the people of the country themselves or whether it was nato enforced not asking why it is just a few years ago we had said there is and u.s. officials shaking hands looking cozy with gadhafi and why he suddenly became a target now we're going to get into all of those questions in just a minute and we speak to robert farley but i think the limit things that i found most disturbing and the coverage this morning of the announcement of gadhafi is death was the immediate smugness that followed the media apologies for unlawful acts that came and let's not forget right the president obama did not ask congress before he got the u.s. involved in

a war in libya he just decided to go but there has actors have suddenly the u.s. listens to the u.n. rather than runs it of course but that's a tangent so here you had a really truly gross overreach of executive power and it deserved to be called out and at the time we saw a number of lawmakers voice their opposition their concern people like congressman dennis kucinich who came on the show to talk about it but the mainstream media. not so much for some reason they're not as bothered as the rest of us about the constitution being trampled on over and over again so i guess i should have expected the following question today coming from chuck todd who there was a lot of. capitol hill when president obama unilaterally decided to do this not ask for congressional approval on this particular cicada nato operation . in hindsight. cobblers. i have given the president more thought or frankly give. other than publicly creating

a little bit of a political issue about it. you know i really hope the chalk was stuttering so much right there because he realized as the words were coming out of his mouth of a sounded ridiculous this is the problem with our political system with our power worshipping establishment media the president decides to unilaterally get the country involved in a war one where the subject it was supposed to be the object he was using was supposed to be just a humanitarian intervention not regime change but when all those rules are broken and the bad guy being killed and all is forgiven it was totally worth it it was more than just a little political thing chuck it was a move that was unconstitutional there was an abuse of executive power they deserved to be criticized so whatever members of congress want to say about it right now and i'm sure that we're going to hear nothing but praise thrilled responses to get off of being out but it doesn't change the fact that the way that this operation came about was and still is an outrage because it goes against what

this president promised in terms of what kind of a leader he with the it goes against the constitution the rule of law the justice that we supposedly hold so dear and it just sets another back precedent for everyone to follow in these footsteps and expand on them in the future but the mainstream media they care about it all now that's what they choose to miss. out throughout the day details on just how it is the market off he was killed after more than forty years of rule in libya have been pouring out and at this point the official statements say that a u.s. drone fired hellfire missiles on a convoy uncertain but could offer himself was said to have been found in a drainage pipe and exactly how he died still a bit of a mystery was it from gunshot wounds in a firefight bleed to death in an ambulance or was he executed captors the following video that's been playing all day show. what looks like a wounded but alive they're awfully being wrangled by rebels leading many to

believe that the third option is probably the most probable. the. the. the. the. was the. it's so now that moammar gadhafi is gone let's take a look at how it got to this point how he went from being friend or foe to america so quickly i want to message that sends to other leaders in our africa and the middle east join me to discuss this is robert farley assistant professor at the university of kentucky and blogger at lawyers guns and money robert i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and you know i think there are most people in the u.s. right now don't think that we can provide any official that's going to say they're not happy that gadhafi is gone but we have to go back and realize that that wasn't the point of this operation of this humanitarian intervention we weren't supposed to take copy out and so then when you start thinking about it and the events that

transpired today if this was supposed to be about saving civilians why why on earth are we still having drones that are firing hellfire missiles in sirte. i don't know no i think you're absolutely right but the original mission was intended it's going to go see. is not near benghazi and there seems to be no indication that he really was people were about to attack civilians at the time and certainly i understand that american drone was involved also a french jet but it's pretty obvious that. either the intention from the first point was to engage in regime change or the mission shifted to regime change at some point during the war. or for the world war two intervention makes so much more sense in this context. but yeah i mean we started at some point that it was simple you're going to your goal to oppose gadhafi rather than to protect civilians which was the original united nations writ which the united nations security council group too. well exactly with you there that war is

a much more adequate term but it's so much about the rhetoric right and the way that at the president's that western nations have really tried to approach this humanitarian intervention slash really war and so i want to play you a little clip of what the president said today where after the reports broke and take a listen. one year ago the notion of a free libya seemed impossible but then the libyan people rose up and demanded their rights and when gadhafi and his forces started going city to city. to my town to brutalize men women and children the world refused to stand idly by. and so we've heard that refuse to stand idly by statement said before by the president actually he got a lot of flak for it in the past and i think rightly so because there's just a little bit of help obviously think about what's been going on in bahrain in yemen in syria why is he still using that term. but i think at this point it's just far

and he wants to testify what is in his ration is done and he wants to talk about it in the best possible terms and it's you know you talk about how all the political actors in the united states right now are essentially congratulating the president and i think. president obama wants to knowledge all of that i want all in the best light and so we don't necessarily think we're going to leave it we don't sort of the constitutionality when we really think but what's going to come next and that's sort of the biggest question which is what is the rest of the libyan war going to look like couldn't but we're not over yet. but we want to return to the reasons that we engaged in the war focused on those and been effectively saying mission accomplished which is so of course something very similar to what president bush said in terms of iraq. eight years ago. well how long do you think the president obama said today that i mean very soon the war in libya is going to be wrapping up but realistically what is that like to me because initially they told

us that we're only going to be there for a few weeks as well i want to take a breath. right i mean we all sincerely hope that the president is correct and that all of you know the secrets and that the war will run but there won't be a long term uncertainty. in the n.t. see the rebel coalition will come together that there won't be fighting between themselves it's just hard for a lot of us to believe that all of that is going to put the united states and nato in general into a very severe find when different parts of the rebel coalition struck by the against one another or when the rebels spend five or six years trying to hunt down guerrillas in the libyan hinterland nato isn't necessarily well prepared to think so i think forward in those terms and i don't think that the president or the american people to think for sure. now i want to ask you if we could i guess go back through a little bit of history of look at the u.s. relationship with the how did everything change so quickly because of course for a long time he was the pariah then we started seeing the bush administration and we

had senator john mccain and senator lieberman there just two years ago in two thousand and nine shaking hands talking about you know possible deals and then suddenly once the arab spring erupts it was so easy to to then go turn against him and like you have been discussing not necessarily for humanitarian intervention but regime change why such a quick switch but i think people in washington thought about it as both a problem or an opportunity simultaneously because even though there have been a lot of positive elements for the relationship with gadhafi over the past five or six years there were still a lot of people in washington from long memories memories that were part of activities in witchcraft here in the village. and so what the arab spring did was it offered an opportunity for some of those people to argue well this is a this is a situation in which we can really get rid of gadhafi no matter how friendly he's going to a certain part of six years that he remains a fundamental. but i think it was also a problem in terms of the united states having developed this positive relationship

and then being embarrassed by what it off he was doing to his people i think this is even a bigger apartment in europe where italy and the united kingdom and france are developing relatively close relationships with libya but they all sort of went back on its agreements as well and therefore to. but is it that moammar gadhafi really changed or just the way that we looked at him change and i'm just wondering what kind of message this sends to perhaps other leaders out there and middle east in northern africa if you look at off these history and you look at the fact that about for twenty years he defied the u.s. and had nothing to do with them and he held on to power then it was once they decide to start working together open up oil reserves get rid of weapons then he made himself very vulnerable and somebody they could turn against that is a send a message is to just don't ever cooperate don't ever give up your weapons oh i think it sends a message that the united states and the western alliance more generally are fickle friends but they aren't friends who are necessarily going to stick with you for the

long haul as it were that's that's was a good thing i mean it's a good thing in terms of leaders not believing that if you can do horrible things for the people but it's also about you in terms of leaders in these countries more or less work here and sometimes a little bit more democratic sometimes a lot more authoritarian being skeptical about cooperating with the united states skeptical about giving up their nuclear weapons or other weapons stockpiles in the future there are a lot of leaders from are going to try this before and the promises from the united states into problems from the other nato countries are a serious one and i definitely think that that makes sense and so if you decide to have a guess here robert in terms of the ask me how long do you think that we might stay but what do you think the situation is going to look like and how my it play out in libya at least in the near future. well you know and i hope that everything works out i hope they are democratic elections i hope that there is peace and libya but

i'm really skeptical i mean i see fighting between different elements of the rebel coalition and i see an insurgency an insurgency that still supports gadhafi i see your potential for al qaeda becoming part of that insurgency for making inroads into the insurgency into the chair and so i don't think that there will be a war is over by any by any means i think this is just the beginning of the libyan war i rob i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you. now coming up and coming up after the break it seems that eighteen t. will ask this about anybody for their support when it comes to the company's proposed merger with just wait until you hear her going to an opera house and left out strategy libya uganda neither are in our national interest so how does that say about obama's foreign policy style. the police in the uk any.

nobody seems to. make the case the argument that they're being overly dramatic. sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you understand it or. some other part of it and realized.

i'm lauren lyster. now when it comes to getting things done there is nobody better than corporations

are doing it because all do just about anything to get what they want and so eighteen t. is no different here in eighty initially announced its proposed thirty nine billion dollars merger with t. mobile they have lobbyists go to every inch of america to make sure that their plan would go off without hitch they met with more obvious people like the department of justice for a series of sessions discussing our proposal although all of that came to a halt when the d.o.j. slapped an antitrust suit on the deal out of the blue but the government was the only sector where they were trying to gather support the eighteenth tee got edible a.c.p. to back the merger and they're notorious for finding ways to get groups other groups to support it of all shapes and sizes across the country hispanic groups cattle farmers even hot air balloon companies are sending letters to the f.c.c. explaining why this merger would be beneficial and trust me some of the reasons very get very creative that we should know the head of the telecoms lobbying group is also the head of their corporate foundation the division that hands out small grants so it's nice little process they have going on there right now it seems you

want this merger so badly that they even found sappy ways of appealing to the american people making this commercial explaining how the deal with t. mobile would bring fallon's of jobs back to america. to look. for. it's generational struggle. if we. can. it's right there is nothing better than sucking on america's heartstrings for the sake of creating a monopoly but i think it's over it's fair to say that the telecom has reached a new low after reports came out that they're turning to homeless shelters to back up this merger with t. mobile to the shreveport rescue mission out of louisiana has agreed to show support for the telecom mega merger on a local level and. appeals to the f.c.c.

all of this in exchange for fifty thousand dollars so as you can imagine eighteen teeth came under fire for that seemingly awkward deal but reverend tied to the rescue mission shows support for the merger he said people often call on god to help the outcast in downtrodden that walk among us but sometimes however it is our responsibility to take matters into our own hands please support this merger so you get that now god it wants this merger to happen eighty and t. is just being plain old ridiculous in fact as word spreads about what's being done to their fake grass roots and for the telecom is losing credibility by the day and reaching out to the homeless asking for them to show their support even write letters i'm trying to think of crossing the line there's a reason the d.o.j. put a halt to this effort because it would create higher prices lower quality products and provided fewer choices to the public but i guess eighteen t. has too much vested in this deal to take no for an answer. now today everyone has shifted intercessions to the results of the war in libya moammar gadhafi being

killed let's remember why the u.s. got involved to begin with or at least the official line of so why we got involved which would be humanitarian intervention nothing to do with our own personal self-defense now same goes for the president's announcement last week one hundred u.s. soldiers would be heading to uganda to help take on the lord's resistance army and human rights activists have been calling for that intervention for here so you first have to start ask why now and you have to wonder if this is a better or worse use of our military capabilities and massive undertakings for the sake of self defense here that's the suggestion healy vice president of the cato institute and columnist at the washington examiner jeanne thanks so much for being here tonight. so i just want to get your take first we already had you on foot to come talk about uganda and then what do you know where cannot be is being killed how do you compare these two situations in terms of humanitarian intervention in terms of the arguments that are used to go into to both countries to get us caught or you think they're linked because each piece you sort of emerging obama doctrine

which is very heavy on feel good humanitarian interventions and the notion seems to be that we get involved in areas where there is no plausible relationship to u.s. national security in fact there's hardly street food storage if you can meet it there is a plausible relationship to u.s. national security and we kind of show our nobility by doing things we're getting involved in fights where the u.s. has really no stake but i think you could say in libya you know look let's face it right our officials have been cozying up to morocco for the last couple of years and all of this was done in exchange for the oil fields there being opened up and for our big oil companies to be allowed to go in there so you could say that maybe there's not something in terms of our defense at stake but there's definitely some part of national interest there were. well you heard secretary of defense robert gates the president's own secretary of defense go on national t.v.

and say that the united states had no vital interest in libya while we were in the middle of bombing libya so that some evidence that there's not much for us to gain and why don't i don't think it's a governmental again right i mean i think you can talk about some of the some of the people that might pull the strings and i have a lot of influence on our government where there's a lot of money involved doesn't necessarily mean that it's good for america to go into libya but i think that it might be good for exxon i think it might be good for the for the french who have more interests there for the british it's not a major supplier of us oil and i generally don't buy these conspiracy theories that say to iraq war was about oil libya was about oil uganda is not the world and spirits of fear i think that's a very valid point to bring out if we do have a certain self-interest i think we do you know always when my father said if iraq was a war for oil you know why are we you know three dollars a gallon gas why did we get any of that oil once those are actually opened up and sold ok i think what's going on here there's

a huge ideological components of this it's pretty clear that there are many people new administration who sincerely believe in the u.n. notion of the responsibility to protect the citizens of other countries when their governments cannot or will not protect them and i think this is part of the piece and i think it's a very wrong headed but why is it wrong headed you know i think that first of all i think it's also contradictory because you could say that right now we're going into uganda you could say that supposedly which i just don't believe that we went into libya solely for the purposes of humanitarian intervention to save civilians but at the same time we still have soldiers in iraq we haven't wrapped up that warrant civilians are still dying there are killing civilians unfortunately that right on the crosshairs or maybe drone strikes in yemen in pakistan in afghanistan so it's not like those are wonderful adventures from the heart they are saving lives. it is difficult. to make a credible way through argument that intervening in uganda makes any american any

safer it's really just another case of the us turning into like unicef with predator drones we've got nothing we've got we've got nothing in this fight you most americans can't find you know know very little about this region and could have named the lord's resistance army before last weekend and why it is contradictory what it does contradict the purposes of the us national defense is laid out in the us constitution which the founding fathers were pretty clear about that the us defense establishment exists for the common defense of the united states and it's not an agent to go around to do armed community organizing it's not a device for just making the world better and i think to the extent that we forget about that we're going to perhaps not in this limited intervention but somewhere down the road will find ourselves in a lot more trouble what do you think they're already you only start hearing these

ideas are discussions about nation building coming up right if we talk about iraq if we talk about afghanistan he's actually words that are already in you know just that also come into play or tell me how iraq was part of our national defense at all you know i think that they've already exactly asked about things that were your call then on a massive scale because it's not just one hundred troops like we're sending in to uganda these are wars that we've been in for here is where thousands of people have died and trillions have been spent to push and i was against the iraq war from the start but one thing i would say is it least somebody bothered to make up a story that had some plausible relationship to making american safe or even the story of those story was completely bogus better to go out to stories and was no real hold or a star i think you would say the difference is these humanitarian interventions on the part of the obama administration if nothing else they can't possibly. but there are a lot cheaper and less bloody. iraqi afghanistan so you

know if you want to look on the bright side that's something but it's not something we should be doing and you know that's what i think that you bring in a very interesting point here because this is where you have bipartisan consensus normally is when you start talking about humanitarian interventions and you know these types of stories and i actually want to show you a clip this is ed schultz and jeremy scahill and this is them are going back in september i think right after it had been announced that we had at least lost bengazi and so here you have ed schultz who says i'm a progressive i'm a liberal but he was defending the president's actions despite the fact that he buys into this congress got together to the debt. we have a situation out of bring justice on a terrorist who has killed americans that's why i support this policy that's why i support this move why this sounds a lot to me like i like ollie north and iran contra is where you take up you make you a judgment you don't fighters assure you you can't you can paint me any way you want here but you're backing out thousand people ad but you get inside of

a very large country and it's and you're taking sides in a civil war where you're advocating it's going to lead to more american deaths have had zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero s. of dollars you don't want already cost because the president you know i take president obama's word for it the troops we must be engaged on the ground i take his word for it. so you know one hand we can call it responsibility to protect but i also do think that we've seen an uptake in this sort of liberal interventionism you know since since obama came into office definitely i think there's a lot of hypocrisy here on both sides i mean he killed his own people was not a particular was not viewed by liberals as a good argument for taking out saddam hussein but suddenly it's a good argument for taking out moammar gadhafi and joseph koni the ned man who's the head of the lord's resistance army you know it often is so often there's like this situational constitutionalism where people line up behind their team but i think what we ought to be thinking about is do we want to use u.s.

military power so promiscuously and i think what's behind most of these things i don't think there's much that we stand to benefit for many of them i think through ideal out ideology is a lot to do with it but i think a lot of it is also like with the infamous quote from now in albright colin powell use chairman of the joint chiefs and she said what's the point of having this wonderful army you're always bragging about if we don't get to use it i think people in power want to use it and a lot of times they use it for purposes that have nothing to do with u.s. national security and i guess the and some ways you can say that that's a little bit of empire play here you could say that's a little bit of. military industrial complex of labor because we have this massive beautiful military i have somebody fancy tools and machines that so much money has been thrown in jail and you know somebody has to at least justify that by using them that's awfully nice to everybody to take a good look at it and you know come back to sammy every now and then gee thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you. that's not

a common tonight's show and tell segments and then one of the main stream media shifts all of its focus to libya will continue to bring you the latest on occupy wall street and how president obama has found a way to feel support this movement or this. means that only we would he would do the work just to sort of. help. should know what the government should do we want to know why i should say. well we can't do as obama care is not a. problem american exceptionalism. story . if you understand it and you know some other part of it and realize that every. local business.