we're struggling. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you

glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

sixty percent approval rating at the height of the oil spill. and we're. well you heard it here b.p. v iraqis and even the idea of communism have a higher approval ratings than the u.s. congress at the moment maybe it's because of all that bipartisan bickering so as lawmakers duke it out with the threat of a government shutdown looming tonight we ask are americans ready to send washington packing. and there is nothing americans love more than meddling from the revolution in egypt to the rebellion in libya and even riots in syria the u.s. may be pulling out of iraq but the war machine. will take a look at the role the u.s. played in the arab spring and the death of libyan leader moammar gadhafi. this is a deal that we can be the policemen of the world and settle all these disputes i

mean we have to quit because we're broke well at least one republican isn't willing to settle for the status quo and now ron paul is setting the record straight on america's role in the world and taking the iowa caucus by storm we'll take a look at his policies and his potential. thursday december fifteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t well it's been nearly two months since libyan leader moammar gadhafi was killed the video of him being brutally brutalized by rebels in his own stronghold to have made the rounds on the internet and sparked debate now russian prime minister vladimir putin says the u.s. had direct involvement in the death of gadhafi. who did this germans including those of the us his motorcade and then commandos who were not supposed to be there

for the so-called opposition and militants by the radio and he was killed without an investigation or trial. well joining me now to talk about this investigative journalist wayne madsen who returned from libya not too long ago welcome wayne so first want to ask you your reaction to prime minister vladimir putin statement that the u.s. was directly involved in gadhafi that well i think the prime minister putin is correct because of course as prime minister he has access to his own intelligence that was gathered from every place from russian diplomats to intelligence operatives and and other sources i myself received a call the morning that. khadafi was captured along with his son and other members of his entourage. they left sirte after sun up now the charge was they were trying to escape if they were trying to escape sirte they would have left while it

was still dark under cover of darkness with the headlights off and instead they waited for sun up at that point when the sun came up about eight o'clock in the morning at full full sunrise over sirte all these white flags started to appear in white flags of truce white flags of surrender it was quite clear that something had been worked out in advance where khadafi was either going to go to another location either surrender or a deal was worked out where he could leave for another country we now know that there was negotiations in march of this year between khadafi government and american. private security firm called executive action that was negotiating a deal where khadafi might be able to go to either zimbabwe or south africa but it looks like the u.s. and nato the drones that had him under. surveillance and the people the libyan rebels who were there with u.s.

special forces present by a late at the white troops white flag of truce white flag of surrender something that's been very rarely done the u.s. did it a to the indians turn our genocide of the native americans but the white flag of truce surrender has been recognized since the year two thousand and five the eastern han chinese dynasty that is an egregious violation of the laws of war and i think putin is correct when he said the u.s. was directly involved in khadafi as brutal death and showing scenes of the body of him and his son for days and days and days is just indicative of us policy we did it with saddam's sons they were being shown in a morgue and when we know we know our forces took out jonas savimbi and then go the rebel leader he was seen laying on a slab with about sixteen bullet holes in his body the u.s. seems to be have a calm culture of death and you have to as do some of the people at the cia and

pentagon do they bathe and human blood on a daily basis this is this is just in a calm type situation with some of our leadership do want to ask you because you were recently and libya you were in the middle of it all but you saw for yourself and what you heard from your sources the pentagon has acknowledged that drones were involved and libya about but they are denying that there were boots on the ground to your knowledge of what it what is the truth behind it well when i was in libya we were seeing fresh videotape coming in from the field from the battlefront showing libyan rebels uncreating brand new f.n. assault rifles that's a belgian company these were chambered for nato rounds coming out of the crates you could clearly see these were new weapons where are they coming from obviously now. they're arming these rebels these rebels we were told oh they're using old. soviet

weapons from the time of when during the cold war when the soviet union sold libya lot of weapons these we saw very few. we saw evidence of very little use of soviet made weaponry this was all brand new nato weapons being used by the rebels i want to ask you to reflect also on another thing sad there he argues that this his dad went down without an investigation without a trial do you think it doppies dad was justice served in this case oh absolutely not you know whether whether he had gone off to south africa years i'm bob way and he got a chance to you know write and write an article or give an interview or or even if he was in before the the tribunals in the hague where he had a chance to give his side of the story i think a lot of western powers would have been very embarrassed by what colonel gadhafi would have had to say about his past relationship with the cia for example which

helped engineer his coup in one thousand nine hundred sixty nine to overthrow the senile old king king eidur is now eager as his family thinks they have some right to take over libya again as some in some sort of a renewed monarchy but clearly people like khadafi and to rica's ease a former iraqi deputy prime minister under saddam hussein who's now the iraqi government says they're going to execute him people like manual noriega who's now you know pushing eighty days in a prison in panama and these people who have done these deals with the united states know too much and you see what happens to the either killed or they're put in prison and they throw the key away and after the death of gadhafi the brutal death of gadhafi images that we're at war all over television screens all over the internet having been there and witness what it's like there firsthand what was your reaction to. to seeing these images now is appalling i was actually in tripoli for

the fortieth anniversary of the libyan revolution in two thousand and nine i was in khadafi stand in the compound which came under incessant bombing during the the nato bombing campaign i mean khadafi was well respected in africa he had a lot of plans which may have come right against them plans by the british french and u.s. for africa he wanted to create an african currency unit and stop trading with you know based on the dollar and the euro he he was a great promoter of development in some african countries he put any invited a lot of guest workers from africa into libya to work from the poorest countries in asia where burkina faso guinea they could all come to libya make a decent wage and unfortunately the rebels who are largely berbers who are racist you know many of them are racist targeted these african workers as so-called mercenaries and this was put out by the corporate media here that khadafi went to

hired a bunch of mercenaries he did not these were guest workers who were laid upon by the rebels they were brutally killed their women the wives and daughters were raped and this is the legacy of the so-called libyan rebels when the history books are written. without the interference of the propaganda is this is what the story's going to tell. this story and we're not hearing a lot about it and the mainstream media do you think it's important to keep this story alive and for these kinds of details to come out yeah i think it is because what we see is the united states and gauged and its allies and gauging these blood sports the they foment these rebellions in these countries and then they have these external forces come in in libya was the salafi many of them backed by qatar and saudi arabia the most extremist islamic people you can find this is the legacy. the same blueprint is now being used in syria and as we know from senator mccain's

comments they have plans to maybe use these in russia he was quite open about the fact that he hopes that prime minister putin goes the way of gadhafi is incredible coming from the u.s. senator wayne thank you so much for giving your insight on all of this that was wayne madison investigative journalists and it's deja vu all over again for the third time our divided congress cannot agree on a spending bill lawmakers don't come to some sort of an agreement by midnight friday a partial government shutdown will in syria and americans will see higher taxes on their paychecks and as the drama and bickering back and forth between congress plays out once again it seems there is no desire for republicans and democrats to compromise and the american people are fed up with polls now showing their approval in the single digits senator bennett puts that figure into perspective for us my goodness the eternal revenue service has

a forty percent approval rating compared to or nine percent between sixteen percent approval rating at the height of the oil spill and who are nine percent there's an actor says that fifteen percent more people support the united states becoming communist i don't for the record. there. so while they can't agree on a spending bill and almost anything else it seems the only thing they can agree on are the more questionable controversial bills like the defense authorization act which passed the house and within the last few minutes past the senate it allows the government to detain american citizens and hold them in military prisons indefinitely essentially bringing guantanamo bay right here at home and what about the sopa act which if passed would allow law enforcement to shut down any website

accused of pirating content a move that some say would hurt freedom of speech on the internet and let's not forget the passage of the tarp bill which authorizes hundreds of billions of tax dollars to bail out the big banks wall street and big corporations so in the wake of all this what our congress is party already is and is it time to scrap congress and start a new life spoke earlier with nomi prins author of black tuesday with yet another deadlock i asked her if lawmakers even have a desire to compromise here is her take. they seem to have a desire to act like children or if it's not a desire it's an inherent ability although i think children come to a compromise a little bit sooner it's like this is nice and box this is mine ok let's play together whereas congress doesn't seem to be able to do that over the important issues which really impact americans day to day life which is their job to work

towards accommodating now there are a few things it seems that congress can agree on bailing out the big banks recently the defense authorization act so when it comes to military spending and bailing out corporations we do see a consensus but when it comes to spending to a spending bill which affects each and every american why is it that they can't agree. you know what that consensus is part of it's the fact that the wall street community fun many of the campaigns or the staying ability of these politicians on both sides of the aisle certainly so does the defense industry so if you follow the money you see the things that can be agreed upon are generally the things that have the most money behind them and not just in lobbying money that's part of it but also in campaign contribution money and i think the closer we get to the election and we're always in washington worried about the next election in the next run for office that becomes more and more apparent of course tarp the seven hundred billion dollars congressional bill that bailed out

a number of banks in addition to all of the money and trillions that were thrown at these banks through the federal reserve and the treasury department was just after an election so this just shows you that really that is the game in washington and with respect to individuals that's what seems to get put on the table is so it's a long term bargaining chip between everything else that both parties want to get done and gets thrown by the wayside and you get these ridiculous inane conversations we just have this conversation about are we going to start down the government can we extend the payroll tax cut and so for the a few months ago and all that happened what is it was punted down the road whereas yes when you look at a tarp bill you get agreement within a period of days and as you just pointed out it's no secret that congressmen spend a great deal of time raising money because that is where they get their campaign funds from these big donors so how does this system influence the priorities of our elected leaders and with this is seven who do they really represent. for those that

they represent the money rather than the votes and the way they look at is the corporate contributors who pay them the money to raise in their campaign situations are supposed to be about getting votes about getting their messages heard that's why else would you be raising money technically for a campaign but that isn't what happened when the money gets used to do is indicate what kind of legislation that particular politician is going to be pushing when he or she gets in office or is able to stay in office so that's really how our entire political system has devolved and it's not that there wasn't always money in politics or that there wasn't always a revolving door between people that were leaders or are high ranking officials in the business community and then become that in washington but we've gone to a point where it really is all about the money that's behind these these campaigns and the legislation that gets passed and the doesn't get passed in the priorities of the country are just verbal sort of rhetoric that you hear in debates or you you hear on the floor but the don't get passed as quickly or as widely or get thought

about is deeply and we're seeing this impasse get again when i ask you do you think that we will see a partial government shutdown this time around. no i don't think we're going to any more than we did last time at the end of the day because there is this election coming up you know congress person on either side of the aisle wants to get labor where you go from a nine percent approval rating there's there's not even a very big drop from from one percent to zero and i don't really think they want to go for that i think there's going to be an agreement like there was last time which is going to be something along the lines of we'll extend the payroll tax cut for middle class americans we will extend the unemployment benefits like we did last time for a little bit further down the road we won't penalize or tax more greatly the wealthy and we'll throw in some pipeline extras to make it work and everything that's being discussed now ad nauseum for days and weeks is going to come is going to be resolved even with all of the squabbling back and forth and it will be them

punted down the road for the next time that the squabbling will reemerge so obviously congress not very popular right now they're at an impasse yet again american people are not happy what is the solution i mean eight is it time to start over or what needs to be done econo wish that that the vote actually could get rid of anyone who is in the way of getting things done for the american public instead of doing their job which is to effectively help the american public that would be basically getting rid of almost everyone in congress not everybody but but a majority of congress people on both sides of the aisle and starting over again the issue is that people don't feel that they have a choice beyond who's in office or running for office and generally the similarities that we are seeing between the republican in the democratic parties are very very the same and i just want to ask you. as you said is a shutdown not likely but if that were to happen if they do not come to

a compromise what effect would that have and what would it mean for the american people. well i mean there be a lot of uncertainty again around this this potential extension of a tax cut against unemployment benefits and we're looking at a situation where despite the fact that the unemployment rate was reduced a little bit in the beginning of this month that we saw it's really only because a lot of people have stopped looking or they might have jobs but they're not jobs that are able to make ends meet and people are paycheck to paycheck away from not being able to make a mortgage payment in addition to the ones that are living in poverty or close to poverty which is now almost fifty percent of the nation so all that does is continue to prolong the pain instead of providing a little extra comfort to go a little further forward realizing that a lot of this situation this economic deterioration that we're seeing in the united states is partly because of these decisions to fund wall street and to fund the defense and to fund the bigger corporations at the expense of the community of the population of the united states now we great to have you on the show that was no me

prince author of a black tuesday and los angeles. well ron paul surging in the polls in iowa considered a fringe candidate by the mainstream media he appears now to be making his way to the front of the race most recent poll shows him coming in second to newt gingrich now what mostly sets paul apart from the rest is his stance on foreign policy throughout the years he has maintained that the u.s. should stop acting like the world's policeman and stop waging wars abroad and it seems his answer you war message is resonating with more and more people today so what exactly does ron paul have to offer that the other candidates don't and how do his stances measure up with other world leaders and if elected what will it mean for the u.s. earlier i spoke with libertarian columnist for world net daily dot net dot com a lot of mercer and author into the cannibals pot lessons for america from post

apartheid south africa to answer just that i started with a question what sets ron paul apart from the rest of the g.o.p. faithful take a listen. well he's the only candidate who actually adheres to the constitution in terms of foreign policy an economics and he certainly appears to the founders vision of what the country should be like and how it should conduct itself with the rest of the world. and i think that he's followers are in fact seeing that what it hears to are the natural laws of economics and justice you cannot flout them for too long and not expect to to crumble and i think the response is amazing as you say he is. cheek to jowl with a very flabby new to in in iowa is looking good in south carolina and he's poised to do better one message that paul has maintained over the years is the

antiwar message and do you think that that message really hitting more people today in n.f.l. why. i think it's not as simplistic as that the republicans union's would like us to believe that he's simply anti war he's anti just was which are the kind of wars that we have been waging unconstitutional and unjust and i think that that message more than anything has the capacity to take him to the national level it is not only mitt romney who although as a libertarian i do not agree with him but is a fine man it is not only mitt romney who can beat obama it is. ron paul can do that with a message of a non interventionist if defense of foreign policy i mean consider ron paul running on a ticket not worth. a warmonger as hillary clinton is who cackled wildly when

we were watching videos of our proxies in libya was she orchestrated executing khadafi but let's. synods i wouldn't trust him with a commonly but he has impeccable credentials when it comes to the constitution and our foreign policy. and a lot of staying on foreign policy i do want to play to sound bites for you one is from ron paul and another is from russian prime minister vladimir putin and will compare and contrast this idea that we can be the policemen of the world and settle all these disputes i mean soon we'll have to quit because flat broke but we cannot continue to get into these issues like this and and getting ourselves into more trouble you know they made up their mind in afghanistan and what did they discuss the mission with their own eyes in advance they carried out their strike and we

started pulling in other forces saying whoever is not with us is against us you need like to be allies with the united states but what i see now is not the ship sometimes i think america doesn't need allies it needs service. so both leaders are speaking out against the u.s. becoming involved in wars abroad to what extent would you draw a parallel between putin and paul. well i wouldn't draw that parallel except because it doesn't really flatter. ron paul among the base i wouldn't want to emphasize that for his sake but it's very ironic for liberty loving people like myself who's been writing and in the trenches for over a decade and who came out against the bush's war of aggression in iraq in two thousand and two however it's very interesting that we have putin who's so much maligned in the american press echoing very sensible policies.

and so if one paul we see that he's gaining their momentum do you think that if you were to poll at poll this are what would it mean for the u.s. and what would it mean for global policy. well first of all he has to take it from caucus goers which is clearly pleasing they understand the laws of economics and justice or natural laws and that you kind of lot them for too long and he has to take the message nationally and he has to do that. in a way that he unseats obama and captures his base and he can do that with his foreign policy he can do it it's not a noninterventionist far foreign policy it's a foreign policy that hears to the vision of the founding fathers strengthens a very broken america i wrote in one column that the titan is tired we are tired we need to to circle the wagons protect our own borders and stop gallivanting

around the world and destroying other countries and so ron paul he has always had his base of followers but he still is seen by the mainstream media as a fringe candidate what does he need to do in order to expand his base of followers so so that he could pull it off well you make an interesting distinction he's seen by the mainstream media as a fringe candidate but not necessarily by his growing advocates and he supporters and they are growing among the young people and what i mean by young i don't mean the occupy street crowd ron paul's crowd although you do see a lot of supporters in the occupy wall street movement that you support ron paul yeah yeah that's that's going to but he supporters you identify them by the message lou free not give me stuff for free they understand that the pursuit of happiness

does not mean a guarantee of happiness house and free healthcare there understand the economics they have years of working life in front of them so he certainly has a growing base among the people if not the media who obviously sinecure and have a vested interest in the states. and speaking of young people ron paul does have the youth or a large following from the youth what is it about him i mean he is the oldest candidate among the g.o.p. candidates what is it about ron paul that they he attracts this young following and this is what is so interesting that has brought impish traditionalist who's probably the oldest among the candidates is attracting so many young people and i don't even like to call it the message of liberty i like to refer refer to ron paul's agenda as he promotes eternal verities eternal truths and i think

young people understand that they understand that if they cannot spend hierarch private property counterfeit money their way to prosperity neither can the state or the super state being the e.u. and the lights and they have many years of working life ahead of them and they understand these. truths also want to ask you we have another debate coming up tonight another g.o.p. debate there's been many of them it seems this campaign but some people say that you know the republican contenders right now are unimpressive newt gingrich right now is in the lead by he it's really questionable how long he can stay there when you look at some of the other candidates do you how do you think that that impacts paul's chances. while i really think that newt gingrich is a flash in the pan and then you.