they're ready for the alleged wiki leaks whistleblower others are quick to criticize his actions so why won't so many other whistleblowers are praised for coming forward what makes some people heroes and others traitors. i think this gold to help another war in the name of defense is the dangerous thing the dangers and the danger is really overreacting. to bomb or not to bomb that is the question it's a war of words between michele bachmann and ron paul g.o.p. candidates spar over the issue of iran i'll give you my take on last night's debate . is friday december sixteenth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you watching our team. all right folks there is a lot going on right now decisions being made that are unprecedented and will have

an overreaching impact on what it means to live in the united states of america just down the street from our studios in the u.s. capitol your elected officials both the senate and the house of representatives have just overwhelmingly passed the national defense authorization act squeezed into this military funding bill are two provisions that give the military not just lots and lots of money but lots and lots of power as well through two very controversial provisions one expand the use of military force in afghanistan to include indefinite detention of anyone suspected of being a member of al qaeda or quote associated forces so essentially anyone but here's the big one folks it gives the military the power to indefinitely detain american citizens even those captured here in the united states suspected just suspected not convicted of some sort of involvement or affiliation with terrorism in

a recent article with the question it can broaden counterterrorism rules open the door to indefinitely detaining peaceful protesters j.-m. meyerson rights but the problem is the fourth amendment is the precondition for the first amendment if a person can be detained without charge leveled than a person can be detained without a crime even alleged to have been committed including for confrontational peaceable assembly jay myers it is a contributor to the online publication truthout and is in our new york studios to talk more about. their day seems to me the fourth amendment in this case that has really just been thrown out the window talk to me about your take on all of this. yeah well that's incredibly troubling i mean it's not good enough to me to have a president who probably wouldn't detain peaceful protesters because he's focused on capturing terrorists i want the bill of rights which ensures that no president ever can do that let's talk about the bill itself the national defense authorization act this is passed every year this provides funding to the military

this is something that a lot of people think is a good think is important. this year very little coverage was done of these two provisions i know a couple people tried to stop or sort of overturn them i know dianne feinstein wrote a provision that sort of makes part of part of it makes sense she voted him out of it makes part of it no one void and then mark udall the udall amendment went on the floor and this was overturned why is this not as big of a deal i mean i'm i just overreacting are you just overreacting. know it's a huge deal the reason that the media don't want to cover it is because there is broad bipartisan consent to this proposal i mean it really gives the lie to this whole myth about partisan bickering and you know congressional gridlock and all this kind of stuff eighty six senators voted for this thing so when there are issues about you know solving human crises the sovereign debt crisis in europe or

the health care crisis in the united states then there is all sorts of gridlock in the factionalism and other kind of stuff but when it comes to furnishing an executive branch with huge powers which let's say president bush and president obama both already claim but this gives congress is our gust imprimatur to them when it's to do with that well then all the sort of partisan bickering stops and you get overwhelming bipartisan support for the measure and as long as there is overwhelming bipartisan support then there is no political horse race to cover and everybody turns a blind eye to it it's really really shameful i think it's a really interesting point let's talk about president obama up until a couple days ago president obama had vowed to veto this bill he vowed to veto it for reasons that are a little different from what you or i might say in some way that didn't give the president enough power he thought the bill undermined his power because it gave some too much to the military the president has changed his mind and will most

likely sign it and moment now so what do you think happened here. well it's the number of bills that he's threatened to veto and has done is sort of piling up but i think it's a mistake to think of this is caving because his objection to it wasn't on civil libertarian grounds like anybody who has any interest in upholding the bill of rights his interest as you say was in furnishing the executive branch with even more power with taking power from civilian prosecutors and the f.b.i. and all sorts of other law enforcement agencies and just reserving it for himself and for the military. so in essence the objection was on the opposite grounds from the actual humane ones that one could level at the thing and once congress congress really is the one who gave once congress caved on that point the president was happy to sign it into effect you know as i say he's already been claiming these powers this is a really important thing for people to understand president obama has been claiming these powers as we've seen he's claimed the power to assassinate american civilians

abroad with no due process at all this is just codified into law by congress in a way that's really disgusting and actually there are provisions in it that i don't fully understand as i'm not a legal scholar that i gather based on the reporting of jonathan turley glenn greenwald and others makes it really difficult to legally overturn these provisions as well so it's really a shoring up of the kind of. civil libertarian and civil liberties abuses that president bush started with after nine eleven and it makes it really difficult to see a way out of this horrible quandary that america finds itself in and say i too am not a legal scholar but when you say that from what you read from what you understand that this will be hard to legally overturn that's a surprising to me because it seems that the most basic constitutional. you know provisions in there as we're talking about before the fourth amendment those are being ignored how how is it that this is so difficult to legally overturn.

yeah well the thing is that law the sort of legal superstructure of the united states has been very subservient to politicians and especially to intelligence agencies in the military in terms of the fight against terrorism which is how this whole thing is framed it's useful to remember that this is all you know according to the politicians about terrorism but the fact of the matter is that it leaves everybody vulnerable to the thing it might be that no president will ever use these powers to target anybody other than people that they legitimately suspect to be involved in terrorism but the reason that we have these provisions is to take away that that sort of arbitrary handing out of justice and to make this a nation of laws the fact is that occupy the london stock exchange the metropolitan police put out a memo equating the occupiers there with. with fark and other terrorist factions

there's been a lot of insinuation there were counterterror cops that i've seen with my own two eyes down in zuccotti park surveilling and harassing the protestors down there there's a deep insinuation that dissent is somehow connected to or accessory to terrorism and that's a really horrifying prospect because once we have provisions in place that give unfettered authority to detain indefinitely without trial anyone even just suspected of being a terrorist well that opens up the field to peaceable assembly as well the more that this terrorist as protestor or protestors terrorist miss is transmitted through the channels of the media it's really really scary and people have every right to be very concerned about this i think you're right and i think under the guise of being at war whether you know the war in afghanistan or the war quote on terrorism i think that's when things get really murky and that's what these new provisions one star signed into law really added is sort of a stamp of approval on allowing the marking us i want to talk about one other thing

i want to have you here and this is the. piracy act it's just sort of an extension of another way in which congress is interested in expanding rights to the powerful and i know that it looks like debate will pick up after the holiday break congress decided to give this one a rest for now but what this does is this gives us law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking and copyright intellectual property. it's just really really interesting to me when you look at what congress is trying to do maybe they're using the time being so close to the holidays to do this but really trying to just expand the power of what lawmakers have the authority to do what do you see happening here with. i mean i see civil libertarians losing another big fight it's because that's all the tappan since nine eleven the patriot act an extension of an all of the all of these laws have just been put in place to.

prop up and expand vastly the powers of law enforcement that may be up to no good we have no checks on them and to diminish the power of individuals this is exactly i mean it's there's a lot of hemming and hawing about how occupy wall street is sort of unfocused or people will only talk about the financial crisis or whatever but actually what this is about is reclaiming not reclaiming because it's not obvious that we ever had it but claiming power for ordinary citizens and everything that that you know of bridges that power from environmental abuses to war abuses to legal abuses like these will will you know fire up the protests even more and i think that we'll see a big protest backlash against this kind of thing. and a contributor to truthout interesting discussion there thanks so much. thank you well today is the day that private first class bradley manning against the first stage of his military trial manning is accused of leaking thousands of secret

military and diplomatic documents plus a video showing u.s. military pilots gunning down civilians and a reuters journalist in baghdad in two thousand and seven to the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks phase one of his trial today comes five hundred sixty nine days that's one year six months and three weeks after he was first taken into custody after reportedly admitting to a former hacker who then exposed manning to authorities now today if you dozen people showed up to the protest outside the pretrial hearing now the hearing is expected to last about five days and tomorrow hundreds are expected including bus loads from occupy wall street that's also when daniel ellsberg the pentagon papers whistleblower will speak now we'll be talking a lot about the implications of bradley manning's case today but i want to give you a quick look at the ins and outs of the case what has been both revealed about him and also about the u.s. government leading up to his appearance today in the courtroom. it was this a video. of u.s.

army pilots in iraq eagerly firing shots at innocent people on the ground and hundreds of thousands of secret military documents and cables leaked to wiki leaks there have been some criminal acts committed by u.s. government employees and those employees have never been held accountable for them all this made public over a year and a half ago by bradley manning a twenty two year old army private turned whistleblower for the past eighteen months that bradley manning has been behind bars has become somewhat of a symbol to his supporters he represents the extreme secrecy and lack of transparency within the u.s. government and the documents that make public reveal that the u.s. has a dark secret that shows that in my opinion in the last decade there's been no real . lessening of the standards of diplomatic reporting and in our military the real disregard for life of torture of assassinations of as

executions have become more of the norm really. and for bringing all this to light he's regarded by many as a hero he has impacted governments around the world he. lifted the veil of the u.s. empire to show us what we really are basically i got a military because of bradley manning michael patterson is an iraq war veteran he says seeing this video changed his life from the wiki leaks stuff start coming out and that's when i kind of hit that wall that wall. basically i decide i was i could do something more but today manning is paying the price he's been locked up behind bars as a maximum custody detainee subject to solitary confinement and forced nudity which some argue are forms of torture he was being treated as if he had already been convicted and the punished. it was going to be a very brutal punishment he's now charged with aiding the enemy his critics say he

put american lives in jeopardy just because you don't like the country's foreign policy doesn't mean you can out it to the planet that doesn't make you a truth teller that makes you a tree a traitor and as manning finally gets his day in court his supporters say the only thing he's guilty of is telling the truth he awoke a lot of people up to the actual realities of this world right now and he deserves you know a medal if the truth is actually undermining our national security there's something wrong with the truth. in washington liz wall r t a bradley manning story is most high layered and has brought about some ugly truths about the u.s. government both about what has happened behind closed doors and also how the government values secrecy and will stop at nothing to punish those who reveal government secrets and you may remember former army lieutenant dan choi basically the face of the movement to overturn don't ask don't tell in this country has a gay soldier himself you know he was outside of fort meade earlier today he spoke

to r.t. and i think this is important here's his take on all of this the question of fairness and the larger implications on the u.s. the question is not about fair anymore the question is about whether america is going to be america when we know all of the people in the world we purport to export democracy we report to share our values with all these other countries while we invade them we say we're helping. but the question is always what do you do to your own people who bradley manning is not on trial or very system of government is on trial or moral ascendancy is on trial and the referee by the actions of a reprobate government would most always be questioned by good and well informed citizenry. so this case with bradley manning is tough on one hand leaking secrets might reveal things that make people in other countries hate the us more on the other hand does it also affect our national security when our guys our military

guys are indiscriminately shooting civilians in other countries well i pose that question to kevin zeese a member of the bradley manning support network. exactly that's that's exactly what the documents and videotapes that bradley manning is accused of leaking show us foreign policy needs a major reevaluation when you move away from militarism and empire foreign policy and move toward a policy of diplomacy and that's what music come out of. the manning for a while is important for bradley manning and for the contrary what's even more important is a discussion of our foreign policy and it's way off track it's been all cracked for a long time and he's a good reconsidered and read very well and changed dramatically and i hope that the documents that were released with a broad brush meaning or anybody else whatever we please put out there are darknesses show we need to really reconsider what we're doing i think also the documents there are hundreds of thousands of them but the video as well a lot of people i know we have it on our website more than a million hits if you watch this video in full it's not just that these apache

pilots are gunning down these people it's that you hear them laughing you hear them almost treating war you know like a video game you see the video here what ends up happening is they think that somebody is carrying a k forty seven and it's actually a reuters photographer carrying a camera. you know and then they're killed and then they just kind of go on and you hear their voices you hear the discussion while they're in the helicopter. and certainly when you hear that it makes people mad it makes people realize what kinds of things are being said by our own military by and by the military that our taxpayer dollars funds so talk about this in terms of you know the argument is that playing this and showing this and making this public what it does to our reputation well the point to be able to understand is that secrecy is killing more people than troops during the truth will result in

a better foreign policy the result of americans and others result in a foreign policy that makes sense not one that's made just done for making profit for trans. national corporations one thing that we keep these documents showed was that state department and the military were can do with transnational corporations for their profit and not for a national security what's undermine our national security is not bradley manning if you do reason accused of well during our national security is our own foreign policy numerous repeated intelligence estimates by all of our intelligence agencies say these wars in iraq and afghanistan no doubt you know other countries that were involved as well are resulting in more terrorists than we can capture or kill creating more fast that we can capture or kill them so it's really a foreign policy is way off track and undermine our national security now of course a phase one of bradley manning's trial it just started today but many people including it seems president obama himself have already sort of made up their mind

about amending scales i want to play something the presidents have recently. we don't have the big car on the. air. all right so there you see president obama being questioned sort of on the side. he broke the law you know that you would think with that the united states going at least try to make this look like a real trial and not a kangaroo court they pointed to the top of that problem which is a new command influence resulting in everyone involved in this case from the prosecutor the judge the jury or under obama's command he says they broke the law or they're going to find against their commander in chief now they put in place a judge judge on monza who works for the department of justice which is investigating wiki leaks and he's going to be the judge of this kangaroo court

david manning his lawyer today said the judge recused himself because of conflicts of interest he's refused who was asked to appeal the judge's ruled against manning on a critical point allowing the witnesses who classified these documents to explain why they were classified these documents that were released should not of human class of are these are low level documents that were didn't show any troop movements or in those going to undermine national security what they showed was embarrassment they showed the truth about u.s. foreign policy and how they put a judge in who's not the listeners and why those documents are classified not with those who be cross-examined in court already this is off to a kangaroo court type of experience plus the first day let's talk about the other side that haven't i mean critics of this have an argument legal argument that is at the very least somewhat strong that manning is accused of being a traitor people say that what he's done is the equivalent of somebody spying on the u.s.

government among the twenty two charges twenty two or so charges that he faces one of them is aiding the enemy. so talk about that i mean don't critics don't people the prosecutors don't people have a right to be angry and to feel that that if manning indeed leaked these documents that that is a threat to our national security and the enemy charges of tickly the most serious one is that carries the death penalty and ensures that manning is now free. going for disclosing war crimes for getting information out of work we should mention though nobody has said if at least to my knowledge that they plan to take the death penalty up to the presiding authority and not up to the prosecutors but the charge carries a death all your friends i can tell you that david kuo has been preparing to defend a death penalty case because it is a possibility and if manning was a traitor he would be giving the documents to china or iran or you know the taleban or some enemy of the united states. if he was someone who was going to proffer these are as he was sold these documents to the highest bidder and become

a millionaire that's the reason he's accused of leaking documents to the media so the american public can know the truth about what our foreign policy is in a representative democracy where we vote to represent us we know the truth kevin isn't there a time when the truth is too sensitive i mean when do you think it is ok for the u.s. government to mandate secrecy but i think when you do it only troop movements at that present moment that's a high risk you know to the troops and i think that even though it's even though it's an illegal war in unjustified war i can see an argument there for you know keeping those kinds of movements secret but when it's stuff that's you know years old describing you know daily activity of the troops and of diplomats it doesn't undermine secure that we in fact robert gates the secretary sense at the mercy of no one was harmed by this and that was kevin zeese a member of the bradley manning support network. now i want to talk about last night's republican presidential debate the final debate finally before the iowa

caucuses on january third i got to say it was a little less fun and exciting without herman cain but one exchange from last night is worth noting it's a back and forth between michele bachmann and ron paul on the issue of iran. about a shadow of a doubt that with iran will take a nuclear weapon they will use it to wipe our ally israel off the face of the map and they have stated they will use it against the united states of america look no further than the iranian constitution which states on equivocally that their admission their mission is to extend shahade across the world and eventually to set up a worldwide caliphate we would be fools and needs to ignore their purpose and their plan. obviously i would like to see a lot less nuclear weapons i don't want iran to have a nuclear weapon i would like to reduce them because there would be less chance of

war but to declare war on one point two billion muslims and say all muslims are the same this is dangerous talk yeah there are some radicals but they don't come here to kill us because we're free and prosperous or they go to switzerland sweden i mean that's absurd if you think that is the reason we have no chance of winning this they come here and they explicitly explain it to it as the cia has explained it to as is said they come here and they want to do us harm because we're bombing them what is the whole world about the drone being in iran and we're begging and pleading and how are we going to start a war to get this drone back why would we fly in that drone over iran why do we have to bomb so many countries why are we and. have nine hundred bases one hundred thirty countries and we're totally bankrupt how are you going to rebuild the military when we have no money if we have an avowed madman who uses that nuclear weapon to wipe nations off the face of the earth and we have an i.e.e.e. a report that just recently came out that said literally iran is within just months

of being able to obtain that weapon and nothing could be more dangerous than the comments that you just already. know you in reports you said that is totally. wrong on what you what you just said i was knowing that that is not true they produced information that led you to believe that they have no evidence there is no it would be no enrichment and why only see if we agree with the united states people take any every scenario you're trying to i'd like a lot of like to finish if she thinks we live in a dangerous world shots think back when i was drafted in one thousand nine hundred fifty two with a nuclear whistles in cuba and kennedy call screw chef and talks to him and talks of out of this and we don't have a nuclear exchange and you're trying to dramatize this that we have to go and they treat the wrong like we've treated iraq they kill a million iraqis and eight thousand some americans have died since we've gone to

war you cannot solve these problems with or you could solve the problems if we for a constitution go to war only when we declare the war going with them and get them over with instead of this endless fighting and there's a messiah too that we have all around the world that is presently with ready to thank you. i'm sorry what michele bachmann just say what i think she said i mean hear that again. i think she said i stand on the side of peace so essentially start a war with iran p.s. i love peace there are a lot of things that this makes me think of questions make a light comparison with two cartoon characters some favorites of mine charlie brown little sister sally a minus. at the playground. well i. am not afraid of them i'm taking the advice if you know i was down.

in my mind menstruation children will be children and adults will be just like me even googly stupid elections like this st q. holiday season. everything has quieted. this school like you all right so on one hand you have the crazy irrational girl flying off the handle once again and then there's the guy everyone discounts actually is kind of making perfect sense but i want to go back to this comment by michele bachmann that she sort of slipped in there one more time please but i want to. thank you. all right there are so many things to say about this first of all bachmann cites a report by the international atomic energy agency that basically says iran might have possibly been working to develop nuclear weapons before two thousand and three and also might possibly be doing so now it does not cite any direct evidence of

this because well there isn't any so michele bachmann is drawing this conclusion based on a hypothesis that's based on premonition fear mongering and perhaps the desires of the defense community that iran is an urgent direct threat not to be ignored ron paul says let's just tell it like it is and be honest about the fact that it's the warmongering that beefs up that threat say what you will about iran but if you want to believe they have nuclear weapons capabilities despite the very little evidence fine but don't say you're in favor of peace in the same breath as you say a war with iran may be imminent let's do a better job here at calling it like it is not how the mainstream media tells us too. well that is going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered and r.t. dot com slash usa or check out our youtube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america you can follow me on twitter i'm at christine i'll be back here and

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