and tired of by a partisan politics tonight will determine if there is any room for another party and if it's time to kick the democrats and republicans out of congress and if that's the case who should replace them. it's thursday december twenty ninth five pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t. well more signs today that the u.s. and iran are inching closer to war this hour this after an iranian warplane sponsor a u.s. aircraft carrier crossing the strait of hormuz now this strait is critical because it's the only sea passage to the open ocean for exporting oil over fifteen million barrels of oil passes through here every day that's about a third of the world's oil shipment by sea aircraft carrier iran says this spot it is part of the fifth fleet which is based in bahrain not too far away while iran

now flexing its muscles and threatening to cut off oil supply from the waterway this is a response to the last imposing sanctions on the country and the u.s. is that way to use its navy station in the persian gulf to stop iranians from blocking this passage well in the wake of these of vents is this another sign that the war with iran is just around the corner well to answer just that i spoke to senior fellow for the center for advanced defense studies lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer here's his take. no i really don't believe so i think all sides will prevail and thinking this thing through there or any of us have a great deal to lose one of the things that i'd like to mention is a fact that they produce about one third of the crude oil in the world that we currently have in searching lation so one of the folks who would be hurt the worst by a conflict in this area would be the iranians i don't think they're that irrational secondly this is something that goes back to president carter jimmy carter back in

the seventy's said it is liberal as he was that there is no way we as the americans would ever stand for the straits of hormuz being cut off by anyone therefore i just don't think that the iranians are willing to call our bluff on this and frankly i think they would suffer as much if not more than anyone else because their oil can't get out either i also want to talk more about the significance of this waterway the strait of hormuz this is a crisp crucial passage and terms of shipping oil in the region if iran blocks this package passage which they say of are valid to do at the u.s. moves forward with these sanctions what effect will that have. well huge it would just jack up the price of oil globally we're talking about prices and i would be i think a conservative year five to six dollars a gallon i mean unheard of prices and most importantly you're talking about a huge huge hit to the global economy and this includes all of our friends in asia as well because they need the oil it more than we do it we the americans are down

about sixteen percent of our oil coming out of the way of this or the world therefore we would be hit but not nearly as bad as the rest of the planet so i again i think all sides would have hoping they will think this thing with before any sort of armed conflict would come to fruition on us and what exactly do you think iran is really trying to achieve here i-man it this is a response to the sanctions do you see the u.s. backing off as a result of this well not really no i think the sanctions are really a paper tiger the people the only people have signed up so far for the sanctions are us the rest of the world have ignored the call for additional sanctions so i think the iranians are overreacting so simply put if saber rattling i don't think iran is going to slow down this need to get way and let's talk bluntly about their nuclear program i'm one of those who believe based on my sources say that they have at least two nuclear weapons at this point in time the problem is they don't have a delivery system which will take another eighteen months to two years to put

together so i think we need to understand what the realities are i don't think it's there's any practical way for the west to bomb iran to prevent a getting the bomb in the on the converse i don't think the iranians really want to prompt a western response which would require which would result in them losing men material or military capability i want to talk about military capability of want to bring this up as they as they have a spot any u.s. aircraft carrier and the region want to take a moment to compare and contrast iran and the u.s. navy fleet. so iran is equipped with twenty eight thousand personnel. sixty five aircraft twenty six submarines five for a gets two hundred twenty five vessels and warships but that is nothing compared to the us navy fleet with three hundred twenty four thousand personnel three thousand seven hundred aircraft seventy five submarines twenty seven forgets and more than four hundred and six that's almost double that of iran vessels warships and

destroyers so want to get your reaction clearly we are at an advantage when it comes to being equal. that's correct and let's remember that we have a global responsibility they don't so those numbers are a bit mis misleading by the fact we can't have all of that larry there's just no room for it anyway secondly that the advantage we really do have is in technology we can spot them coming we can do things with cruise missiles and frankly a lot of that you know that they're currently using to glue their force is from the seventy's some of the same weapons we sold the shah are still in service include f. or chains and f. four s. which were i've long since left our inventory so i think they're a huge just vanish however it doesn't change the fact that they could badly hurt us by focusing on the straits of hormuz and clearly their objective is not to the fetus it's to interfere with our interests and our responsibility to keep the straits open and are we as we are seeing this escalating tension you know

a confrontation in the gulf cut impacts certainly impact the region and world peace how far do you see this ask going i don't see it going much beyond where it's at right now again i think we're going to see a lot of saber rattling the only thing i would think that would make take this to the next level is if the israelis decide to take on the nuclear program and do you know unilateral strike then there's going to be a lot of issues relating to do we the u.s. fall in with them to help them or do we back off that's a question that no one seems to know the answer of so i do believe you'll see the iranians continue to prompt. they make us attempt to overreact but i think their focus really is going to be on our iraqi leader not trying to gain more influence in iraq so why would you want interference with interfere with doing that and i think that's what they're really going to focus on the rest of this i do believe is saber rattling for the most part so what about you do you see that president obama declaring war with iran no i don't there's three three elements here and competition you have the military war fighters who have plans to do this we always

have plans to go in to do something you have president obama who's been very clear and reluctant to do take any military action and then you have the. candidates the republicans are all literally trying to say that they would go to war with iran which i think the rhetoric is huge lee and unhelpful in the current situation so those three elements are right now in conflict frankly i just don't see the americans doing anything to provoke the iranians but clearly there is interest in keeping that strait open the matter what it takes and that would require president obama to take military action if the iranians really did something to close it off as certainly we are seeing are a lot of rhetoric especially from the republican candidates i mean at how do you think that impacts the chances of coming to a peaceful resolution in the region when we are seeing so much of this harsh rhetoric almost pushing to go to war. from these candidates we have to look at this the chess game the checkered game i will say this directly the republican

candidates you're saying is that they're like chess they're don't like checker players they we need to look at the region from the perspective of pakistan afghanistan iran iraq so to arabia syria we have to understand all of those things and not simply push on want to assume that we can get away with so i think that the wisest course of action going forward is accepting the iranians will probably have if not already a nuclear weapon and try to deal with them as a regional power and not provoke them and i think the republican rhetoric is not helpful this one time i don't think that republican candidates even if they were elected would be able to fall through with any military action if they wanted to hear such baltimore anthony thank you for weighing in on this that was lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer a senior fellow with the advance with the center for advanced defense studies. also had on our team he's been labeled as just about everything except as a viable g.o.p. presidential candidate but is ron paul really as extreme as everyone is making

a mountain after the break we'll find out if some people are choosing to play dirty politics. new website with twenty four seven live streaming what to do about the ongoing financial heart unlimited free high quality videos or download. stories you may never find. the. most aren't. well the attacks against presidential candidate ron paul just keep on coming since ron paul's surge in the polls and i was seems the mainstream media has been

focusing on kicking him down his stereo over newsletters his staff wrote decades ago but what about everything else the candidate stands for like his foreign policy which clearly separates him from the others and is clearly resonating with more and more americans today stopping the wars abroad shrinking government spending advocating civil liberties where's the discussion on all of this and the mainstream media well to discuss this i spoke to journalist michael tracey here's what he had to say. well the mainstream media frankly has never felt it necessary to afford ron paul substantive coverage it was only in the last two weeks when he ticked up so dramatically in the polls in iowa that they felt it necessary to visit him as they would any other candidate. ron paul actually has been leading the polls has been in the top tier of the of national polling for a good portion of two thousand and eleven and until now when it's actually his

candidacy is considered viable by these mainstream media types that they you know. go through his passion to sort out some of this large now ron paul he is seen as this fringe candidate as a kind of an extremist i'm quite far outside of the mainstream thinking like here's what gay rights activist dan savage recently said about paul. to show what he says is ron paul may not like gay people and may not want to hang out with us or use our toilets but he's content to leave us the f. alone and recognizes that gay citizens are entitled to the same rights as all other citizens so that kind of shows that ron paul isn't that extreme especially when you have someone like rick santorum that he wants to restrict gay rights by law so what do you think about that ron paul being labeled extreme when you know he does take some balance approaches just just as the one we just we just pointed out. well

i think it's very illuminating to consider what mainstream media figures can believe constitutes extreme positions or extreme enough positions that the candidate espousing them should be disqualified from serious consideration so you have newt gingrich for example who has called for the execution of drug dealers who wanted to forcibly intercede to halt the construction of the ground zero mosque who's warned about the potential of electromagnetic pulse attacks if gingrich were to win the iowa caucus this would be considered you know perfectly normal and appropriate and mitt romney for example has said that the withdraw from iraq is one of barack obama's greatest failures he's a lot of the suharto regime in indonesia if you can believe in southeast asia. and yet it's ron paul who has actually called attention to civil liberties and drug prohibition and now the racially discriminatory screen atory

nature of drug laws that is considered beyond the pale so it's very revealing insight into how modern media discourse kind of operates and which views are pushed out on the terms of. propriety or lack thereof what do you think it is about ron paul that makes him such an easy target among his opponents among the mainstream media i mean some say that the only thing that republicans and democrats liberals and conservatives agree on is that they don't want ron paul in office. well i think it's because he doesn't fit neatly into the left or right paradigm that mainstream media in their functionaries throughout the government help intrench ron paul has specifically disavowed that paradigm as not being adequate to describe where he how he views his political philosophy and his educational mission as a longtime libertarian you know just yesterday rob hall was asked about the tea

party and the occupy wall street movement and he actually said that he has affinity with both. and of course this comes as a shock to. people in the at c.n.n. for example and other outlets of that nature who expect very simple easy to pigeonhole answers to these major philosophical questions from paul kind of penetrates through that orry discourse and people are sick and tired of and i think that's why his message is resonating in iowa also kind of want to talk about the timing of this smear campaign against ron paul why now i mean these letters have been around for decades they haven't been a secret but they're just now resurfacing and capturing and captivating much of the media why now. well you know as i mentioned earlier even even up to

a month or so ago it would be very common for political journalists in america to scaf that the suggestion that ron paul should be contended with as a viable candidate for the republican nomination even now they claim that. so. so rather than apply due diligence and sort out his past life as they have with other candidates this is now being presented disingenuously as a shocking new revelation where as you noted the newsletter controversy was thoroughly documented to two thousand and eight nothing that has been written about it now is actually new at all but you know this is this part of a chorus of predominantly right wing. vitriol that is coming out of certain quarters of the conservative movement in response to his impending win and i would even have people at the washington examiner philip klein for example has suggested that ron paul on account of his apprehension about the about israel's attack on

gaza in two thousand and nine. help tibet a global conspiracy to undermine israel i mean this is a very serious charge and it's being leveled against the individual who may well win the republican the first republican primary contest so it's very interesting development in american politics and i think it reveals a lot of the you know kind of odious orthodoxy that underlie conservative thinking and especially authoritarian minded thinking because you're finding ron paul attracting support even on the left in some quarters and among independents and people who. again fit neatly into the left right paradigm michael thank you so much for weighing in on that that was journalist michael tracey. well as the two thousand and twelve presidential race heats up there remains a mystery which g.o.p. candidate president obama will face in the november ballot but one political group has already decided on their candidate the boston tea party picked up two women to leave their take it for the white house but can a third party really attract voters in a country divided mainly on democrat and republican lines the answer that i spoke

to darrell perry chair of the boston tea party here's what he had to say. but we have a platform that a lot of americans agree with you support reducing the size scope and power of government at all levels on all issues and most people if you talk to them they will actually agree with that platform but they vote for the two established parties because they buy into the wasted vote theory and we're trying to break that cycle and i mean how are you going to be able to break away from that you encourage people to vote. and vote for the third party but just continue to show that the republicans and the democrats are basically the same party everything that george w. bush did barack obama is continuing we still have foreign wars we still have an expansion of government the patriot act was renewed shies it was renewed you've got

more stimulus which under bush was called a banker bail out but it's basically it's the same policies so there would you say at this point america needs a third party candidate definitely we need more than three candidates and why is that. you need choice. there was one of clinton's mentors said something to the effect of you have two parties that pretend to be ideologically opposed to one another but they're so close that you can trade them in and out without any effect and what happens with the government and if you look at countries that are similar to the u.s. canada and the united kingdom they both have three four and five parties that are very strong. ok would you say americans are sick

of the options that they have both the republicans and the democrats. oh of course just look back historically over the past five years at the approval ratings for congress. i believe it was in two thousand and ten when congress had a nine percent approval rating but yet eighty five percent of members of the house of representatives were reelected and sadly that was the lowest reelection rate since one nine hundred fifty. and you know are fed up and they want to do it often i understand he. a third to our your presidential nominee her name is go. for that perhaps the other candidates did not. she has a very sound libertarian ideology and she is in my opinion the only candidate that actually wants to reduce the size of the government at all levels particularly the

federal level she supports withdrawing the troops from all the countries that we currently have troops and my last count showed one hundred fifty eight there's one hundred ninety three members of the u.n. we don't need troops in one hundred fifty eight countries we don't need wars in eight countries well seven or eight depending on how you count. and you know the candidate right now that is probably the most closely aligned to your ideology as ron paul who is surging in the polls in iowa what's your reaction to that i wish him the best of luck i hope he does well and i would love to see many libertarian options on the ballot in two thousand and eight the boston tea party had its first presidential nominee charles j. he was on the ballot in three states was a certified write in several more and i believe he was actually more libertarian

than the libertarian party nominee bob barr and beyond ron paul from your perspective what do you make a presidential campaign so far. but. this is just my opinion and the only other could be candidate within the two major parties is george sheep richard said that he's opposing barack obama in the democratic party primary. there oh thank you so much for weighing in on this that was the chair of the boston tea party darrell perry. just to have the nato and u.s. mission in libya is over the country is facing lots of changes and struggling to determine who is really in charge r t is on the ground in libya when we come back. we'll be the same. people calling

like you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the clinton as you can hear behind me loud explosions at least . three days. i mean. i get it. there's always the repetition of. what the test the body seems to know. that never

pepper sprayed the face of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. to the capital and now because i'm lauren lyster. libya is heading into two thousand and twelve as a completely new country with new leaders and new hopes but as the immediate post of revolutionary excitement fades different factions of the former rebels are turning on each other and what may become a competition for power. boyko has more. flying

high but still running low almost two months after the lifting of a no fly zone over tripoli the city's airport operates far below its capacity yet the passenger traffic keeps increasing every month as more and more adeline's a putting tripoli back on their flight schedules the tripoli airport is once again buzzing with visitors a fellow lives have already within service and more expected to follow in the coming months but while flight controllers and customs officials the back of their desks is still the militia who call the shots here and the rebels themselves admit that the situation is still way to trouble and to save control to civilian authorities they're no longer flashing their guns to get make it very clear who is in control here the rebel brigade from the western city of the entire captured the airport in late august as the rebels over on the capital the control of this key

facility how the town with a population of some pretty thousand rise to national prominence sends them this entire militia has successfully styled itself as the save guards of libya's future . for forty two years our country had nothing no state institutions just one insane person. now we have a historic mission to overcome the difficulties of the transitional period and build a new country that imus will be upon us. is one of the top guns in tripoli these days primarily a colonel in the get off his army he still keeps the good office army cap in his office his subordinates are now holding the deposed libyan leader's son safe will islam. we are against i need to take her history repeats itself we will wage a war but we will let the rule of law decide his fate. didn't ghazi

zintan misrata these libyan c.d.'s one after another rose against gadhafi as regime . the militias now represent and the real axis of power in the country as their various and their legacy and agendas as the stripes on the only base new tricolor the prospect of civil war in libya is always there and it has a hole which has been there but has been effectively mastered by the very strong centralized rule of the gadhafi regime but of course now that that has been the stabilized we see this all of the tensions there in the fabric of libyan society coming to the fore another militia commander in charge of tripoli rebels is preparing for an interview it's been a month since he changed his military fatigues for a business suit abdullah maker is now trying to transform rebels under his command into a political force a laptop has replaced every rifle as his main tool internet is his new front line yet the armed assistant at his door is

a sign that the political process is still in its very early stages but. we've seen many examples in the past when people's revolutions were stolen and we are very clear that our struggle is far from over gadhafi may still come back in some other shape or form and in that case we'll have to take up our weapons and defend our revolution. guns are still a common side on the streets of tripoli have their problems has visibly decreased the city's covered with posters calling on the rebels to turn them in the design element of militia has so far failed to translate into national reconciliation the competition among various brigades may have become less visible but not less in towns the nato alliance would like to build upon any division within the groups or the parties that they have revolutionised against the qaddafi regime and according to my own understanding they would like to see certain provinces being divided

inside the state of libya back in the arrival hall as in tongue rebels are screening passengers bags under the posters left from the old regime to get out his golden framed portrait that madness at the airport a year ago is gone hatred of him a have glued the libyan society for several months if he's killing the former unit appears to have died as well the work of art see tripoli. and that is going to do it for now for more of the stories we covered but r.t. dot com slash usa you can also head to our unity of pages youtube dot com slash r.t. america you can also follow me on twitter as well we'll see you right back here at seven. whether you die from high or to the depths.

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