and tired of bipartisan bickering in d.c. tonight will determine it's time to kick out the democrats and republicans to make room for another party and if that's the case we should replace them. it's thursday december twenty ninth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r.t. . well more signs today that the u.s. and iran are inching closer to war this afternoon ronnie and warplanes spots a u.s. aircraft carrier crossing the strait of hormuz now the strait is critical because it's the only sea passage open to exporting open to the 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 the aircraft carrier iran says it spotted as part of the fifth fleet which is based in bahrain not too far away well

iran now flexing its muscles and threatening to cut off oil supply from the waterway this is a response of the blast imposing sanctions on the country and the u.s. is vowing to use its navy stationed in the persian gulf to stop iranians from blocking the passage in the wake of these events is this another sign that war with iran is just around the corner while to answer that question i spoke to senior fellow for the center of advanced studies 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 the same through there are 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 was 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 our value to do at the u.s. moves forward with these sanctions what effect will that have. a 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 word of this or the world therefore we would be hit but not nearly as bad as the rest of the planet so i think again i think all sides would have him hoping they will think this thing 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 i think the sanctions are really a paper tiger the people don't. 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 there's going to get way and let's talk bluntly about their nuclear program i'm one of those who believe based on my sources 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 if we're going to get in the ball in the on the converse i don't think the iranians really want to prompt it was a response to a degree which would result in them losing men material or military or capability want to talk about military capability of want to bring this up as they as they they spotted a u.s. aircraft carrier and the region i 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 and five for a gets two hundred twenty five vessels and warships but that is nothing compared to the u.s. 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 i want to get your reaction clearly we are at an advantage when it comes to being equipped. that's corrected 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 go there of course 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 advantage however it doesn't change the fact that they could badly hurt us by focusing on the stories of romo's 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 golf cart and pack certainly in fact 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. 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 tell petition 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 hugely 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 checkers 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 then 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 you know 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 study it's. also had an r.t. he's been labeled as just about everything except as a viable geo presidential candidate but is ron paul really as extreme as everyone's

making him out to be after the break we'll find out if some people are choosing to play dirty politics. new website with twenty force. seven live streaming news times what to do about the ongoing financial hardship unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never find on mainstream news. media the political. posturing on aren't just. lindsey lowe and you are paying the freight that is women nothing people are suggesting. you know she said she's a star. all

the attacks against presidential candidate ron paul just keep on coming since ron paul's surge in the polls in iowa seems the mainstream media has been focusing on taking him down hysteria 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 resonating with more and more americans today stopping the wars abroad shrinking government spending advocating civil civil liberties whereas the discussion on all of this in the mainstream media while to discuss this i spoke to journalist michael tracey take a listen. 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 vet him as they would any other candidate. ron paul actually has been leading the polls has been in

the top tier of the 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 past and sort out some of his lie that he's now ron paul he is seen as this fringe candidate as as kind of an extremist i'm quite far outside of the mainstream thinking 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 balanced approach as just just as the one we just we just pointed out. well i think it's very illuminating to consider what mainstream media figures. 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. fear 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 the 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 at 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 liabilities as they have with other candidates this is now being presented disingenuously as a shocking new revelation where as you 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 just 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 when i would even have people at the washington examiner phil cline 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. helped to bet 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 don't again fit neatly into the left right paradigm michael thank you so much for weighing in on 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 on the ballot in november but one political

group has already decided on their candidates the boston tea party picked two women to lead their ticket for the white house but can i third party really attract voters in a country divided mainly along democrat and republican lines well the answer guess that i spoke to darrell perry chair of the boston tea party here is what he had to say but we have a platform that a lot of americans agree with what we 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 the platform but they vote for the two established parties because they buy into the wasted vote dearie and we're trying to break that cycle and i mean how are you going to be able to break away from that cycle to 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 bailout 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 dri 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 the members of the house of representatives were reelected and sadly that was the lowest reelection rate since one thousand nine hundred fifty. and you know are fed up and they want to do it often i understand. a third to our your presidential nominee. what is that perhaps the other candidates do 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 felt. 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 of the presidential campaign so far well. this is just my opinion the only other good to be candid it within the two major parties is dorsey richardson and he's opposing barack obama in the democratic party primaries. 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 but the country is facing lots of changes and struggling to determine who's really in charge party is on the ground in libya when we come

back. to the. people calling what you said for free and fair elections. again we're still reporting from the. as you can hear behind me loud explosions. i don't. know you got it.

thank you there's always the red you know. 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 company like now because i'm lauren lyster. well libya is heading heading

into two thousand and twelve is a completely new country with new leaders and new hopes but as the immediate post a 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 airlines a putting tripoli back on their flight schedules the tripoli airport is once again buzzing with visitors a feller's have already within service and more expected to follow in the coming months but while flight controllers and customs officials are back of their desks it's still the militia who call the shots here and the rebels themselves admit that the situation is still way to trouble and to cede control to civilian authorities

they're no longer flashing their guns to get make it very clear who is in control here the rebel brigades from the western cd of the 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 something fifty thousand rise to national prominence since then does in time militia have successfully styled itself as the save guards of libya's future. for forty two years our country had nothing no state institutions just one and same person who ruled us now we have a historic mission to overcome the difficulties of the transitional period and build a new country and that i was will be upon us. is one of the top guns in tripoli these days primarily a colonel in the good after 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'm the dictator but if 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 is regime . their militias now represent the real axis of power in the country as their various and their legacy and agendas as this tribes on the only base new tricolor the prospect of civil war in libya is always there and it always has been there but it 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 of the armed assistant at his door is a sign that 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 and their province 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

intense and 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 rebels are screening passengers bags on to 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 human have glued the libyan society for several months if he's killing the former you need appears to have died as well in the work of art see tripoli. all that is going to do it for now more of the stories we covered you can head over to r.t. dot com slash u.s.a. and you can also check out our youtube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter as well the big picture with tom hartman is up

next for now have a great day. max kaiser this is the kaiser report somebody is doing something right because these brokerages are shrinking their become.