and he was one of the journalists who helped change the course of the u.s. war in afghanistan with nothing more than his words now he's got a few more this time to journalist and the media establishment here in d.c. we'll speak to rolling stone a contributor michael hastings about how the mainstream press and like a megaphone for the establishment. and sold to the highest a bitter american politics seem to have a price tag these days ever since the supreme court ruling making corporations people but as politicians rake in the dough something well it's just not adding up we'll explain. thanks for watching it's wednesday january eleventh eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine of any watching our t.v. well it looks like the pentagon has potentially a nasty scandal on its hands another one that is that the u.s. marine corps says that it is investigative

a shocking forty second video that surfaced today on lively going elsewhere on the internet in what appears to be u.s. soldiers urine eating on dead bodies in afghanistan how's that for winning hearts and minds for the video that you're about to see here there it is shows four men in full combat gear standing over three corpses relieving themselves it seems the men appeared to be joking during the incident at one point you can even hear one of the soldiers say have a great day buddy now the video does prove to be a legitimate some experts say that it's desecration it could even constitute as a war crime the anonymous person who posted it included the caption scout sniper team for with the third battalion second marines out of camp peeing on dead taliban's now the video and photos are sure to further and further relations that are already strained between washington and kabul and of course the bring back memories of another embarrassing pentagon scandal the abu ghraib photographs from iraq back in two thousand and four we're going to keep you posted as the story

develops. right was supposed to be a short term fix a place to keep prisoners captured as a part of this so-called global war on terror of course they've gone tom obey prison saw the arrival of its first detainees ten years ago today since then the base in cuba the american base in cuba has seen more than seven hundred people come through its doors today one hundred and seventy one detainees remain even though more than half of them have been fully cleared for release few of them are going to see home any time soon now of course we've heard president obama say numerous times that he would love to close down the infamous prison but again the facility seems to be more established than ever now air force colonel morris davis resigned from his position of guantanamo bay as the chief prosecutor of the military commissions there back in two thousand and seven once a staunch supporter of the military prison and he then spoke out against that establishment's speaking out against what he said political interference in the military commissions of guantanamo with prisoners now he was at this morning's

protests here in washington d.c. one of numerous protests around the globe including some in london over the prison and he joined us in the studio earlier one of the first questions i posed to him was what does dick want tunnel bay prison symbolize in his view today take a look. well i think what it symbolizes now after a decade exactly a decade today is that we turned our back on the law you know for two hundred years in america that's what made us exceptional and unique was we stood on the law and then after nine eleven people were scared and they were politicians at the good vantage that fear and pick guantanamo because they thought it was outside the reach of the law so for a decade it's become a symbol of turning our back on our strength which is the law and you know it's one thing to talk with the political climate that took place right after the terrorist attacks but we've essentially changed that it's right i mean the country we haven't seen another attack on our soil things have changed why do you think there isn't

more of a sort of public outcry or reaction to the fact that the president remains well it's interesting to go back to two thousand and eight member president bush before he left office said he want to close guantanamo and they had both candidates you know john mccain and barack obama bipartisan want to close guantanamo and president obama took office on the order and then immediately the far right dick cheney liz cheney in that group went on the offensive in for trade this to the american public is either you're with us or you're with the terrorists you know there was only one of two choices and the president didn't stand up and tell the other side of the stories i think a majority the american public bought that narrative and they think these men are the worst of the worst they don't realize a majority eighty nine of the hundred seventy one of them cleared you know through the cia and d.o.j. and d.o.d. and all the other agencies has said they didn't commit an offense we're not going to charge and they're not a threat and we don't want to keep them the congress is now locked them in a kuantan of most soley because of their citizenship messes not american values you

know it's well unfortunate kind of understandable that people wouldn't really pay attention to something that doesn't seem to affect their everyday lives and talk about u.s. citizens but it also seems like the laws been expanded and shifted in a way that could theoretically put american citizens. risk of suffering similar fate to guantanamo i mean is that just a totally crazy idea or is that only we could see down the line i think you're exactly right benjamin franklin said you know if people are willing to compromise their liberty for their security they deserve neither for the past decade and people rightfully were scared after nine eleven but they fear has continued and they've let things like the patriot act and the drone missile program and targeting americans without trial and guantanamo to remain you know every once in awhile like the tenth anniversary a few people pay attention to come tomorrow and majority the public will be out of sight and out of mind again for another year and that is scary implications and in terms of who is a terrorist i mean that's one thing when it's

a fight abroad but what if i don't know occupy wall street are going to be party i mean. how how broadly could could could this hold terrorist definition issue be expanded what is i think some people take a little comfort in that president obama is the decision maker but if you get a rick perry or michele bachmann or rick someone like that who you know they're vents now in the debates the applause lines are you know how many people have been executed in reviving torture i mean that's what people are cheering for earlier actually on this program we're talking about the issue with iran there's the iranian scientist to die an explosion there some potential connections to israel or the u.s. and we had newt gingrich i believe it was that rick santorum saying i hope that the u.s. played a role in this you know if this is a bad country and we should be doing things like that for our safety this is posturing is political posturing pandering to figure things for the national defense authorization act was it doesn't really accomplish anything but it allows the politicians to go home and say hey look how tough i am on terrorism nobody

wants to campaign in two thousand and twelve and i stood up for the rights of detainees but it's not just the detaining rights as american values that you know the laws are strength not something to fear and that's what we've done for the past decade reminds me of that saying well as i kept silent when they came for the jews i am silent when they came for this special. yeah exactly i mean you know it's easy to kind of say you know these guys are the worst of the worst and as long as you keep me safe in i don't care what you do you can tell is your son or daughter and then this a different story and you mention a rammy the state department this week was critical of iran they've convicted an american citizen in this unfortunate the circumstances but if you look at the criticism that our government has levied against iran that you know it was apprehension under questionable circumstances a shoddy procedure conducted in secret with inadequate defense and of course confession sounds a lot like guantanamo i mean we're willing to tolerate it when we do it but then we condemn it when others do and i just talk or see of is certainly an important one i

mean but there's also the financial cost this is the most expensive prison in the world is it like eight hundred thousand dollars a year per prisoner and this is hard to calculate exactly what we spend on one ton of it because you know it's a navy base but you know the cia and department of justice the f.b.i. and the coast guard a number of agencies that are separately funded that roughly one hundred forty million dollars a year three hundred seventy one detainees eighty nine of those have been cleared for release of the really eighty two people that we want to keep locked up and if you do the math on that we're spending about one and three quarter million dollars per person to keep them locked in a federal prison here in the u.s. the cost is about thirty thousand dollars per person and at the rate we're going i mean do you think we'll ever see it shot up i don't know i made to give up hope you know. churchill said never never never quit so i'm going to keep fighting the fight and like congressman randy mentioned in your lead in piece i mean i was at the talk yesterday that he gave and i was encouraged that there are some sane members of

congress that are willing to stand up and try to do the right thing now before we wrap up the interview i want to bring in the the issue of sort of we talk a little bit about symbolism of what went on at one time in our present. and it's a black mark of course on our reputation abroad not just in terms of implications for the rule of law here at home. there's another unfortunate video that i want to briefly pull up i don't know if we have that on the screen that came out today it's purports to show u.s. soldiers i think we're seeing right now apparently of possibly urinating on dead bodies the marine corps flatly and investigating the issue what do you what's your reaction to this you haven't actually seen it. i saw online that it was mentioned and it is unfortunate i mean hopefully it will be investigated and if people would say it is what it appears to be people will be held accountable my concern is like now we've got the trial going on in washington state the last guy from the head of the massive accountability seems to be imposed at the bottom but never at the top

so the people that allow this atmosphere to be created where anything goes and does geneva conventions are quaint. ought to be held accountable to and not just the folks at the bottom of the totem pole and you know unfortunately at the end of the day the even if something like this is investigated symbols matter just like on one of those a symbol of abu ghraib was a symbol this is a symbol and we can only hope that more people start paying attention to issues like this with work like what you do thank you so much for your time i really do appreciate and i'm pleased. i will more than ten years ago american warplanes began to pummel taliban positions across afghanistan in what became the first stage of america's longest war billions of dollars and countless afghan not to mention american lives later the war drags on and while an end is technically in sight for us forces victory whatever that means in afghanistan is not so how do we get here and what is in store for the future of that country for the answer we decided to

turn to one reporter who's watched it all unfold both on the ground and among the pentagon's top brass michael hastings penned the infamous rolling stone article that helped end the career of general general stanley mcchrystal he's now expanded that story and his experiences in afghanistan the coins the strategy so-called a counterinsurgency strategy and what he calls the media military industrial complex into a new book it's called the operators the wild and terrifying inside story of america's war in afghanistan when it comes to that country what went wrong here's his take. i think there's a pretty strong case you made that after september eleventh the united states had to respond in some kind of way militarily against the taliban because they were harboring osama bin laden i think what happened was we went totally off course after that our whole premise on going to afghanistan this idea we were going to avoid a void a quagmire literally defense secretary donald rumsfeld said it's not a quagmire and anyone who said at the time we're going to get into a quagmire this in two thousand when it was mocked in the right as

a fool and an idiot and you know a nut and of course at the time when we had you know american flags on every single network and god forbid you criticize any sort of policy that the states takes because it's the war on terror exactly and for sure now ten years later you we found ourselves in a quagmire more disturbingly in two thousand and nine when president obama faced the decision about whether or not to escalate in afghanistan they even said they knew we're going to a quagmire but we're going to go into it anyway but what was i mean could you pinpoint a specific mistake made at least by this administration and was that was the escalation itself wrong should he have pulled out completely what i think he should i mean in an ideal world i would have loved to see them pull out completely yes i think the mistake that the white house made was underestimating the desire and will of the pentagon to want to escalate the war in afghanistan and the white house believed when they took over that oh if we give if we give the pentagon no they're twenty one thousand troops which obama did right away then you know check

afghanistan or done let's move on to health care and these other issues what happened was the military came back and said no it's not enough those twenty thousand are enough we want a hundred thousand and so within the first year of obama's presidency he has tripled the scope and size of the conflict in afghanistan that's a major ask less escalation that's more then the escalation in iraq which the surge is only another twenty thousand thirty thousand more troops so you went from one hundred two hundred thirty thousand troops where in afghanistan you went from thirty thousand to close to a hundred thousand plus about fifty thousand more nato soldiers so the mistake was underestimating the pentagon and. what about the so-called strategy and this is going to be the gentler face of american war fare or total nonsense i mean coin the idea is a famous phrase winning hearts and minds but essentially what it is it's the way for the american military to make the natives behave in a way they want them to behave by using violence and and bribery and other forms of coercion this idea that counterinsurgency is some sort of friendly gentle face of war is not even supported by the facts more afghan civilians are killed under

general mcchrystal is counterinsurgency plan than under the previous general who was due also doing counterinsurgency as well but just not not on the on the grand scale and in iraq also when david petraeus took over there what you saw in the surge was a lot of a lot of violence and what i mean also gave birth to our so-called man in kandahar right you know you have afghans who we are now trusting with taking over in the country essentially torturing and committing the same kinds of sense that we're supposedly protecting directly doing it so one of the scenes i have in the book which now the book we're talking here pretty heavy policy so what i wanted to write a book was about kind of these wild and crazy guys boozing it up running around europe running around the world you know figuring out the best ways to kill people and run the war and that's what this book's really about like after a decade of war what sorts of people rise to the top and how did we get there but yes there are man in kandahar a guy named abdul razak is a known war an old war criminal known human rights abuse or known drug smuggler i met him hung out with him he's a charming guy yeah you don't you don't you don't get to become

a thirty three year old you know local commander without local warlord without without some charisma he's the he's the guy we've embraced not only we've embraced him to trace has met with him one on one essentially and given him and rolled out the red carpet form and this is the same guy that group ordeal and it just came out a couple months ago who is was literally torturing people himself with cigarettes. and this is the guy we're giving millions of dollars to giving him special forces assets giving him jeeps and you know so you could buy a scene in the book where he shows. his diamond encrusted watch and i showed him my watch as well so you know this idea that the military tries to steal us and folks in washington try to sell this counterinsurgency as this warm and friendly thing. i said was nonsense and it's trying to put distance between what we're doing and what our allies on the ground are doing and what i what i sort of say in the book and what i do say is that there's no distance there were complicit and any human rights

abuse that goes on by people we're funding and training were complicit in that and we can tell ourselves we're not but we be lying to ourselves and those are strong words but you know of course it's very difficult for american citizens who have plenty to worry about and in terms of domestic issues to really get a grasp on what's going on in a country like afghanistan i'm sure if you could even put the place on the map perhaps not now but. the point that i want to raise i mean that's what we have journalists right and so you're supposedly supposed to have these journalists that tell us the situation like it is and yet when you came out with your article granted it was more of a reaction i guess to the terminology used by mcchrystal and his aides there was a firestorm and in the media establishment why did you feel so many from the feathers i first response i was somewhat surprised by the response a i didn't think democrats would ever get fired i thought he was untouchable but when some of my colleagues started coming out in kind of attacking the story my first

response was oh i guess the i can't even the bit of the death so you know they don't really understand maybe they didn't understand what i was doing or but as it went on the response and there's sort of response from the media kind of continued and i should say it's a pretty small slice the media but influential what a pretty it's vocal one vocal you know the pentagon press corps. the nationalist some national security reporters who were sort of the ones who were the most sort of vocal about it and look as a journalist i look i criticize you all the time so i'm not too shocked when i go there's no. just someone saying that michael hastings you did a bad boy you should know things i mean we're talking about a war that's cost billions that that's resulted and thousands of lives lost most of these pentagon reporters have indorsed been kind of complicit in waging this is this was my insight if you can call it that. it's called the pentagon press corps right and so one would assume they have a watchdog function as in to look over the pentagon but in fact what has become is

that the pentagon press corps is just an extension of the pentagon itself and so you don't have critical coverage which you have coverage is just essentially it's not it's not necessary because sometimes they do break stories but it but it's not the kind of stories that i don't think are two that are very helpful to what did to information people need to know to make informed decision what's the what's the implications for us as people i think the implication is that you need to i mean i question how do you get around it i think my my goal would be to sort of support journalists who are doing the hard work matt matt akins at the atlantic there's a number charlie savage at the new york times glenn greenwald i'm salon who really and there's a number of other journalists who are out there kind of hacking away at this stuff . you sort of you have to sort of support those journalists as well as that the other journalists know you're in on their little game and i'm happy for them you know if they want to have a nice career and write kind of b.s.

like do that but then if i'm doing something a little different you know i would prefer them to that's i mean that's not even journalism when you go in supposedly to expose the power i mean these are the same types of and i want to it's not so much about the individual reporters but we saw the same sort of reaction for example to wiki leaks to you know the julian assange scandal to. politicians like ron paul or dennis kucinich say what you will about their policies it almost seems like anytime someone comes out and says something that goes against the the mainstream narrative they're exiled to some sort of a hearing. yes i don't see that really changing do you i think well i think the way to change it is i mean in the back in the day if you did something like this i would have been hammered and buried but now there's enough other outlets out where you can actually who will defend you who put you on t.v. who put you on the radio show who will support you on twitter facebook and other social media so there is i think is opening for the sort of golden age the kind of where is this to get this but it's an uphill it's an uphill battle you know i mean

the lesson the reason why the response was so severe in my case or in a case like the leaks we gradually manning and julian assange is because they want to set an example they want to show oh no you can't do this you can actually report what powerful people say you can't rip you can't try to write as accurately and as truthful as possible at these people because if you do you will be exiled but that's that's no longer the case and in fact what i've tried to do and show with this book is look you know i'm still alive i'm still standing to have put a drone strike out on me yet i'm not in get low you know i've yet i still get invited to the cool parties occasionally. at the white house of course wants to know are there the christian part of the white house i people in the government still talk to me on a regular basis you can do it you know you can do it and the reason i know that is because other journalists who come before me have done it david however spin. so i her she's a people who showed that you can be very critical and fair to those in power and

still and still have a career as a journalist now before we wrap up the interview i mean i know your book is sort of about we've see it in the past but where we left afghanistan today what do you see as the path forward do you see things spiraling out of control even worse is there any sort of forward what's what does the future hold i think president obama's remarks that the tide of war is receding is quite telling that for all intents and purposes the afghan war is essentially over it's on the glide path down it's like iraq two thousand and eight two thousand and nine. what's going to happen after we leave or after we draw down to a lower presence my guess is just sort of some sort of low level civil war that's going to continue on and it's not going to be we're not going to be able to see too much of a difference i wouldn't think. that being said i think you have a situation where as long as the characters as long as american soldiers aren't getting killed then most then we can constantly are doing our fighting for us than these kinds of wars are. fine and mighty good if drones or the afghan army

are sort of different proxy forces we have if they're the ones dying then then we have an american public and they have very high tolerance to allow this stuff to go on for a long time and so what's replaced point i mean is that you know the forget about troops on the ground let's do you know electronic while it's going to be the phrase a detour is c.t. plus it was vice president biden biden's plan it's a plan they should have adopted when obama took over and essentially it's small groups of special forces supplement my drones and training the afghan army and police to do their to do their bidding for them or to do their own fighting for them and i think and i think that's you know if you're going to be waging a war at least you know do it on the cheap you know and not try to kill as many people as we have been. and that was rolling stone reporter and the author of a new book called the operators michael hastings. all right well the war is no

doubt expensive but hey so is politics in fact it is money is under the influence in politics that is in part what gave birth to the occupy wall street movement of course while the protests may not be changing policy yet they are at least forcing the question of whether this country stands for the best government or the best government that money can buy but that happens to be the name of a documentary by filmmaker francis madani with whom we interviewed about a year ago about the corrupting influence that money plays in politics because everything changed for the better since then well that is exactly the question that we posed to him we brought him back earlier today and here's his answer. well it's got a lot worse and in fact i'm revising my film to reflect that because the decision by the supreme court in january last year in the citizens united case has opened the floodgates to a complete torrent of corporate money and this is corporate money which is not accounted for it's not limited and it's already beginning to distort the process

and we could see that in the iowa caucuses and we're going to see much more in the rest of the run up to the actual presidential election where you'll see it again in this world now one of the things that has also changed since we last spoke to us of course the the rise of the occupy wall street movement what's your reaction to that and do you see this as a potential force in and potentially starting to sort of if not change the narrative the start of some changes in this money politics relationship that seems to be getting more and more complex. no i'm afraid i don't i think that they're a very unfocused group and that when they went to wall street they should have gone to k. street if you don't like what the banks are doing it's perfectly legally then you have to get the law changed and the only way you're going to get the law changed if you is if you bring some pressure on the people for whom we vote and of course you run into an enormous problem with lobbying and campaign finance because the only

people who can change the law is not the electors it's not going to be the supreme court in spite of the citizens united decision i'm sure that will be overturned somehow it's a five hundred thirty five people we can vote for and they have a vested interest in keeping things exactly the way they are they don't want to change the system well on that point of the occupiers are of course can be heading down to washington d.c. on january seventeenth will be covering that for us if they raise any more attention to the issue but you know it's not necessarily the money itself that's the problem here right i mean it's part of the issue is who is giving it to the candidates and what exactly we they need x. expecting in return so talk a little bit more about about that i mean it's not about campaign for donations right at about corporations lobbyist vested interest to expect some sort of a return on that and those types of investments break that down for us. i'm afraid

i have to disagree with the slightly that because what you're talking about is the issue transparency whether we know who's giving the money it really doesn't matter the fact that the citizens united ruling was swept away completely we still have a totally rotman corrupt system which we've created so different then you will learn giving money let's just say you know we weren't in a recession and individuals were getting these millions and millions and thousands of dollars in the weren't those limits when they're not necessarily be a problem with that because then congress would be responsive to the people as opposed to say i don't know goldman sachs or some lobbying firm that has some vested interest in some i don't know airplane military airplane part well how about newt gingrich's friend who's got a vested interest in newt gingrich who's given him three hundred fifty million dollars to try and rescue is hopes in south carolina or jeffrey katzenberg who last year you know the c.e.o. of. dream works animation who last year gave obama's super pac two

million dollars i don't think we want to live in a country in which you know the desires and wishes of see those and multi millionaires and billionaires are controlling the way we live well i would agree with you there but i it's easy to sort of give lip service to the ideal of getting money out of politics but for example buddy roemer the former louisiana governor has made that the central primary key point of his campaign and he's barely a blip on the national radar how do you actually go about implementing this. well this is where you run into difficulty with the constitution because you have a situation in which the elected members want things to stay the way they are and the rest of us are beginning to want to change them now the only way to change this is going to be to amend the constitution in some way to have a constitutional amendment which is a huge thing to do and trying to amend the constitution you know has many many

distinguished failures in its past like the quill rights amendment which is still never been ratified so i think that that is the only way to change it is to get the constitution amended and people are very reluctant to get into that well and do you even get the sense that regular people i mean folks are worried about the financial crisis right now they're worried about you know putting food on the table and keeping jobs getting jobs is this even an issue that's resonating with the american people. no i don't think it is but i don't think it's resonating with them because i think they actually don't know about it before i started to research my film and i flattered myself that i was fairly well informed politically and i didn't realize that lobbyists can write and do write the speeches that are made in congress they write the laws very frequently the exact wording of the clauses which govern our lives i think if people knew about that they certainly wouldn't like it. certainly wouldn't like it that was filmmaker francis ghani well fortunately that does it for

now the big picture that's coming up in just about a half an hour guest host sam sachs will be talking about his favorite topic the global apocalypse something having to do with the doomsday clock or something or other that's been keeping sam up at night but you'll have to tune in to find out why of course for more on the stories we've covered you can go to our t dot com slash usa and check out our you tube page to you tube dot com slash r t america and as always you can follow me on twitter at lucy calf enough to find out what stories i'm paying attention to and weigh in on anything you've seen tonight have a great night stay tuned. good. question is that so much china can we should call the white man a company or a republican party presidential contenders are falling over themselves in their support of israel is this a reflection of close ignorance of history in the israeli.