but accepting the setback to iran's nuclear program. and while tensions reach a boiling point in the persian gulf the new york times is once again in hot water this time for spreading false information about iran's nuclear program editor's note don't believe everything you read. it's thursday january twelfth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wall you're watching r.t. . well it's the video that sparked outrage all around the world u.s. marines urinating on what appears to be dead bodies of the taliban well such an embarrassing display of behavior by american soldiers surely is not helping to win the hearts of people abroad and it's likely to strain relations between washington and kobold this at a time washington aims to form some kind of a diplomatic relationship with the taliban but it isn't the first time you relating

acts by the u.s. military have been captured for the whole world to see brings back memories of the infamous case of agression who can forget these haunting images these photos were released back in two thousand and four from the aga group prison in baghdad american guards piled naked inmates into human pyramids and forced them into embarrassing positions apparently just for the fun of it and now do these acts serve as the best work recruiting tool for al qaeda and the taliban afghanistan war by jake deliberate joined joined me earlier to talk all about this. yeah i mean basically what happens when you go to war it brings out the worst of human behavior and from all sides from doesn't matter if you're the dominant side or the weak side and you could take i am and i was really the number two al qaida and you could and adam gadahn and the rest them you could give them a million dollars and send them out to a camp yard in the middle of iran and they could try to imagine the best way to to recruit more more al qaeda members and we could give them nothing better than what

we do when we have incidents like abu ghraib and this situation here this is the hugest recruitment for al qaida that we can do that anybody can do and where really what it shows is that the utility of open ended war long force. open into war and long occupations the utility of it is has very real limits and so the united states ought to take. the advice of people like me who have been there and bring the wars to an end it's in our best interest and it's in the best interests of the people over there as well so you know but what you're saying is the u.s. trying to fight terrorism but images like these are all encouraging it. yeah it's absolutely right and the reason is because images tell a bigger story images do great things to influence the psychology of. people that see that i mean and we can't control the media that. militants use in

other parts of the world and so they see this in the on all the all that the militancy is anti muslim anti arab anti pashtoon sentiment coming out of u.s. soldiers and and let's let it be known that the u.s. military is not a representation of what these people are but these people are a product of war and when you go to war barbaric human nature is brought out and i mean this isn't new the native americans how it were subject to scalping and did scalping themselves and there was the cutting off of the ears in in vietnam and there was a whole lot of barbaric prepares behavior that happens when you go to war now you can say that this is an isolated case that you know not necessarily this this doesn't necessarily represent all of soldiers in the u.s. military but the action of a few can have profound consequences how can this incite even more violence i mean in other words is this video going to cost more alliance. yes it will just show it

just to remind people of a few incidents that occurred a while back there was the burning of the koran that happened with. jerry jones as then there was the abu ghraib incident and before then there was the decision to invade iraq that had nothing to do with nine eleven so all of these these situations pile on and they add up and what happens is al qaida and other terrorist organizations and using this video and they put it in their recruiting videos end up on you tube and across the jihad of web channels and they end up reading anti-american sentiment and all over time this is a way to radicalize and recruit young people to join in the suicide terrorist activity and it should be in the it should be absolutely. spoken against by the department of defense and. right now i think they have been

kind of incompetent on it they say well we're looking into it no they just simply need to say this is absolutely horrible and we're going to go after these guys. jake i want to bring up a couple of recent statistics some about relations between people from muslim countries and western nations in the last about half say that the relationship between the two groups is generally bad but about forty three percent say it's generally god but in places like pakistan and lebanon and much smaller amount of people think there is a good relationship with the west other interesting findings the majority of muslims believe and negative stereotypes of the west that people from the west are selfish violent and greedy. now it's no secret that the taliban has this anti western agenda and they aim to spread this anti-american sentiment you know and when we see a video like this this serves to push that agenda. absolutely i mean you know the

gallup poll did galloping around the world at the polls and polled the islamic world and asked you know the greater part of a billion people what do you think the united states than as the data you just represented showed that. muslims across the world have a problem with what the government does not the american people but what our government does and the policies of the united states government is absolutely atrocious with dealing with the especially the middle east and also in pakistan and videos like this only make it worse it's one of the worst things we can do it is like the most colossal display of stupidity based upon our government to continue doing the same old policies and it's interesting this is an election season and you know there's only one person right now that speaking about doing something different besides the status quo and that's ron paul and he's sort of being booed out of the room as well so i don't think things are going to change that much unless of course there's a dramatic shift in the leadership you know jake it's interesting because i was reading some of the comments on response to this story and not everybody is

discussed sad about this story and you see remarks like you know with a. you know that this is just the nature of war you're dealing with the enemy and if you look at the other side there's examples of horrific acts on the part of the taliban. you know what do you say to that argument we all i mean that's something to think about because i mean when those four blackwater agents were drug the streets of baghdad few years back and. gary gordon and randy sugar in mogadishu were drugs in the streets yeah ok war does bring out bad human behavior but no this nobody in the united states military is trained to pee on dead people this is the behavior of ill disciplined soldiers under my opinion are probably also suffering from a severe amount of p.t.s.d. from long ended war and what happens when you suffer from p.t.s.d. you and the dehumanizing other human beings in the battlefield and it's. and it's

a un fathomable how pathetic this is become because the war hasn't been brought to an end like obama said he was going to do and what we've seen abu ghraib happen twice now in afghanistan so there should be outrage both of our from americans and from muslims and also anybody that says oh this is justified it's war i would challenge them to go to marine corps boot camp and go find out that marines are not trained to do this sort of thing this is the behavior of p.t.s.d. and ill discipline soldiers and jake you know this comes at a time that the u.s. is inching closer to forming peace talks with the taliban trying to form some kind of a dialogue with this group how can something like this affect any possibility of dialogue happening with a grab well it's interesting i actually think that this this can can damage it a little bit but the taliban are no stranger to barbaric behavior remember the the acid they threw in the woman's face that was on time magazine a few weeks back in the cutting off of the ears and and all of that so the taliban

are not are not shy on cruel human activity themselves but i actually think that with the greatest thing that's preventing us from bringing peace is a drone strikes that are occurring inside of pakistan and that we've seen drone strikes there's been an increase in punjab the violence in the middle of pakistan there's been insurgency has increased it hasn't decreased and the myths and the reason why is we're killing we have accidentally killed civilians inside of afghanistan and pakistan and afghanistan that have agave in the rear the taliban recruiting tool just like this video does so it's not that the taliban are so concerned about it but rather it gives them power in the negotiating because it just makes more people not like the united states that was afghanistan. well it sounds like something straight out of a thriller someone secretly attacked as a bomb to an iranian scientists car the explosion killing him now the scientists wasn't just any scientists mustapha rashawn was the director of iran's

a rainy and your radium enrichment facility so those skeptical of iran's nuclear program believe he is a key figure in creating a nuclear bomb for the country and it's not the first time this has happened it's happened to three other iranian scientists killed almost the same way all under mysterious circumstances so it's hard to believe it's all a coincidence and this goes down as tensions escalate between iran and the u.s. and israel over iran's nuclear enrichment program the u.s. has threatened to impose sanctions on the country and is encouraging its allies to do the same but now turkey is pushing back turkey who imports oil and gas from iran is refusing to take action against the country beyond the un mandated seeing sions meanwhile iran is firing back threatening to block the strait of hormuz a critical waterway where twenty percent of the world's oil passes through so what could possibly be behind this latest attack while to get some answers i spoke to jamal of the policy director for the national iranian american council take

a listen. the united states has actually come out very forcefully and said we are not behind this secretary clinton yesterday categorically denied that the u.s. had any involvement in this and i think that that's very telling this assassination comes just weeks before planned to go she asians between iran and the u.s. the p five plus one and so. while there's a lot of informed speculation nobody knows quite who was behind this but i think that what the consensus is that whoever was behind this is less interested in setting back you grans nuclear program and more interested in setting back possible ratcheting down of tensions between iran and the united states and you know this is something that the g.o.p. candidates would celebrate presumably especially at let's take a listen to some of the rhetoric coming from the very talented but take a listen. well there have been scientists. in russia and in iran there have been

computer viruses there have been problems at their facility i hope that the united states has been involved with maximum covert operations. to block the iranian program we would be moving taking out their scientists including breaking up their systems all of it covertly all of it deny. all of it covertly all of it. i mean when you hear this coming out of the g.o.p. candidates i mean this is exactly what's going on. i love to see president newt gingrich deny taking covert actions after going on stage and saying he would indorse that this is. the fact the matter is that the hardliners on all sides who don't want to see any kind of negotiated resolution who don't want to see iran brought some way into the fold and want to see this tension escalate want to keep iran sort of outside of the security status quo in the middle east are supportive of these actions and that's why you have speculation that perhaps israel was behind

this perhaps. a terrorist organization that is dedicated to overthrowing the iranian government and preventing a reproach mom between the u.s. and iran are behind this or you even have people who think that perhaps hardliners in the iranian government were behind this because they're more interested in preventing any kind of talks and be able to create a security environment within iran where they can crack down on on dissidents and use the threat of an external you know a war with the united states or external threats to actually consolidate their control so in every instance all the speculation falls on those who want to see a continued escalation of hostilities so you're saying the line of asian may not be necessarily to halt a nuclear program but just to further strain the relationship between the west and iran i believe that this attack is more about sabotaging talks sabotaging. negotiations that it is about sabotaging iran's nuclear program because i mean it's

interesting. targeting scientists if you take out a nuclear scientist i mean how effective would that really be and halting a program if there was one you know this might have an incremental effect it might set iran back a little bit but we also know that iran is going to double down and actually probably be more inclined to accelerate its nuclear program if it believes that it's under threat the entire rationale for potentially pursuing a nuclear weapon would be. the need for a nuclear deterrent and if you were on believes that the united states policy is one regime change or one of the hostilities into a war there would be more inclined to pursue a nuclear weapon and we have to remember that you know leon panetta the defense secretary went on one on face the nation just this past weekend and said iran does not have a nuclear weapons program they have not yet made the decision to take their nuclear program which currently is for civilian purposes and to convert that into

a nuclear weapons program if you want to convince iran to make that move continue down the path we're on now despite as you just said the defense secretary denying that iran is trying to make a nuclear weapon we do hear remarks like this let's take a listen on fox news recently john bolton the former u.s. ambassador to the u.n. said this. half measures like assassinations or sanctions are only going to are only going to produce the crisis more quickly the better way to prevent iran from getting nuclear weapons is to attack its nuclear weapons program directly. so he is suggesting that we attack them directly he's saying that what we're seeing so far is not enough i mean what do you make of rhetoric like that basically pushing just to go out to go to war at this all out push for war i'll give john bolton this he at least is not guilty of intellectual dishonesty that those who are advocating

for these so-called half measures that really are a means of ratcheting up to war he's not he's not mincing his words he's saying really what the agenda is which is an all out war with iraq. i think that that would be disastrous but i credit him for actually acknowledging that that is what the agenda is being honest about it is not so at least according to this covertly let's try to keep it a secret is just putting it all out there and saying well what the intention is he's been advocating for a balmy run for years now and those of us who are calling for diplomacy and saying that these sanctions are really just a trajectory to war similar to the trajectory we were on with iraq are in the opposite camp but at least it's clear where where the two camps are when john bolton comes out and says this is about going to war with iran now all this is happening while another coincidence takes place right now in the water in the near iraq are two u.s.

aircraft carriers and supposedly a third one is on the way coincidence or is there something else going on is this more than just a military exercise i don't know about the details of why those carriers were pulled in there the united states has denied that it has anything to do with the threat from iran of blocking the strait of hormuz. but i do find it hard to believe that when you have defense of fish. going on t.v. and saying we will not permit for the strait to be blocked off. that these actions don't necessarily coincide with some attempts to prevent that from happening should it escalate to that point i don't personally believe that iran would take that step but the threat has been leveled and the united states is working to assert credibly that they won't allow that to happen especially as we see oil prices sort of skyrocketing now because of these tensions so now a lot of people say that there is this cold war happening and we are seeing this escalating tension i what point do we see an all out war between the u.s.

and israel and iran well there are several sort of inflection points i think that if israel did decide to. there's a potential israel could decide to strike iran iran has made a move in the past week to put some of its enrichment activities into this bunker in the fordo facility and that has been described israel as giving iran nuclear immunity it's a facility that would be very difficult to strike militarily particularly for israel to strike and to take out with their capabilities so the likelihood of an israeli strike has actually i think increased because of that and it's a matter of how long before that immunity for iran's nuclear program sets in. i would also you know i would say given what has happened with his assassination given that the united states has come out so forcefully against it and denounced it if this was israel that was behind the assassination it lends some real doubt about

how much the united states can constrain israeli actions against iran and so it creates some real worries that. a strike that is not supported by the defense establishment in the united states and a lot of the civilian establishment could go forward very interesting jamal thank you once again for coming on the show that was policy director for the national iranian american council jamal. anderson between the u. . in iran is being ratcheted up on what seems like a daily basis the u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton added fuel to the fire calling terrans recent threat to close a vital oil transit engulfed in the goal returns a route in the gulf a provocation artie's going to chicken takes a look at whether a war of words could translate to an all out war. the cold run of tension between iran and the west is simmering it. seems the slightest increase of heat could make it boil over into an all out confrontation. where we'll be that boiling point the

point of no return we're getting closer and closer to war with iran the iranians are playing with fire problems in a crisis if you get where any small thing can really set it off and it doesn't tell washington that the international nuclear watchdog these i'm sorry closely monitoring iran's nuclear activities are trying to develop a nuclear weapon but we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability and that's what concerns us and our red line to iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon iran's main source of livelihood its oil exports is in danger the u.s. is imposing fresh sanctions that will dramatically complicate transactions that you grand central bank iran is also close to losing europe as a customer the reason that this is happening is that this is the logical conclusion of our current strategy against iran we have sanctions in place with no diplomacy the only way that that is through confrontation cornered by crippling sanctions he

runs directly to block the strait of hormuz why don't more oil artery through which a sixth of the world's oil is should the u.s. replied by moving its principally to the region and saying if iran goes forward they will attack experts say the policy of isolating iran may lead to other threats from tehran and the possibility that one day they will go through with their threats but washington signals that it's ready or it wants everybody to believe that it's ready could way if we had to without using nuclear weapons ourselves take out their their nuclear capability well i certainly want them to believe that that's the case well is that i absolutely want them to believe that it's secretary would you. not believe. it's just a war of words and neither sign for an all out conflict entering what a disaster it will be. frankly speaking this tension is artificial it doesn't

have to happen it doesn't need to exist the iranians would do themselves an enormous a rabbi saying unless. we would do ourselves a favor by ignoring most of it all of this size surely i think is connected to israel and the israeli fear of iran for rhetorical reasons more than military ones it may be a war of words but actions are already showing thousands of u.s. troops are being deployed to this room an american citizen has been sentenced to death in the rand convicted of espionage iran might feel cornered and therefore make drastic moves right now it's in a war of words but one bullet shot and the powder keg can blow up the question is what's going to provide that deadly spark i'm going to check our reporting from washington our team. of the new york times in hot water again this time for misquoting a report that details iran's nuclear program the times reported as fact that there is proof iran is developing nuclear weapons here is that quote now stirring

controversy it reads quote the threat from iran and develop at the west and at israel combined with a recent assessment by the international atomic energy agency that iran's nuclear program has a military objective is becoming an important issue in the american presidential campaign now the problem with that is that the i.a.e.a. report does not make that accusation nowhere as a confirm that iran's nuclear program has a military objective so what is behind this journalism blunder and is there more behind this so-called mistake well to help answer that i spoke to robert naiman policy director for just foreign policy here's his take. well i think it's very telling and it's clearly not just simply a mistake if we were just simply a mistake then the new york times would have corrected your article given a clear correction you know another context the new york times every makes mistakes

right newspapers make mistakes but other context the new york times reports to be quite until it is about correcting mistakes in this context what they did was remove the paragraph from the article if you go you go to the website now that paragraph not in the article anymore but there's no editors no a narrative any correction and then we explain to anyone oh you know we had this before we don't have it now and here's why and then i think is even more telling than the fact that that paragraph. occurred in the first place we are in the united states in the context of a concerted campaign to her raise distinctions between what is known about iran's nuclear program and what some people allege about iran's nuclear program. so for example you know we have. defense secretary

panetta went on to feed our defense secretary was on face the nation on sunday and he said europe what are they trying to build to develop a nuclear weapon no and the very next night p.b.s. news hour edited out that statement by panetta and then used his remarks to try and argue the opposite as fairness and accuracy in reporting noted we didn't alert p.b.s. on this and received any response so this is part of a pattern in the us media and it's certainly part of a pattern in the presidential campaign with republican presidential candidates not all of them number one paul but. rick santorum for example. when they meet the press and said well how would i be different from president obama well i would tell the iranians you have to open up your nuclear facilities to inspection or i'm going to bomb their wants nuclear fuel so we are already under un inspection

n.b.c. should have corrected but they did so this is part of a pattern see over and over immediately well as you just detailed this pattern of bad journalism behavior talk about the danger of reporting as fact that iran is developing a nuclear weapon when at this point it's not a fact it's an accusation so there is a difference between the two. it's you it's an extremely important distinction. because in the united states it is there's a widespread view particularly among the elites in the u.s. government state is openly that if you were going to to develop a nuclear weapon that is a cause as believe that is a cause of war no of course there is nothing international law that says that the united states or israel or any other country has a right to bomb iran or anybody else. if they try to develop a nuclear weapon there's nothing meant bt there's nothing in the un charter your

church says you're not supposed to go on bombing of those countries but who grows their fact political reality in the united states that it leads to see this as a cause cause this belly so that's why the distinction is so important for the war if your goal is to deter iran from developing a nuclear weapon iran isn't in fact doing then that distinction is important to you because if you raise the distinction you're saying well it's too late they've already gone all the way there's no power the military competition and there's no incentive for anyone to do anything besides develop a nuclear weapon you know pay all the consequences anyway then you're the messenger so send your letters well you might as well do anything because we're going to punish you as if you were doing anything regardless of which kid. that was policy director for just foreign policy or auburn amen and that is going to do it for the

news tonight the big picture is coming up in just a half an hour tonight gets hell sam sachs will take a closer look at how wisconsin governor scott walker is doing the texas two step but the koch brothers all in the quest for cash and later later on health sit down weapons or about a state representative jefferson smith a take a closer look at how well. inequality in the u.s. isn't just a problem it's an epidemic. but for more of the stories we covered got our t. dot com slash usa and check out our you tube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter at liz wahl for now have a great night. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charming welcome to the big picture.

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