to military documents and now the man is being court martialed we'll show you just how far the u.s. is willing to go to silence dissidents. and in politics there are kings and king makers the question is where israel falls on that spectrum when it comes to electing the next u.s. president and why it has so much poll in the first place we will question more. it is friday january thirteenth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine you're watching our t.v. . well let's begin this hour with the latest from that video that's gone viral around the world which shows several marines urinating on the bodies of militants in afghanistan if you haven't seen it here it is again now to be honest folks we thought we had said enough about this video that we move on from the story today

but we discover there's actually an entirely other story here it turns out there is a massive level of support by americans for what you're seeing going on right here i'm not talking about supporting the troops i'm talking about the support of their actions of urinating on dead bodies here well ok because she comes as no surprise that one of those people in support of it is pamela geller the woman who made a name for herself speaking out loudly and vehemently against the proposal to build an islamic center a few blocks away from where the world trade center attacks took place she showed a statement and here's what she said so let me be perfectly clear i do love those marines we're at war with an enemy that means to slaughter us and overthrow the united states of america i don't care that these marines we read on murderous savages and you see their scare spelled she felt like that like that as a knock on the council on american islamic relations. all right so again though it

turns out this is not a radical fringe opinion in the coverage that we've done of this incident we've gotten hundreds of comments and i want to read you just a few. here we have mr pound town at twenty one writes why is this a big deal i piss on them if they took the lives of my fellow brother friend then we have a joker k.d.t. what everyone is whining about this to we forget these are the types of people who came and attacked us on our soil these are people who in the beginning of the war were cutting off heads of civilians and others from our ally countries it's a little pissy they'll live not like the lives they took or helped take and dittrich six to seven says it seems a lot less offensive than cutting someone's head off the only mistake i see here is the video that part is dumb well in our nonscientific count about a third of the comments that came into our website sounded kind of like this but i do want to show you it's important to show that we had quite a few comments on the other side as well so here's a few t.

states seven one seven two wrote quote as a vet who served two tours there and four in iraq all i have to say is that grow up troop we were trained better for those who support that either didn't serve or did a college tour in the service which all of you are a joke i'm now a disabled vet with over seventeen years in but i would never condone that. joanna with too many sevens in front of her name says shame on the usa this proves they are not civilized and finally quack eighteen says and the americans wonder why people around the world hate them i think all of these are food for thought here and i think it's important to talk about this as a separate story so i want to bring in journalist abby martin who founded it media roots or she's in san francisco hey there abbi what do you think is the story we should glean from this that so many americans seem not to think that there's anything wrong with what's going on in this video. well touching upon what you just

said about the corporate press i mean what else can you really expect from a top down managed news run by a corporation so of course we're going to condone this type of horrendous despicable behavior from the military because they're funded by the military industrial complex and you know in terms of american citizens they're watching the corporate press so they think of these wars are justified so it's really so i understand their position but it's disgusting it's a completely despicable act what's shocking to me is the outrage you know once there's a you tube video that's viral that shows this despicable kind of things going on in war and then people get outraged where's the outrage of the fact that we're still over in afghanistan killing thousands of people i think that is such an important point because when you think about these incidents and it's unfortunate that it was on camera but the fact is stuff like this probably happens a lot more that's not caught on video and i do want to say i mean you say the mainstream media has condoned this

a lot of you know hosts and pundits have actually expressed outrage but they haven't as you said expressed outrage that this war is even still going on so i want to talk about this because i want to point to it as a larger issue i mean the media is treating this like a single scandal and that's why it's a story why do you think that this is the only time that the media sort of makes this the story when there's a scandal involved. you know if it bleeds it leads you know you look if you look back at the poll in two thousand and ten ninety two percent of afghanis that were polled didn't even know what nine eleven was so these people you're talking about goat herders were not even really in or when you hear the false equivalency that people say oh well they beheaded soldiers accent or etc this isn't a war zone people have to understand that we're not fighting a standing army this isn't world war two this isn't vietnam these are goat herders and you know there are insurgents over there people who are armed there's no way to tell who's part of the fighters who's not so yeah the whole thing is completely

it's not about a field it's just soldiers i think have a stream cognitive dissonance based on video games there's a weird detachment we saw with the reuters video obiter aiding people bombing parties villages it's a very strange combat that we're fighting and where it's completely detached from reality i totally i think that's a really really good point a lot of these soldiers and marines it's almost like they have to detach themselves from reality to be able to deal with what their government is sending them to do on a day to day basis abbi i want to talk about another aspect of this story though among those in favor of the actions by the marines c.n.n. contributor dana loesch she said this on her radio show can someone explain to me if there's supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a taliban fighter someone who was

a this is part of an organization murdered over three thousand americans i dropped do it too that's me though. all right so dana has this radio show and you know she's certainly allowed to say whatever she wants on her radio show it's her show she's also one of the co-founders of the st louis branch of the tea party but she is also a paid contributor of the network that calls itself the most trusted name in news c.n.n. this is the same network by the way that fired rick sanchez for comments on a radio show where he called jon stewart a bigot and also on t.v. a nasr who tweeted that she was sad to hear of the passing of a grand ayatollah who was affiliated with hezbollah are it obvious so i guess i want to ask you what you think about this i mean do you think there's a little bit of a conflict of interest here oh yeah and look at the double standard just in the corporate press michael moore on the oscars and shame on you for this illegal war go booed bill maher are saying they were great the suicide bombers because of

taking their own lives he got you know his show got taken down and then you have a c.n.n. correspondent going out there and basically the middle east saying to hate speech about desecrating dead afghanis and you can go when you're in eighty nine corpses i mean this is outrageous but yes the complete double standard of what we see condemning. things that are completely truthful the wars that we go and it should you know should never happen and then of allowing and condoning these sort of comments it's very telling and i we should put up what c.n.n. said in response they issued a statement saying you know c.n.n. contributors are commentators who express a wide range of viewpoints on and off of c.n.n. that often provoke strong agreement or disagreement c.n.n. also says their viewpoints are their own so it seems to me that the network is sort of defending what this paid contributor said on the radio show. yeah i mean they're

not taking any initiative to really. you know do anything about the fact that she's out there saying that it's ok to your corpses of afghanis i mean look at her premise though that this is part of an organization who killed three thousand american citizens no it's not. just because bin laden was from afghanistan the hijackers were all from saudi arabia i mean it's just it's complete and total ignorance in the premise so it's just hard even to experience lee and the fact that c.n.n. has just say no well commentators have their own opinions well that's why the corporate news is becoming irrelevant because we can't even i mean you can't take them serious i think it's an interesting point abbi what do you expect looking ahead i mean what do you think all americans should be concerned about were guarding the mainstream media i mean here we have a year in which there's a presidential election you know and americans will go to the polls in november to either reelect obama or you know put somebody new in the white house what is the meat what's going on here with the media it seems to me we just keep hearing more

and more opinion based news and not as many you know calling people out whether it's candidates or people who are spewing things that are blatantly not true on the air. no i think it's just a matter what we're saying during our turning to the stations like your arts you television projects censored me your roots we we need to start turning you know way from corporate media it's completely controlled from the top down it's run by the military industrial complex it's run by a month so all of these weapons manufacturers have been in a vested interest and drafting foreign policy recommendations and they're also sitting on boards of directors of people who are media conglomerates so it's really just realizing who the message and why it's filtered down like that and why it's all you can base and why it's simply a dog and pony show election coverage etc etc not covering these real issues so the wars are illegal they need to and so it's really been i think the media element i

think you'd be surprised in a lot of your eyes how few people in this country actually realize that journalists and founder of media roots dot org abby morton martin excuse and i mean cisco. which in here is now private first class bradley manning the man accused of being the source of a major dump of classified documents to the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks has been recommended to move forward to face the most serious military trial out there general court martial his pretrial hearing is wrapping up an investigating officer colonel paul almanza says all twenty two charges against private manning have also been recommended to be part of that trial now this is not really surprising news the odds have been stacked against private manning the defense team from day one this includes just two of the near fifty defense witnesses being allowed by the military and by the way the prosecution was allowed an entire week of witnesses brought to the court the defense team with witnesses testified for one single morning before the hearing ended now the court martial when given the green light

will take place in the next three or four months but let's not forget probably manning has already spent more than a year and a half in custody and much of that in solitary confinement and some pretty harsh conditions that hundreds of people and groups including the united nations by the way have characterized as torture us. now if found guilty with these crimes with which he was charged private manning stands to spend the rest of his life in prison so i get nothing too surprising and i should mention to bradley manning has plenty of support in this country i personally have covered countless of protests and rallies where hundreds of people show up in support of him and also we have some video of this new billboard just put up pretty recently here in washington d.c. this is on new york avenue and the people behind this billboard basically want to tension to be brought to bradley manning's case a lot of people in this country still don't know who he is a lot of people feel like he has been treated extremely on fairly and want to make sure that you know americans are keeping their eye on this trial as it goes forward in this military court and you know there are

a lot of questions to answer so earlier i spoke to zack has a vento press liaison to the bradley manning support network having made prior reference to a new infamous video i asked him the simple question in his view what's more harmful to our national interests bradley manning's alleged intelligence leaks or those leaks made by the soldiers on afghan bodies that we just talked about here's his take well i have to say you know the video is certainly concerning and something that you know makes me feel. wants me to take a step back as an american and say you know what is really going on here with this war and i think when we take a step back and look at it we can say you know this is unfortunately part and parcel of the day to day realities of war and combat overseas when we look at what bradley manning is alleged to have revealed the day to day you know cover ups of atrocities and crimes and. you know it's often times many of those things that we

don't see that don't get caught on camera that he was able to bring to light. and we're showing the video again right here and i think it's an important point i think. for in a lot of ways it was unfortunate that this was caught on video i think this press stuff kind of happens probably way more than the mainstream media would would like anyone to believe it is it's a stain on the reputation of the u.s. it's very sad but you're right private first class bradley manning revealed things that were going on and for that he is facing serious punishment i mean let's talk about the specific factors in this trial i saw you nodding your head when i was sort of laying out some of the factors that the defense team has faced it seems to me zach that for those who serve this country at least in this case innocent until proven guilty doesn't seem to be a play here i mean for people familiar with this case and there are

a lot of people familiar with this case around the entire world what does this story tell the story of the defense team being denied almost anything here why i think it's pretty clear that from day one the obama administration never intended to give bradley manning a fair shot here and as you said before we've seen when it comes to no matter what issue it is whether it's the witnesses that are being allowed the evidence. at every step of the way the the military has stacked the deck against bradley manning and we see again here today or yesterday with this set of charges they want to go full force with this they want to make an example out of bradley this isn't about giving him a fair trial this is really more about how this is going to play out in the public eye and what sort of a message they want to send to other people who might want to blow the whistle on crimes or other illegal behavior that seems that no matter what the investigation actually finds that this punishment is going to be

a severe one and i think it's important i'm not going to list all twenty two charges here but an important one to mention is aiding the enemy now now with the charge of aiding the enemy comes up punished. and of the death penalty the government has that it will not be seeking the death penalty in this case but it is a very very serious charge and it will be interesting to see how you know what sort of evidence is brought forth that he was actually aiding the enemy if he is the one indeed behind this leak i want to talk about the role of the media in this too this has been going on for a very very long time this case and let me just play a really quick a sound bite from bill o'reilly this is host of the o'reilly factor on america's number one cable news network fox news of course wherever leaked almost new department documents to the wiki leaks website is a traitor and should be executed or put in prison for life as you may know classified information is now floating around the globe courtesy of the traitors and this is fixable website which is based in sweden. all right jack now this is of

course an opinion show the o'reilly factor but i always thought the job of the media was was to expose government corruption instead here's a news host not only deciding who is and who is not a traitor but that he thinks that this twenty something year old young man should be put to death talk about the role of the media as you've seen it sort of play out in the case of bradley manning well you know if it calls to mind president kennedy's statements that the very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society and i think that that is something that really motivates a lot of us a lot of us who want to see a free press that is able to hold our elected officials accountable at the end of the day you know we believe in a constitution that starts with the three words we the people the government is supposed to work for us and if they are going to routinely conceal. every day you know the things that do not harm national security or if they're going to you know

conceal crimes or conceal things just to avoid embarrassment then that's not what they're called to do and so if our elected officials aren't able to live up to that standard then they're just frankly not qualified to govern there are a lot of aspects that we can talk about regarding this bradley manning case but i think it's also important sometimes to sort of take this out and make it a little bigger i know that every year at the united states comes out with a report it focuses on human rights abuses around the world pointing its finger at a number of countries including for example iran and china but what about the treatment of bradley manning i mean i think this tells a larger story i interviewed the un special rapporteur or. to united nations and he has been outraged and frustrated he has even been able to meet with bradley manning one on one. talk about this i mean the solitary confinement there's so much to talk about well it's absurd and i had a chance recently to speak with mr mendez as well and he he mentioned the absurdity of this. to ation his normal mandate is to be able to speak candidly with the

prisoner anywhere in the world so that he can have that really private discussion about what went on and the military said you're more than welcome to have that discussion but we're going to have it on videotape so there's no way for them to really speak candidly there have been situations where meetings with between manning and his defense team have been recorded and even unfortunately in this is really strange but the some of the abuse that you mentioned the forced nudity that has also been recorded on videotape by the military and they refused to turn this evidence over to the defense team that would clearly show that manning's eighth amendment rights to be free of cruel and unusual punishment that's clearly been violated as have many other rights here and you know back to the the issue of you know staying true to the constitution i think the real question here is is president obama staying true to his oath to defend the constitution to stand up for

the rights of bradley manning and by extension all americans it's an important question and we will keep our eyes on this case despite the fact that it already seems very skewed and it hasn't even really started press liaison for the bradley manning support network zack president president of thanks so much better for being here today. well twenty twelve is going to be an exciting year the madness surrounding the presidential election has already started but it looks like come november president obama is going to have a lot to deal with he won't just be facing off with whomever the republican nominee is he will most likely be getting a whole lot of questions about his role in the u.s. relationship with israel has he been strong enough was he right to support elections in egypt that have resulted in the muslim brotherhood and the salafist being voted into power is or is that the people of egypt have chosen to lead quite a few people including prime minister israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu are extremely unhappy about so what should the role of the u.s. be concerning is. this is

a subject max blumenthal writing fellow for the net nation institute has written quite a bit about now i spoke to him just a little earlier from our new york studios and i asked him about the role of the super pac it is alive and well this year as we already know i asked him if he thought this would be one of the loudest voices against president obama coming up this year take a listen. well. what i wrote about in english is the degree to which israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu is completely immersed in the american presidential campaign in the culture wars of the united states he's the first israeli prime minister who's aligned himself completely with one political party the republican party in a campaign to unseat president barack obama and some of his cutouts it's neo conservative allies in washington have started this super pac the emergency committee for israel right now the only guy they're going after is ron paul because he's a republican candidate calling for an end to the u.s.

israel special relationship but ultimately this will turn on president obama once the republican campaign is resolved i think it will turn on the issue of iran i think this is really interesting and i know you also write about that connection between bibi netanyahu and the republican party and the money aspect of this and all you have to do is follow the money you take someone like a senior mogul sheldon adelson we know that name here because about five million dollars check he just wrote to g.o.p. candidate newt gingrich turns out as you write about he's also a major contributor to netanyahu what do you think we should take from this money aspect of this. it's kind of remarkable because there's a discussion in the u.s. media about adelson is role in the presidential campaign and no mention of israel they refused to say the israel word and adelson is game is he's a union buster in las vegas who became friends with newt gingrich he's funding gingrich's campaign he gave gingrich five million dollars to gingrich's again which

aligned super pac right after newt gingrich called the palestinians an invented people at the same time adelson owns a newspaper in israel called him which is can considered netanyahu house organ his propaganda sheet and he's finance pro netanyahu think tanks so there is a clear so adelson is the link between netanyahu and the us presidential campaign what i'm on able to completely figure out and what i think a lot of people in the us are wondering is why is adelson funding gingrich's campaign which is so anti romney gingrich has dedicated his campaign to destroying the republican front runner mitt romney while romney is surrounded himself with neoconservatives who are very close to netanyahu is agenda so it's hard to understand what's going on there are you suggesting there might be something that hasn't come out yet that might come out in the near future or you're just thoroughly confused as many of us are. i mean in adelson his gift to gingrich could have just been just that a gift to

a friend but i'm sure that sheldon adelson and benjamin netanyahu would be just as happy with a mitt romney presidency as they would with the newt gingrich presidency both are going to be supportive of the greater israel project of settlements in the west bank and they seem at least mildly supportive of a military strike on iran netanyahu is game i want to go to something you said just a few minutes ago you said a lot of the media covering this covering that donation by adelson they refused to say that israel word why is it that the media is not talking about this whole aspect as i'm sure we will be in the months ahead but it's also an important aspect now. well adelson the funder of the israel lobby in the united states so is mel sembler who is a major funder of romney's campaign key donor romney aligned super pac and the media in the united states is terrified of the israel lobby and the power it has to

suppress this discussion i mean i know producers in the mainstream media in the us and they say you know we're never going to discuss this issue of the u.s. relationship with israel in a frank way and this is just one more example rachel maddow had a segment on adelson the relationship with gingrich and she just recalled that she just made a reference to sheldon adelson dark money no reference to the fact that he is funding netanyahu and is incredibly interested in seeing the settlement project in the west bank continue you talk about this powerful relationship certainly we've done countless stories here at our team of candidates from both sides of the aisle visiting israel making that sort of pilgrimage as a necessary stop on their own campaign trail going to israel it's very interesting obviously israel has a lot of power the relationship between the u.s. and israel has a lot of power but do you think there is enough power and money there to take down the obama campaign despite whatever candidate however weak the republican candidate

is. i say pretty clearly in my piece in english that i don't think that netanyahu in the combined power of the israel lobby can decide a presidential election but what they can do is color the american political landscape in what's happening with netanyahu the israeli prime minister at the head of the extremely right wing coalition in israel. aligning himself completely with the republican party is that israel has become a wedge issue in the campaign whereas before it was. there was a bipartisan consensus around it and this is worrying the jewish establishment in the united states in the united states which counts on bipartisan support for israel the center for security and international studies centrists think tank in washington has said that the partisan way around israel is likely to deepen in the future because because partly the netanyahu is involvement and the involvement of the neo cons and what this means is that the democratic base is likely to turn

increasingly more critical of israel even if democratic politicians vote with the israel lobby and this is of great concern as i said to the jewish and establishment and the mainstream pro israel establishment in the united states that israel could be another wedge issue like abortion and gay marriage in a political campaign it's certainly often seems that they're trying to do that we should mention one of the major groups in favor of israel that wants to work with israel work with netanyahu is sort of the very evangelist the right wing christian christians in this country seem to have a very special partnership with them just real quick max. if it becomes clear in the polls as we get closer to november that president obama is likely to win a second term what does israel do. well netanyahu has signaled his intention to call early elections because he's so worried about a second obama term partly because he's being attacked by opposition the opposition

leader in israel sippy livni for damaging the us israel special relationship and that could affect him in the polls because the special relationship is critical to israel's entire policy and so if netanyahu is seen as as damaging his relationship with obama if obama dares to ever criticize netanyahu in public could damage him very deeply so i think what we're going to see if obama's clearly going to have a second term is an early election in israel and netanyahu probably triumphing right at a very rancorous very rancorous second term for obama with netanyahu is certainly an important discussion to be having now we think in january as opposed to waiting until you know august or september when we start to see these strange ads from a strange super pac and wonder why they're coming out next blumenthal writing fellow for the nation institute thanks so much. thanks.

and that will do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to our t. dot com slash usa or check out our youtube page at youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter at christine i will be right back here in thirty minutes. wealthy british style. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our.