lines with none of them or see me live in washington d.c. now it's a night we're going to take a look at the continuous warmongering and cold war rhetoric of the g.o.p. candidates when it comes to cuba and iran will also discuss an upcoming speech to be given by attorney general eric holder or some secrets about the legal memo which allows for targeted killing of u.s. citizens just might come out colonel lawrence wilkerson will join us for that one but a former cia officer is being charged with leaking secrets to the press this is now the sixth time the obama administration is attempting to use the espionage act to marcy wheeler will help us uncover the inconsistency s. and the dangers for whistleblowers and then last night the candidates spoke on immigration mitt romney suggested that self deportation should be the easiest fix so what exactly is self deportation. going to give us the details we're going to all that morphy tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss.

our so last night we were forced to sit through yet another republican debate this one was hosted by n.b.c. and moderated by brian williams who did an embarrassingly poor job of it and it one point i'm pretty sure that william just stepped out to have a smoke or something because he let mitt romney newt gingrich just ask each other questions and go back and forth for about ten minutes now there was one of the value to this exchange however romney really went after gingrich and expose what is a systemic problem the revolving door of politicians then becoming lobbyists or is gingrich claims being hired as a historian to be a consultant now the mainstream media of course didn't really bother getting into those details they just love a good fight. stunning role reversal of the debate last night mitt romney taking off the gloves blasting newt gingrich on a number of issues including his time as speaker of the house and his consulting work with mortgage giant freddie mac. newt gingrich took a swipe at mitt romney over his tax returns romney fired back mitt romney went

after newt gingrich last night in the debate but did he land any punches in the latest match up in tampa last night mitt romney hammer hammer away at newt gingrich and is a record of leadership gingrich shot back accusing romney of lying. yeah yeah yeah they went at it they really took each other on now that took up hours of time this morning on the cable networks but let me highlight something for you that didn't make the cut as usual we didn't see much coverage or wrap up of the foreign policy visions of the candidates from last night visions wish which with the exception of ron paul included wanting to go with to war with iran like it's no big deal keeping our troops in afghanistan and continuing a cold war era relationship with cuba and just sanctioning them forever but perhaps one of the most telling moments from last night's debate circled around iran threats of closing the strait of hormuz and the candidates trying to outdo each other with who would respond with more force and who thinks obama has done a weaker job the problem is that inside of all this talk one thing became very

apparent that these guys don't have their facts straight here's mitt romney we have an aircraft carrier in the gulf an aircraft carrier and of course the task force with it in the mediterranean we want to show we run any action of that nature will be considered an act of war an act of terror and america is going to keep those. so mitt romney thinks that we ought to have an aircraft carrier in the gulf well guess what mitt we do you see last thursday the u.s.s. abraham lincoln arrived in the arabian sea this past sunday it sailed through the strait of hormuz we also have two more aircraft carriers nearby the carl vinson in the. the arabian sea and the u.s.s. john c. stennis which was in the persian gulf for months but is currently sailing to the pacific but could very very very easily come back and the u.s. isn't even alone there the u.s.s. abraham lincoln went through the strait of hormuz flanked by british and french ships and guess what nothing happened iran didn't react violently war has not

broken out because it's not in anyone's interest and where is danger room also pointed out a few more details about just how active a presence we have in the waters in this region they call it routine naval posture one point five to one point seven meaning that there is an average of at least one point five carriers in this region every twelve months which means that at any given time iran faces more u.s. sea power than most of the world he's can offer i might be saying that all that's really technical the g.o.p. candidates they can expect you know it all but if you're going to attack the current president's policies and his actions and call for more the better already know what is currently being carried out so in this case mitt romney is trying to attack obama for being soft on iran when fact he's calling for the exact same thing that the obama administration is already doing but more importantly the media needs to follow up and correct these kinds of mistakes counter aggressive foreign policy statements with facts i mean in an ideal world they should counter every untrue

statement it's made on a debate stage with facts but well we all know they don't do that and we all know that there are especially lots of the details when it comes to foreign policy and military exercises but hello people we can't afford not to correct those kinds of mistakes did you learn nothing from iraq from the war that was based on lies that the media overwhelmingly supported and that was shocked when it turned out that there were no w m d's to begin with if anything iraq should have been a turning point for the mainstream media in this country should have been a moment where collectively the press said never again but unfortunately it wasn't now maybe they've all forgotten maybe they're just too lazy maybe they're too scared to question tough foreign policy talk because the establishment will like them for it when somebody who's vying to be the commander in chief makes mistakes like that the mainstream media should pick up on it and correct it but they actually do is they choose to miss.

now aside from mitt romney's factual error on what our neighbor naval buildup should be in the persian gulf there was a lot of other big talk about iran the dangers of them acquiring a nuclear weapon and what we must do to counter it as also a lot of talk about cuba the need for sanctions and a travel bargo to stick around and much of the rhetoric coming from the g.o.p. candidates makes you wonder if they're living in the past and they refuse to acknowledge that the world has changed so here discuss this with me as lawrence wilkerson retired u.s. army colonel and former chief of staff to colin powell lawrence thanks so much for joining us tonight so i'm losing my voice a little bit first let's go back and i want to show you a side from mitt romney's gaffe or mistake that he made there last night a few other clips of what exactly was being said about iran and i want to hear commentaries let's take a look. american people have no interest in going to war anywhere we have no interest in going to war the japanese only bombed pearl harbor we had no interest

in going to afghanistan when the hottest destroyed the world trade center well the contrast with that is what happens if iran gets a nuclear weapon and the entire world changes bottom line is the theocracy that runs iran is the equivalent of having al qaeda in charge of a country with huge oil reserves gas reserves and a nuclear weapon that is something that no president could possibly allow to have happen under any circumstances. i where do we start there we go with rick santorum will the world change overnight if iran acquires a nuclear weapon let me just point out two things one that al qaeda and the leadership in tehran and i'm getting their next have almost nothing in common and second and probably more important to the point is that north korea is in my view a much more dangerous country with respect to our allies in the region and iran is north korea has tested not one but two nuclear devices at least and maybe

weaponized where is all the brouhaha from rick santorum and the rest of the republican candidates about north korea at the end of the day not either is next an existential threat to the united states nor any of our real solid allies in the world so this posturing is simply political if they actually believe this in their heart of hearts they're idiots but then what what's the point why iran specifically why has this become the popular you know rallying cry for the g.o.p. this is the new iraq for the neoconservatives and the new conserves as neo conservatives have infiltrated largely except for ron paul of course the campaigns of romney gingrich and others that might have had a chance back in the past primarily romney and gingrich right now and this is their mantra this is it this is war they love war they want to go to war now with iran they want to go to war with iran ever since iraq tumbled in two thousand and three

two thousand and four yeah we do have to make that point of course is that ron paul as always completely stood out on that stage last night when you ron paul and that was what i see when it came to talking about iran when it came to talking about cuba as well but what do you really see as happening right now clearly the fact that we do have aircraft carriers right now going through the strait of hormuz and nothing happened we've also had secretary defense robert gates saying that it would be a red line if the iranians scared try to shut it down. you know what do all these actions mean but iran isn't reacting well it didn't believe her and the proximity of forces there was i've said to you before is frightening and i hope we have a really good sure we do rules of engagement to preclude any thing turning into a tonkin gulf and so the whatever the other aspect of this is that the republicans can't find as you sort of intimated in your introduction any space on national security with respect to the current president united states they want to blame him for being the president who made america on secure he hasn't anything he's made us

more secure and so they're trying desperately to find space and at the end of the day my party the republican party is close to committing suicide. but at the same time you and i have discussed this before too and so looking at the way in which they republican candidates try to attack president obama but the way that he's also acting what we have going on right now in the movements that are making in the persian gulf no matter who wins this election in november of two thousand and twelve with the reaction to iran be exactly the same let's say if they did try to go after our navy there i don't i don't think so because i don't think they're going to try to go try to go after our navy and i and if they do i think the rules of engagement are going to tamp it down quickly and we won't have a tonkin gulf incident that said i do think we're probably although i'm alarmed at both president both the president and the presidential candidates and the rhetoric that they're throwing out there in the corner that therefore they're painting

themselves into a do think that president obama's policies will be better than a republican and i'm planning on given the current cast of characters casting my own vote for the incumbent right now just because of that i would add also that i believe the situation in the goal is such that we've got carrier carrier task forces there we've got marine amphibious groups there we've got other forces there as you pointed out who are operating on. rules of engagement that will probably preclude there being a conflict that spirals out of control at least i hope that's the case at the same time i think the obama administration right now in concert with its tightening of sanctions and the use coming along and helping i think the obama administration is serious about reopening some sort of negotiations with tehran and i just hope that iran realizes that and is conducive to and ultimately sepsis of the regime of those negotiations let's look at the way that that sanctions right eye even on iran's oil

are necessarily working out are we succeeding we haven't really succeeded in convincing all that much of the world to go along here with this and you know even iran is coming out saying exactly the same thing that we have no problem selling oil to anybody will just find new customers you know that china and other actors out there are still going to be interested and at the end of the day does it come down to that well you know he does have too much oil and it's not worth it for a euro opening to individual be the abominated sanctions i don't think they war i think they're terrible they hurt the people and not the rulers but in this case i do think that the combination of things that the european union the united states and others have orchestrated to at this point and i'm getting this from iranians is hurting them badly that plus the fact that they need an opening they need to calm and they need to do something goes you hating is going to cause obama to have president obama have a much better opportunity to do it this time my fear is that we're really not

serious about this and even if the iranians do put forward a position that we can take to a table somewhere however secret it might be that we will look we'll be so full of our own rhetoric that we won't take it and we won't sit down and at least try but i do see that effort being made by this administration whereas the administration i served for example didn't make any effort at all that it's well let's have sanctions and how you're no fan let's take a look at what the candidates said about cuba last night. this president has taken a very dangerous course with regards to cuba saying we're going to relax relations we're going to open up travel to cuba this is the wrong time for that with this kind of her going out of the policy united states should be aggressively to overthrow the regime and to do everything we can to support those cubans who want freedom you know obama is very influential and with an arab spring he doesn't seem to get a look ninety miles south of the united states to have a cuban spring should make it very clear that if you want the mountains of aid if you want normal relationships if you want to improve your economy if you want to

have that opportunity for freedom that the united states stands ready now to embrace you now that you've got rid of these tyrants who have who have controlled you for these fifty plus years that's why the sanctions have to stay in place because we need to have a a a very solid offer to come forward and help the cuban people. right so newt gingrich wants to aggressively overthrow the regime he wants us to fabricate a cuban spring santorum on thanks and stay in place forever artist has a living in the cold they're living in the dark ages they're living in the dark ages of those came from havana spend seven days there on their i was there in two thousand and seven i was there in two thousand and nine two thousand and twelve the changes are miraculous what's happening is the economy is slowly incrementally opening up it's it's opening up to market pressures and market dynamics people were beginning to talk i'd get in a taxi in a taxi driver would answer my questions and say i'm not being taped emma and then answer my questions i ate in restaurants that could be in buenos aires or in rio de

janeiro cuban and they are idiots they haven't been to cuba they don't know what's happening they can't see what's in front of their face the forty year old technocrats in cuba are shaping the ground and raul the current leader is helping them to administer cuba in the future and to give cubans the kind of economy that raises their standard of living but not lose their incredible health care universal health care or some the best out. better than ours and their ninety nine percent literacy and the other gains that despite what we might say for dell and raul castro with the revolution brought to cuba they're doing all well and ignoring us well that's another area where i guess you could say that president obama is ahead of the of the g.o.p. candidates at least in some way i want to really quickly switch gears running out of time but attorney general eric holder is going to be giving a speech soon about national security touting the administration's national security and they're there supposedly he's going to you know lay out the legal

language that they used to kill on our locky without actually mentioning our locky or his case specifically just finally revealing that i guess they have the secret legal battle and maybe some of the logic behind it how do you see that we know who they think they're satisfying if they're not actually going to give us the evidence this is the attorney general of the united states attempting to justify legally and otherwise in the eyes of the american people the news for america does not give me freedom or give me give me liberty or give me death as in the past it's give me security at any cost and that's why we have legal positions like we came up we came up with in the first bush administration to excuse torture that's why we have legal positions to excuse avoiding due process and killing americans on simply the command of the president because we are so frightened and so scared and so lacking resilience in this country today that a raghead terrorist ten thousand miles away scares us to the bottom of our feet and

we have to do these sorts of things and it's ten years later now and we're still doing it and you're still going to cast your vote for obama despite the fact that that was it is an illustration is what's the choice and i refuse to do like some of my friends are doing in this is going to hurt the president and say i'm not going to the polls right lawrence want to thank you so much for joining us tonight. i thought it comes and i've got a personal response to an attack made by alan to sarah and if he later. chapter in the government after the break we're going to discuss the obama administration's latest attempt to keep people quiet as. well. technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future covered. here is that so much

there's a huge music machine on the market egypt's unfinished business a year on the revolution that used to be spirited appears to have stalled the military rulers who replaced me. over the weekend a story aired on al jazeera english is program the listening post hosted by richard gilbert the show does media critique and this particular episode spoke about r.t. and yours truly so let's just say that i have a few things to say in response to this here's the gist of the point that they were trying to make the english language project is getting mixed reviews its criticism of washington and the ways of the west is relentless. i mixed reviews that's fair everybody is entitled to their own opinion but then they get to me. russian born american educated in the. twenty six year old host of the alyona show he's more

than happy. to lend back. doughboy. who sound so sinister russian born american educated i'm clearly some sort of kremlin plant sent to the united states to learn the ways of the west only to turn them against it when i come of age i actually moved here enough for an american citizen not only was i educated here he spent almost my entire life in the us and i am cast an american not to mention and yes a woman pick here i'm not twenty six yet but we enjoyed my last week of twenty five all you people but back to the hilarious style of their attack when we did the same thing what if we turn the tables on richard gilbert fired by a.b.c. for refusing to cover the u.s. led invasion of iraq he was then hired by qatari funded al-jazeera that's kind of sounds a little bit sketchy to you but it turns out that it's really not sketchy because gives birth spent years working for a.b.c. only to refuse to cover the iraq war because he had small children so then he was

fired sued for wrongful termination and he won and that he was hired by al jazeera but if i say everything in these really vague terms then his career too can sound very very sinister but let's get back to what is said about me as are we not shying away from picking a fight not really sure why that would be showcased as a negative in fact i thought that's what journalists opin you know as we're all supposed to do what i would really like to see in this piece is for them to take some of my relentless criticism that gives birth talks about with my face on the screen behind them and actually show it and talk about that i would welcome then to pick some welcome them to pick something that i've said about the actions of the u.s. government and the members of both parties which are unfair or untrue and stead they picked a clip of me talking crap on when back was i being a little bit hyperbolic even absurd yeah but guess what that's what we do here on this show and i was speaking of al-jazeera being apparently confused about me having fun or being over the top they end the entire piece with a clip from our hollowing show. it was total seriously let's not. we

are in the mainstream. it's her hollowing show you get it it's fake it's satire so let me use a show of a clip of a parody show where word costume always the entire hour play that a newsgroup think of r d i think is disingenuous for leveling such serious criticism on me as a person or two as a channel they simply chose to use the clip to push the agenda that they wanted which is the r.t. is silly and should be ignored just like me now perhaps if they would have reached out to me for some comment on the piece since i was going to be featured so prominently could have informed them that from time to time yeah we do funny skits and parodies on the show we delve into the outrageous we have fun and we laugh but apparently richard gives birth thinks that. i would strongly disagree. we have today the justice department charged former cia agent john kiriakou with disclosing classified information to journalists about the capture and enhanced

interrogation or as we call it torture of members of al qaeda of suspected al qaeda members to members of the press and the criminal complaint specifically accuses kiriakou of disclosing the identity of a cia analyst and the charges against him include two counts under the espionage act of one nine hundred seventeen so that makes it now the sixth time that the obama administration is going after somebody with charges of espionage the others include cases that we've discussed on this program like thomas drake bradley manning james rising and others so to put it into perspective for you before this administration there were only three such cases in history so what is all this tell us about how justice under obama is applied joining me to discuss it is marcy wheeler blogger at mt weil dot net marcy thanks for joining us tonight let's figure out a little background quickly if you can we don't have a whole lot of time tonight but i guess you could say that in two thousand and seven is when people really got to know about john kiriakou who came out said that he was on one of the lead. capturing teams details. and has interrogation or

waterboarding at that time and basically said that he supported it but then where does the story come in with him cia analysts names their identities to the press. yeah at that point everyone thought he was just spreading propaganda for the cia because he was putting the best spin on the on waterboarding just as the whole destroyed tape thing came out but the allegations do go back to that same time period two thousand and seven two thousand and eight and ultimately what do you know jay was investigating is how some get most detainees found out the identities of people who were on the torture teams one of them was martina's the other one nobody disclosed his identity yet. kiriakou has been charged with leaking it anyway and so they went back and tried to figure out how these detainee lawyers found out and ultimately kuria who is the one source that they came up with. and they you know they partly pointed to a new york times article that may have been investigated two thousand as well but

you know one of the things that they're arguing is that curia who lied about a technology called magic box which not only has been out there for decades but is widely used is used by our local police station and so they're suggesting the curia was lying to the cia to be able to publish about this because it was classified only it's not classified and so now we're going back to court on something like that now as i mentioned this is the sixth time that we've seen the obama administration try to go after somebody by using the espionage act do you see the do you think that is fair and in this case at all was he aiding the enemy by by putting out a cia analyst name perhaps to the press. well i mean again that this all started because these detainee lawyers had identified the people who had tortured their clients. so the question is not is it ok for scott shane to report about just

martina's who was involved in care sems torture what they were really after was is it ok for lawyers to know what happened to their clients when they were in u.s. custody and the government is basically saying no it's not ok we didn't tell them we weren't going to tell them you know our torture must be secret even from the people who got tortured as to the scotch erica which is the only one that the only public mention that they're prosecuting heriot for you know it does martinez was not a covert person his peers his identity was not covert they wanted to hide the fact that he had been involved in politics muhammad's interrogation but you know it's they also wanted to hide the fact that he was working for mitchell and justin who are the architects of the really failed torture program in this country and i think we as americans have a right to know that kind of stuff yeah you know and there were some decent jokes

made out there today just about how ironic and unfortunate and sad it is that we finally have some kind of an investigation or some kind of a prosecution going on that involves waterboarding or that involves torture unfortunately it's just the guy the decided to speak out about speak out against it instead of anybody that was actually involved or that gave those orders there you know i want to ask another thing too how can we compare you know the fact that nobody high ranking right has gone in trouble for waterboarding. for the enhanced interrogation program and here we have this case versus the marine staff sergeant who yesterday who was involved in the the massacre where twenty four civilians were massacred in iraq turns out that the maximum prison sentence he's going to serve is only three months. right and obama's about to do a state of the union address where he's going to where he purportedly is going to size accountability and around the world that's what accountability means in

america three months for somebody who massacres twenty four mostly women children old men versus nothing for the people who are torturing you know definitely some al qaeda people but also some people who had no ties to al qaeda that's what american accountability has become anything else that you expect the president to say during his state of the union tonight you know maybe talking about accountability and you know some of his civil liberties records now know he's going to boast about killing osama bin laden and everyone's going to holler and and that will be as close to a discussion about i think his counterterrorism policies as we get. a feeling that you're right thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks for having me. all right coming up next the supreme court weighs in on the government using g.p.s. devices to track you down last night the g.o.p. candidates weighed in on immigration during their debate to find out what exactly

the deportation is. known thanks for being with us a prop thirty here in moscow and a quick look at your headlines loyalists of the late leader moammar gadhafi a polish and t.c. authority in the town of bani walid saying that the administration of the area is now in their hands this comes just a day after a bloody battle between transitional council forces and local militias claimed at least five lines. damascus greenlights an extension to the arab league mission in

syria all of this comes as six gold states withdraw their support questioning the regime's commitment to the peace plan meanwhile the e.u. has extended its economic and travel sanctions as well as targeting twenty two individuals connected to the government. that will do nicely reports emerge that iran is accepting gold this payment for its oil exports effectively bypassing the latest round of sanctions imposed by the u.s. and europe china could be the next country to follow in india's but stands. now let's cross over to our washington studio for part two of the show stay with our. hi guys it's time for show and tell on tonight's program last week we told you about a new model for college tuition that's being proposed in california as one of the many ideas that are being thrown around as a potential solution to the bill.