thousand employees there anyway and we knew it was coming a bill that would require the f.a.a. to open up airspace for the domestic use of surveillance drones is now headed to the president's desk to sign so what are the pros and cons including the effects on your civil liberties and your privacy we'll have all that morphy tonight including into us of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. how the years since nine eleven we've seen drastic changes in this country many of them justified by lawmakers pundits defense and intelligence officials and analysts all peddling constant fear and one specific area that we've been warned about incessantly over the last few years is a threat of homegrown terrorism and it's not just a line that was repeated by officials or put into reports you know we saw the government act on it we've now seen extensive documentation of local police departments specifically the n.y.p.d. spying on muslim communities we've seen one sting operation after another and how

could we forget there were those hearings on muslim radicalization held right here on capitol hill and you know the mainstream media well they've played along with this hysteria all along compared to other heinous crimes every time that there's been an arrest and what could have been a terrorist plot especially with a muslim group a traitor staged by the f.b.i. or not that mug shot was splashed across the screen for hours days even weeks on it so who is this teenager authorities say wanted to cause so much mayhem in portland a new chairman of the house homeland security committee is going to hold congressional hearings on the radicalization of muslim americans later this week new york congressman peter king says the hearings are to help him learn how certain u.s. citizens are recruited or drawn into terrorism according to court records mohammed said he had been interested in just since he was an early teen even writing for just this website under an assumed name all of them or. actually the intended

targets of a would be terrorist here to win huge war right in his own backyard. according to the undercover f.b.i. agents who spent time with him nineteen year old will home at us model home it was a team to go quote operational and to learn about explosives are you targeting muslims. you're doing is violent terrorist in the stream. so considering our media's obsession with the threat of homegrown radicalization or five you can call it concern if you want although i don't buy it you would think that a certain report released today what caught their eye the triangle center on terrorism and homeland security has just released a report that shows that the feared wave of homegrown terrorists terrorism by radicalized muslim americans all that shows that it has not materialized the report's author actually called it a minuscule threat to public safety and the report also includes these details plots an arrest have dropped sharply over the last two years since the peak in two

thousand and nine of about fourteen thousand murders in the united states in the last year not a single one resulted from islamic extremism so there you go folks this incredible threat hasn't materialized and yet one of the sacrifices that we've all been forced to make in order to be ready to counter it one of the grave offenses that have been committed against our civil liberties the power grabs that lawmakers have been able to make while selling us fear of a homegrown threat as usual glenn greenwald did another great job today of recounting it for us at his blog on salon dot com that includes miranda rights being curtailed for domestic terror suspects we now have an indefinite military detention provision codified into law through the n.d.a. that was just signed by the president on december thirty first of last year there's a bill that's been pushed by members of congress to strip americans of their citizenship if they're accused of being associated with terrorism and as i already mentioned we've seen our local law enforcement spy on muslim communities spy on and infiltrate communities based on their. religion even work with the cia in order to

do it i guess though that's technically against the law right and you know all along where has our mainstream media been when it comes to reporting on these changes the truth is that for the most part they have been part of the crowd that's actually been peddling the fear they've allowed the fear mongers to grace the television screens often unchecked by any facts or statistics they spent countless hours holding up the threat and the fear by flashing mug shots of scary looking muslim men and yet one report comes out showing that this threat has been inflated so the facts do not back up the claims now they just completely ignore it and it's a good thing was hard to find either people was written about in the new york times but it's something of a fear pushing accomplices in the mainstream cable network media have completely chosen to miss. well here's a poll that should make us all ask questions of ourselves and of what kind of

a country become so the other day a joint washington post a.b.c. survey was released showing improving numbers for president obama on everything from the economy or against other candidates the g.o.p. candidates specifically and on matters of national security and if you look even closer at these results though you'll find the following the pertains to specific issues that this president campaigned on things like closing guantanamo bay and respecting the rule of law the results from those surveys show that seventy percent of respondents approve of obama's decision to keep get mopin that includes fifty three percent of self identified liberal democrats and sixty seven percent of moderate conservatives and when it comes to the administration's use of unmanned drone aircraft against terrorist suspects overseas eighty three percent of americans said that they approve and here's where it gets scary of those who approve of drone use seventy nine percent think of the use of targeted killing against american citizens abroad who are suspected of terrorism is justified so. is

this tragic or should we have seen it coming so when we discussed it as a civil liberties blogger for firedoglake kevin thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess my first question to you is what your immediate reaction was when you saw these specific poll results because i was i was pretty shocked but you know maybe i'm just being naive i think the revolting whole numbers but i don't think that they're entirely surprising given the fact that back in july of two thousand and ten we had the a.c.l.u. warning that the obama administration was in danger of establishing a new normal and i would say that the way that americans view national security policies or counterterrorism policies certainly indicates that this is so we have established a new normal in this country i want to get into some of the specifics to for example this question about keeping guantanamo bay open and asks if you approve of the president's decision to keep guantanamo bay open which is kind of interesting right because he'll claim that this is something he's been trying to do the

opposite of clothes they all along and yet his hands of been tied by congress it's interesting because it's almost as if this could become a political question in the twenty twelve election which anyone who has been following the election closely knows that neither mitt romney nor barack obama nor rick strand to santorum or anybody else save for maybe ron paul is going to make an issue out of guantanamo bay prison and so that's one aspect that i've thought of when i saw this result but also you know it's awful fifty three percent of liberals would be ok with letting the prison remain open and you really have to put it like that because. and well i think they might be thinking that because they believe that obama's hands are tied it's really all because i would expect liberals who are passionate about supporting obama to weave their way and have the courage of their big shit to say if they think it's wrong the media would be urging obama to close.

on that sense to have to talk about a good point glenn greenwald brought up on his blog today when he talked about the hypocrisy of so many liberals or progressives or whatever you want to call them that were incredibly critical of the bush administration because of guantanamo bay because of the erosion of our civil liberties and yet when you and i spoken about this many times before if you look at the obama administration's policies not only is he kept open by you know he is far and away really exceeded what bush has done in other respects so why do you think that for this progressive crowd you know by the way let me just mention one more statistic here on killing the u.s. citizens with drone strikes democrats approved by fifty eight to thirty three and liberals approved by fifty five to thirty five so when we talk about this specific group why is it ok now. i think it has to do with priorities largely i think that most liberals are thinking about economic issues when they go into the voting booth and i think that it's really a question here of what kind of country are liberals willing to live in. where are

they willing to put civil liberties on their list of priorities that need to be defended in this country i have to stop and think sometimes is it possible that some of these people would be willing to live in a country where we have all of these violations of civil liberties where it's possible for someone to be tortured where it's possible for somebody to be indefinitely detained where there's rampant surveillance where there's all these things that you and i might consider to be undermining civil liberties but at the same time if they can have a country where they have free health care where they had full workers rights where everybody was a lot of the unionized where people had no rights to abortion where people had an equality and anybody who ever they were there was cultural equality if they had all this would be ok because i think that it does seem like they'd this doesn't factor at all into their decisions when they're supporting politicians so you think

that civil liberties this and that being on the bottom of the list in terms of a lot of other democratic policies. i think so and that may be largely a result of the political class itself in this country i mean quite frankly we you and i understand that barack obama and mitt romney they aren't going to go out to any podium and start talking about torture and they're not going to go out there and start talking about surveillance in this country because those are mechanisms that are needed to prosecute the war on terrorism and so it would be undermining the the whole american project to use that term if they were to preach to us about how civil liberties were being undermined but at the same time i mean civil liberties right these freedoms that we also often take for granted that's what america is supposed to be about you think of these are the things that we hold most dear and so you know i'm just wondering for example with this issue when it comes

to approving the administration using targeted drone strikes to take out american citizens suspected of terrorism abroad if they hit closer to home do you think that would be any difference and we did see a little bit of an outcry and we saw the crowd booing at some of the g.o.p. debates when the n.d.a. was signed by the president and when this whole concept of indefinite military detention of american citizens came into play. i think it does depend on who the target is unfortunately most liberals and or you know well talk about americans in general probably would be willing to violate a lot of these civil liberties of how they've been trained to think since nine eleven and so they're willing to undermine civil liberties so that they can be safe so that they can supposedly the government can prevent terror attacks from happening but you know i just think that people here in this country.

they they're very trusting of the government to they were willing to go along and say to themselves that it could never really be as. as as you are have you or i might think that it is that even though people are being targeted without due process overseas and they are being killed without having any chance to defend themselves and and then argue whether they are in fact terrorists or are not well this really isn't something that is being abused and so they are just there's a whole lot of wishful thinking and i just don't think that it matters a whole lot to them because at the end of the day the big critical issues today have to do you know with the liberals that i follow it seems to be about economic issues and i think maybe in some ways that we have to talk about these different rights like you quality and workers' rights as well these

mechanisms that are undermining civil liberties could be used to affect you as a worker and maybe you as the person who wants to have equality as a as a woman as a gay and lesbian bisexual transgender person or something like that what do you think have been that that the media bears any responsibility in this regard to them and i harp on them all the time for not really covering the drone program for when a report came out by the bureau that's a good journalism that says that we target funerals right and we target civilians that run to help it they don't see it anywhere on your t.v. screen. yeah i mean this isn't something that's going to be making any news casts and most moms for the most part. they'd be hesitant to question because quite frankly they're going to go and they're going to ask somebody who's with the pentagon or they're going to ask somebody who's with the f.b.i. if this is in fact happening if they read about some kind of an atrocity and then

they are going to deny that that atrocity has happened and then they're going to say oh well so and so said this isn't exactly what's going on and they're going to go about their business and maybe they'll facilitate some kind of a discussion on their newscast but for the most part that is going to establish for them a boundary for how they cover the issue now and you get a whistleblower if you get somebody who becomes someone out there in the spotlight who there are allowing to go on t.v. to talk about this say well example somebody like donald vance today is getting a rehearing and he was tortured in a prison in iraq and rumsfeld is possibly responsible yeah you know what i mean anything that that's one of those those rare occurrences kevin i got to wrap it up and forth about thanks for joining us tonight i mean i think that it's pretty disturbing bring up some good points that made people just care more about the economy right now but it does seem like land everybody's given and when both sides just accept this that you know we're going down

a dangerous path thanks so much. our guys are taking a quick break but when we come back in the times says the u.s. embassy in baghdad is facing a crisis no splenda and a less than all salad bar what seem like small inconveniences could have larger implications for our future on the rocks we'll delve into the topic with michael o'brien specifically back. from the.

mission. next week president obama will reveal his plan for the federal budget was traditionally released the first week of february but this year pushed back the stated reason was quote determined based on the need to finalize decisions and technical details of the document i would say probably has more to do with the one point three trillion dollars in cuts scheduled to start two thousand and thirteen under last year's budget control act or right about now the administration is coming through government project after project department after department all looking for ways in areas in which to cut but you know it i have an idea of just one place where they could start it's called the chemical and metallurgy research replacement nuclear facility and it's located in sunny los alamos new mexico all of the bulk of the u.s. nuclear program and it was approved by the partner of energy a decade ago to build plutonium components for new atomic weapons and it's still in

the constructor. for eight days the estimated price tag at the time it was approved was three hundred seventy five million dollars the current estimated price tag is five point nine billion dollars handy graphic was put together by the project on government oversight was calling on the administration to defund the project in the budget to be released next week let's be honest cost overruns are a standard feature of these kinds of projects we've told you about the unexpected cost of the f. thirty five the f. twenty two amongst many others but this one is just insane from three hundred seventy five million to five point nine billion that's a small or insignificant jump by any means and so just what are these billions of dollars actually get the american taxpayer wells out of weinstein over at mother jones pointed out almost nothing cording to a two thousand and eight congressional report on the facilities there is quote no coherent mission to justify it unless the decision is made to begin aggressive new

nuclear warhead design and pit production mission at los alamos or for example build new nukes that's something that supposedly we're supposed to be moving away from. fulfills our common objective to negotiate a new strategic arms reduction treaty that includes significant reductions in the nuclear weapons that we will deploy it cuts or delivery vehicles by roughly half that includes a comprehensive verification regime which allows us to further build trust. that would be president obama speaking in prague when he signed a historic new start treaty pledging to reduce our nuclear arsenal to five thousand warheads far more than we would need to blow the world into smithereens five times over so if we're trying to reduce our nuclear arsenal but we possibly want this facility for all those who supported continual bleeding of the american taxpayer say that it needs to be built to quote support current nuclear weapons stockpiles through surveillance and life extension programs. small little tidbit though the project on government oversight guess is that it will be operational until two

thousand and twenty three long after those current nuclear warheads will be supporting will have gone through scheduled life extension programs meaning of this facility literally serves no purpose and yet if the government continues to fund it the taxpayers will spend up to six billion dollars on it now obama has made the reduction of the nuclear arsenal a stated priority from the very beginning of his presidency and he has an opportunity in the coming week to put his money where his mouth is the federal budget which will be released next week he'll need to find one point three trillion in cuts and i say this pointless expensive facility is a good as place to start as any. now despite the fact that u.s. troops left the country at the end of last year the u.s. has long had other plans for iraq most notably a massive diplomatic presence of sixteen thousand people including and protected by contractors based out of the embassy in baghdad a seven hundred fifty million dollars building and the biggest of its kind in the world but a new york times report revealed yesterday the state department is now preparing to

slash their diplomatic presence possibly by as much as half now this due to what they reportedly see as iraqi obstructionism as of late the iraqi government has made it much more difficult to get visas they've delayed convoys of food and they're working on a bill to impose tougher restrictions on security contractors but what specifically did the new york times see as a good measurement of what more difficult means an embassy life here's a quote within days the salad bar at the embassy dining hall sometimes there was no sugar or splenda for coffee on chicken wing night wings were rationed at six per person over the holidays housing units were stocked with meals ready to eat the prepared food for soldiers in the field. so yeah that one got a lot of laughs yesterday but just how telling is that here's this guy with me is michael o'brien author of america's failure in iraq michael thanks so much for coming back on the show good to see you. are before we get into the quotes in the last let's just start with the idea that sixteen thousand people was to somebody an

acceptable diplomatic presence to keep in the country after the war is over after their troops have been pulled out why on earth would need sixteen thousand people well they needed sixteen thousand people to augment the lack of american troops over there most of them are going to be security contractors there were going to be a part about five different installations around the country including the embassy in baghdad also noted in that article was that the embassy in most schools or the satellite embassy in mosul maybe your consulate is has been has been scrapped due to. all the different problems that are up there that the iraqis see it with the american presence there but the fact is that most of those people are. security contractors providing security for all of the american civilians all the all the diplomats over there and as you said the the the point is that there's a lot of bad feeling there's a lot of bad blood between iraqis and americans and well frankly for good reason

they don't want to stay here they're. very bent out of shape over all the problems that have her have occurred in the last nine years and frankly in the end that that embassy complex which is way over budget cost overruns at the at the years. it is basically a boondoggle but you know i mean if you think about it from perhaps you know the iraqis perspective too if if they feel like this is become somewhat of an oppressive force right there is just too much going on your troops are supposed to withdraw from the country why do you still need so much personnel there if the state department planned all along to have. just a much smaller force could that have made the relationships or the relationship perhaps a little bit better well i really think that it's it's because. they thought everybody was going to leave before most americans were going to leave and there would be a small diplomatic presence there all the soldiers left and they all wear

uniforms so i mention this in in my book extensively. soldiers in uniforms are different than security contractors with goatees and golf shirts and khaki pants they thought when the soldiers left in december that would be it in the wall there would be was a small diplomatic presence that oracle mentioned the there were five diplomats at the u.s. embassy in turkey and about fifty five total staff sixteen thousand total staff in the year at the u.s. embassy in or in baghdad that's absurd it's it's crazy i think the whole thing was a knee jerk reaction just like after nine eleven the department of homeland security its creation was a knee jerk reaction the invasion of iraq in two thousand and three was a kneejerk reaction it was overreaction everything related to iraq was an overreaction. and again you know going into afghanistan was one thing going to iraq was totally different and i think that the building of the mountain as a reactionary could just call that something completely based on lies which was

sold to the people who you know who reacted alongside with it but i want to donate all four of the over reaction i want to get into a little let me read this line again right there times decided to highlight as to how tough life is at the embassy right now that within days the salad bar at the embassy dining hall rather low sometimes there was no sugar splenda for the coffee on chicken wing night wings are rationed at six per person i mean right off the bat that sounds absolutely ridiculous would you agree did you will you know did you see the photographs that came along with that article there were about thirteen photographs inside the embassy it's incredible when i was over in iraq i was based out of baghdad. and i ate my meals at the at the at the embassy compound which was the old republican palace of the republican palace in baghdad which was saddam's main the seat of his of his of his government the food was absolutely unbelievable i gained a ton of weight the food over there the food in these countries is for

a twenty year old soldier that you know burns over five thousand calories a day the i can totally understand what that reporter was saying the food over seas especially in countries where we have a lot of military presence and all that like iraq and afghanistan it's simply incredible i've never written that well in my entire life the state department didn't have a reaction to this right they had a press conference today avatar a new lead was saying that whoever was whining about that should have done so and they think that the new york times exaggerated the story a little bit but at the bottom i mean at the end of the day right if if some of the really basic problems are the fact that the convoys are being stopped right that you can't get mail at the embassy those seem like such basics then how are you supposed to do the actual mission right how are you actually supposed to conduct diplomacy you can't you know did the state department bite off a lot more than it can chew here where you know it's funny because this is another

example of the complete lack of planning regarding anything in iraq we the invasion in two thousand and three was poorly planned the post invasion was poorly planned the dismantling of iraq's security infrastructure was the opposite that was anything but anything but a good plan. this is another example of the continuation of the poor planning i don't know what the state department was thinking i don't know what our diplomatic corps was thinking the embassy facility itself it's not one building it's a campus of multiple buildings for the very fact that you know if mortar and rocket fire starts coming in and it. was one facility that were ruins the whole facility so they they broke it up into a compound so that way if one building gets wiped out by a mortar it's just one building. but the number of people the number of staff and again it goes back to my original point we use mercenaries now those security contractors are mercenaries they're there to protect american civilians and

american assets in iraq because the soldiers in uniform are gone but we walk meant that with with with security contractors with golf shirts so the end because they're such bad feeling about america's actions in iraq in general but about america's security contractors you mr square massacre blackwater and all that iraqis i think are going away to minute most of these people are security contractors they're not diplomats we want to and now they're clamping down that's right and they are doing with built up a lot more tough restrictions on them and you know coming out with accusations that they think that they're going to be there for intelligence gathering purposes for one country or another but you know it definitely doesn't look like good news in that sense michael thanks so much for joining us thanks for having me. i had to have i want to start thinking i on this because a drone could be watching you and that growing is and how to become the norm that's

. russia warns against outside military intervention in syria saying the only way to end of the bloodshed is for both government and opposition to enter togs moscow's diplomatic push some western and gulf countries sever ties with damascus and unconfirmed reports say security forces continue to shell the city of home. outrage in the u.k. as and notorious a terror suspect is to be freed after the european court of human rights blogs his extradition. wanted in jordan where he has been convicted in absentia of a plot to kill tourists who has. been set to be released after almost nine years in detention. and egypt remains firm on prosecuting for not funded nongovernmental organizations it accuses of feeling instability in the country

despite threats from washington it could cut more than a billion dollars in military aid to egypt total of forty three ngo employees including nineteen americans face trial for illegally funding debates. next here on our team we go back to the american capital for part two of the only one to show don't go away. i guys it's time for you said it i read it right take time to respond to my brilliant and engaging the work comments from facebook twitter and you tube believe that's going to say.