make a little dope that's all we have time for i believe with that great idea if you are one of our viewers in the u.k. things so much for tuning in to follow me on twitter lauren lyster give us feedback on this show at youtube dot com slash capital account and from everyone here thank you so much for watching come back tomorrow have a great. the

wrong size had been considering passing also to six e.u. countries but wouldn't do so because of the cold winter in europe this god says these are a b.p.m. accuses the islamic state of being behind the tox i mean did children time enough to just announce to the world he said days they'd like republic said when. russia says external players are encouraging opposition groups to stay out of the done oprah d.c. really government and therefore they have knowledge responsibility put on growing violence and while president assad has announced a referendum on a new constitution. smoggy whiney is one of the pro-democracy uprising in bahrain protests the space here for another hard clamp down with police using tactics and weapons from me. as the headlines time to go to our washington studios

now for the i don't know. if. you. welcome to the lower cell at the real headlines with none of the mercy we're going to live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to talk about the possibility of the white house making drastic reduction to the u.s. nuclear arsenal to buy the budget for twenty thirteen so far shows the exact opposite then there's some army psychiatrist downgrading p.t.s.d. diagnoses to save money we're going to talk about a very disturbing speech in which an investigation has now been launched and get

this a private prison operators offering to buy up state prisons all in exchange that they remain ninety percent full so we're going to talk about the dangers making criminal justice a for profit industry we'll have all that and wife and i including it does of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. yesterday's show we spoke to glenn greenwald about how the media seems to be beating the war drums on iran even louder than the government itself and today we saw more direct proof take a look. defiant iran taunting the west iran is calling it a major achievement its nuclear program scientists have loaded nuclear fuel rods into the core of a research reactor tehran is fueling its centrifuges with nuclear fuel and that is stoking fears that the rogue state is indeed one step closer to an atomic bomb is

this another step potentially on the roads road to potentially making nuclear weapons to be certainly a step down the road towards a nuclear weapon escalating nuclear tensions with iran this morning president mahmoud ahmadinejad is shown supposedly loading nuclear fuel rods into the tehran research reactor but it is a huge source of pride for iraq. but should it be a source of worry for the west rand has blue stick missiles with a range of about one thousand miles obviously putting israel well within reach this is a ron doubling down on moving down the path towards a nuclear weapon. so to hear that defiant iran taunting the west a rogue state one step closer doubling down on the path to an atomic bomb should be a source of worry for the west how many ballistic missiles do they have after watching news this morning and hearing all that can help them feel scared oh here you have the mainstream media playing fearmonger in chief actually taking over and expanding on what we normally hear from the warhawk pundits and lawmakers now they

just have their own reporters and anchors doing it but listen is there a lot of talk about the developments of iran's nuclear program yes of course but is that mean that we automatically have to jump to conclusions about nuclear war ballistic missile strikes firstly i'd say no and just like we discussed yesterday perhaps the most frustrating and hypocritical thing about all of this is that it's always perceived as if iran is the constant aggressor and the west is just idly sitting by waving flags of peace this is a game being played by more than one side but if you're the media shouldn't you at least explore both sides explored all don't you at least owing to audiences to remind them that well there's the possibility that iran wants to remain defiant because it's being cornered in sanctions by u.s. military presence and has it surrounded by a covert war that's being waged against it in the form of drones flying over their seven airspace and their nuclear scientists being murdered to point out any of that doesn't mean we're coming to iran's defense quite the opposite it just shows that you have an ability to apply logic and analysis to your coverage but from what

we're seeing coming from the mainstream media it really doesn't seem that they're able to do that now does it now you know what else i haven't seen the mainstream media coverage is the fact that those in our military leadership have been doing nothing but urging caution in regards to beating these were troops heard it from general martin dempsey the head of the joint chiefs who said last month that a war with iran would quote be. really destabilizing he said i personally believe that we should be in the business of deterring war as a first priority air force major general charles dunlop it said almost any use of force carries a great risk of unintended quantum consequences so many of those who serve and command in iraq have also given several similar warnings reminding everyone that engaging in a military conflict is a massive endeavor that involves danger risk the loss of life and it's not by any means something that we should rush into and so you think of the population which is war weary from iraq and afghanistan from ten years of constant war would be cautious as well but as we discussed with glenn yesterday

a recent poll shows that more than fifty percent of respondents so they thought the u.s. should use military force to prevent iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon that's despite the fact that our secretary of defense and the director of national intelligence have both said in recent weeks that there is no evidence that iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon and so once again we have to return to the mainstream media and the role that they're playing in building this in fanning the flames and making conflicts seem inevitable and serious honorable it's dangerous and yet somehow they want to help provoke more war to scare people enough that their eyes will be glued to the t.v. screens and chills will be running down their spines but a semblance of being calm collected responsible professional that's what they choose to miss. now since everyone is on the topic of nukes let's talk about where the u.s.

is heading and their nuclear weapon drawdown officials are saying that the obama administration is contemplating further cuts to the u.s. arsenal possibly by reducing the number of deployed long range nuclear weapons to as low as three to four hundred warheads that be about an eighty percent reduction from what the u.s. agreed to in the new start treaty with russia which limits both countries to one thousand five hundred fifty however if we look at the budget that the administration just released for twenty thirty even something doesn't really seem to quite add up not only is the budget more than last year's appropriation but it's twenty percent higher than ronald reagan's largest nuclear weapons budget at the height of the cold war and yes that is adjusted for inflation but is this a double game what can we really take away from all these reports here to discuss this with me is peter creil nonproliferation analyst at the arms control association peter thanks so much for joining us tonight for having me ok before we get into the obama administration's plans let me at least get a comment from you on what it is that we're seeing you know what do you think that we should take away from what iran is saying about having their own nuclear fuel rods well i think we've seen two three interesting things from iran today on the

one hand they announced all of these major nuclear accomplishments accomplishments they made today but at the same time they also delivered a letter to the catherine ashton calling for responding for a call for a new talks on the nuclear program so what it seems that they want to simply posturing they're trying to show the world that look we're not going to bend to the west's will we've managed to have some serious accomplishments in our nuclear program but at the same time you know we're willing to talk and it's we're they're trying to say that they're coming from a position of strength even though they've come under the most serious sanctions that we've ever seen i mean do you think the people are going a little bit overboard with the nuclear talk when it comes to iran especially when we talk about the idea of iran having a nuclear weapon of. you know hire enough high enough excuse me and rick uranium you know i think so i think there's a certainly a lot of her probably going on i think the iranians are engaged in a lot of hyperbole a lot of things that we've seen today are not very serious nuclear complements they don't seriously advance iran's program very far but at the same time you know

a lot of things that they're doing or very worrisome but they're not necessarily on the cusp of building nuclear weapons and i think that's one thing that we need to keep in perspective ok so now let's get into the obama administration and what these reports are saying that there might just be an even larger drawdown i mean how would something like that even have to go about happening right specially if we look at this budget they've been out for twenty thirty and if we look at the way at the start treaty had to be ratified there was a lot of congressional disapproval there so what would be the process if they wanted to bring it down to only three or four hundred warheads absolutely would what the administration is looking to do essentially is they're looking at what the options are for the role of u.s. nuclear weapons so it's not necessarily trying to decide on a on a number of drawing down there this process would squeeze kicked off a couple of years ago when the united states had concluded a nuclear posture review which is generally done once every administration and that offers some broad guidance about what u.s.

nuclear weapons are supposed to achieve what they're doing now is looking at well what are the specific missions that nuclear weapons are for and drawing from how many nuclear weapons do we need to achieve those missions so it's not simply a matter of trying to ping one number another it's deciding on from from a range of options what can we live with what can we afford and how can we meet our goals while still meet the nuclear mission goals while still maintaining u.s. nuclear security now is that necessarily something that we're going to know about because we had just here on the show a couple weeks ago from the ploughshares fund has talked about how obama had this big decision coming up but it's not something that he makes public in terms of you know currently we have to be able to deploy to five different nuclear enemies or powers whatever you want to call them at the exact same time right this is all classified process so. we're not going to know all the details at the end of the day in fact one of the things that we're going to be looking at is when the u.s. tries to engage in additional nuclear arms reductions with with with russia whatever is decided now is going to form the guidance for how low the u.s.

feels it can go in those negotiations so what we're seeing with the last round with the new start treaty the to the levels that the u.s. went down to work we're good at it by the bush administration policy guidance on nuclear weapons so what we're doing now is looking at where can the next round of cuts go have we actually really fulfilled our obligations with the new start treaty yet is that a done deal we're down to fifteen hundred or one thousand five hundred fifty it's still an ongoing process the there are different levels that we're looking at we're looking at both the level of nuclear warheads and also the means to deliver them russia is down below in terms of the delivery systems that are looking at the u.s. is still going down a little bit further but also an important aspect of it is that this is a constant exchange we recently had several inspections on both sides so that each country knows what exactly the other is doing so that there's no you know they're

trying to eliminate room for miscalculation and things like that so it's an ongoing process i would say if this process is already under way then explain to me why this twenty thirteen budget is so much higher than it was. adjusted for inflation but that it was at the peak of the cold war well part of it like i said we're looking at a range of options and what the administration is doing is trying to plan for what all of those options mean so i mean give us some options right in that case if you're telling me that we're still spending a ton of money on our nuclear arsenal i want to know what it's for well i think one important aspect is that as part of the agreement to get the new start treaty through the senate the administration agreed to to invest eighty billion dollars in do u.s. nuclear infrastructure with the idea that it's not a surly to build up nuclear weapons or to maintain at the same level but to. to modernize those systems to make sure that as we're drawing down the lower and lower numbers we can rely on what we have left ok but then are there some areas where you feel like there is some waste there is perhaps in this management we are part of a couple of weeks to go to a new funding for the continuous building at los alamos where nobody could figure

out exactly why less and less that they needed and less they really wanted to start building nukes there now i believe it's been taken out of this budget but it's not the only facility i'm sure you know there's certainly there is where we can we can get some cost cutting and also to tailor our nuclear arsenal to the threats that we're actually facing these days we don't face the same threats that we did during the cold war so we don't need to maintain thousands of nuclear weapons and you know the levels that we have on high alert status we're looking out decades into the future to build new systems including new submarines and new bombers and or deliver them but we're looking at a very different world decades in the future and i think that the role of nuclear weapons is actually going to be declining they're not where they are during the day they are where they are were during the cold war now and as we look at threats out in the future they're not we're not going to need the same level of. nuclear arsenal that we maintain now so instead of making those huge investments now and deciding on maintaining a huge stockpile well in the future let's take a good look at what our needs really going to be what can we live with and perhaps

you know invest in fewer of those systems and gauging a lot of cost cutting which the defense department needs to do anyway and have an arsenal that also meets the with the president's pledge to work towards a world free of nuclear weapons if you had to make a guess like you said this is going to be classified we're never going to know exactly what it is the president decides what's he going to go with do you think of this three to four hundred number is a good guess it's difficult to take a guess i think that that's it i don't see it going in that direction i think what's what's reasonable is that we can go down to about a thousand nuclear weapons and i think that's it's a level that that should be you know politically acceptable it's a level that would meet for our needs and it was something that would still be able to meet. u.s. national security programs. i don't know what we need at least a thousand nuclear warheads for but you know i guess that's the game is played peter thank you so much for joining us tonight good to be with. part time for

a break and when we return the nesting drones are a go after the president signed a bill that opens up the skies to domestic ground within months why now it's quite common in this town has something to do with the benjamins and are responding too much money on treating p.s.t. and so what army psychiatrist trying to say is going to dive into his comments and investigation that's been launched but jim hansen with about. resistance is not a politics but a culture. is could. see its own.

cultures of resistance on our team. any match one simply. is going. to burn for ever. eternal so far is going single possible. do we old wants to see this on forever. last week we told you about a bill that went through congress that is aimed at helping the a c. on the surface this bill seeks to hasten the transition from outdated radar to g.p.s. based system for air traffic controllers would also seeks to hasten is that when you will see draw drones excuse me flying in the skies above you see the bill affirms that within the years the drones will be sharing u.s. airspace with original airplanes and orders the f.a.a. to come up with an integration plan to open up access to drones more broadly by two

thousand and fifteen but some groups will be flying them much much earlier groups like law enforcement and emergency responders will be allowed to fly on manned aerial vehicles within the next few months on the name of public safety of course now eventually the integration plan will extend to private sectors to a so that t.v. stations other private companies all get their hands on their very own u.a. the isn't it comforting to know that eventually corporations all over the us will have many spying machines at their disposal it's like all you need is a little cash to make it happen now so let's just say that this bill should have set off alarms for obama and those in congress if they cared at all about our civil liberties as we've been saying for months there are quite a few concerns raised by fast tracking domestic drone use here in the u.s. and it's hardly giger of the policy council at the center for democracy and technology explain to us there wasn't really an outcry when congress had its hands on this legislation. a bipartisan effort and passed overwhelmingly in the republican controlled house and then also in the democratic controlled senate there

were no hearings the bill passed the house and three years later passed the senate so the thing was fast tracked no hearings on privacy the bill mentioned nothing about the civil liberties implications of filling the sky with flying robots. that's right they just fast track to bill with no chance of privacy advocates to explain why they're against robots tracking your every move and how we should properly prepare and adjust the rules on this kind of thing now an article from the republic report might explain why that is lobbyists so you turns out of the association for unmanned vehicle systems international which is the drone trade group has doubled its lobbying expenses in recent years and as you can see from this graph here from two thousand and nine to two thousand and ten the association spent a little over one hundred thousand dollars on lobbying efforts two thousand and eleven that number skyrocketed to two hundred eighty thousand dollars and the extra financial support helped those lobbyist ensure that lawmakers voted favorably for the use of domestic drones or investment paid off quite nicely because for

valentine's day the f.a.a. bill was signed by president obama so that's it now it's law obama completely overlooked all the concerns and he followed in congress's footsteps so once again seems like at the end of the day it really does all come down to money and it's clear that defense contractors like northrop grumman lockheed martin and others who are all part of this association for unmanned vehicle systems it seems like they know how to keep washington in their pockets i mean while i guess that you should just start keeping an eye on the skies because this bill means that somebody is going to be keeping an eye on you for a price. now according to data from the department of veterans affairs ten thousand combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder flooded into v.a. hospitals every three months in two thousand and eleven overall that pushed the number of patients afflicted it to above two hundred thousand and that data came out at the end of november that was before the last troops left iraq was before we see tens of thousands of u.s. troops begin to return from afghanistan this year and the next so it's an issue

that isn't going away anytime soon and it's one of the troops and their families and doctors and employers are all struggling with this is the kind of wound that has no physical scars but are some army doctors actually downgrading p.t.s.d. diagnoses to save money and investigation has been launched after a disturbing memo was made public or in madigan army medical center psychiatry has said that a soldier who retires with the p.t.s.d. diagnosis could eventually receive one point five million in government payments and he claims at the rate of such diagnoses eventually could cause the army and the v.a. to go broke he continued by stating that psychiatry is have to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollar and have to ensure that soldiers aren't being quote rubber stamped with diagnosis of p.t.s.d. so what does that say when the health of those who served it's being measured by dollars discuss this with me is jim hansen retired special operations master sergeant and military blogger at black. jim thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess you know thanks for drawing our attention to this story before we get

into some of the larger implications of the bigger statistics here can you just give us more details about this pacific incident i mean was this just a one off or i guess we should say that it's good that somebody noticed and was disturbed by what he had to say well fortunately it was noticed i'm not convinced it's a one off a feeling it's a much more systemic problem what this was there was a group joint base lewis mcchord who had the final say as to p.t.s.d. diagnoses and he's really a diagnosis of p.t.s.d. which is a lasting illness that requires therapy it requires a long course of treatment to. the government money his point was that maybe you know it's not worth you know maybe we need to look at that in a way that it's more the bean counters view rather than we over these people we sent to war you know the best treatment we can get them regardless you know they didn't choose they volunteered for the military they did that volunteer to teach p.t.s.d. so i think it's a situation where these guys were definitely almost bragging that they could save the government money by downgrading diagnosis from p.t.s.d.

to exile disorder now i'll tell you right now you have exhausted you've got a few things you don't have any interest about this and that that's not the same as p.t.s.d. p.t.s.d. is a debilitating illness and it needs to be treated a lot more seriously in terms of the thinkers that he throws out there to. truly make a one point five million dollars if you have p.t.s.d. when you when you get all your benefits is the assumption i don't know how long the amortized out over you know we're really going to take in and see how long the soldiers are going to live and look at the benefits they get over the course of a lifetime ok do we do the same thing with amputees you know do we save some lose a leg that the services are going to give the rest of their life should be measured you know based on the dollar amount not based on the care we all the wrong way to look at things and we owe our troops better all right so let's talk about this right i mean i think you know a lot of people close to. p.t.s.d. and do you think that it's at least progressing in the sense that people are now are more willing to talk about it you know what's the hardest part is the hardest

part is coming to terms with that maybe the fact that you need help you need to see somebody you have to admit that you have this problem of this disorder there was a stigma for a long time there was a stigma that warriors don't admit they have any weaknesses you that you can't say that combat affected you and then that's baloney you know i think we've got to the point now where at least it's something that's accepted but i mean my girlfriend has p.t.s.d. you've met her she looks fine she's been on the show she looks fine if you didn't know you would never occur to you just from looking at her that she has debilitating fly. back she had been so bad this last week she took a fall and hit her head got a concussion all right she was in iraq at the point in time she was at war in her mind during that flashback to say that someone like her does not deserve the care that we promised them when they signed up just because we're trying to save money budget cuts are one thing ok let's argue about you know how many planes to build how many ships to build let's not argue about whether or not to take care of people we sent to war and so what kind of treatment would you say for the most part you

know are they at least advancing how do you how do you treat somebody that has p.t.s.d. you know that's one area where i think there has been a lot of work has been done that we've learned about it the vietnam veterans we let them languish we let them just rot on their own now there are there are excellent programs there is therapy there psychiatric help the psychological help counseling the problem is again that cost money and when you've got people looking at budget cuts right now you know prioritizing the accounting you know balances versus the well being of the troops you've got a mistake and i will commend the army surgeon general lieutenant general hoar who she brought twelve people from joint base lewis mcchord who were affected by these doctors who are making these bad rulings to walter reed to be rediagnosed i hope she's taking a look at the rest of the program as well because i'm well aware there are other folks who have been affected the same way they've been downgraded their findings have been not line of duty been a lot of things to minimize the number of actual cases and that's more let's talk

about what are some of the ways you said this every now and then they just want to diagnose it as anxiety or what's the other thing they try to claim at this including prior to service you know they can say that people came into the military and may have had something that existed prior to service that's ridiculous you know p.t.s.d. is a symptom based disorder if you didn't receive treatment for seek treatment for it before you entered the military you didn't have p.t.s.d. no matter what else happened to you so that's the kind of things should not come into account there are rules the military has that say you have to assume they were sound when they join the military and that. if they got p.t.s.d. having been stoned when they join the military it was line of duty and that's that's one of the areas that needs to be looked at and i hope they take a better look at it and that's one of the reasons appreciate your shining a light on all right so you do you know specifically or individuals have actually had this happen them to you because you said that you don't believe that this is necessarily an isolated incident that it's not just one. being investigated and might lose his job that it might be more widespread in more cases without

a doubt that i'm aware of personally people talking to us were i right we have a lot of people who wrote on the back channel and let us know that this is not an isolated incident to joint base lewis mcchord it's happening at walter reed it's happening at other regional medical centers and it's something the army does take seriously if you have to keep money in the budget to treat the people we sent to war and who were wounded emotionally they have chokes of their minds have been taken out they may not have lost a leg the chance of their minds are missing and emotionally they deserve the same treatment as those with visible injuries so they need to take it seriously and do the right thing it's as i mentioned you know the last year for about the figure as to how many people every three months were coming to the v.a. this is before all the troops came back from iraq this is before we had the war in afghanistan do you think that's probably going to grow exponentially that's not going to get worse as as more of these people come i don't know if it's going to be exponentially i think it's something that i will give the military plenty of credit for paying attention to you know there's a lot of outreach work being done and there's a lot of people saying it's ok get help seek help the question now is are they

going to follow through on the treatment of those people who come up and say they need the help and god willing the creek don't rise they'll do the right thing and help these people well i think that you know. if the american people were to hear about stories like this i think on a more broad level if this was all over the news today which i think it deserves to be then people would be outraged outraged they would be incredibly incredibly mad but it's not and so you wrote you on your blog today that you're lying to take this to the highest levels high as you possibly can you want everyone to write into you . there are congress and people looking at this are we have a couple of arrows in our quiver that i hope i don't have to fire but if the right thing isn't done there will be action taken by combat veterans in congress who take this very seriously i think the army leadership is engaged in this and i think they're going to take a good look at it and push down hill and say evaluate the things properly look at these people and get them the care they need and treat them the way we.