in tough economic times everyone feels the pinch all this as the u.s. is reading from budget cuts all across the board that is unless the pentagon gets its way more cuts to defense spending could put america risk we're told is that really the case going to break down all the budget madness and that. we must not allow iran to have a nuclear weapon if they do the world changes america will be at risk and someday nuclear weaponry will be used well it wouldn't be the first time that unfounded fears lead to conflict in the way american politicians are talking these days it certainly may not be the last but is all of this warmongering actually doing anyone any good director sean stone will tell us why we shouldn't fear iran. and it's

a new chapter for the occupy wall street movement from taking on bankers to taking on lawmakers protestors are directing their scrutiny and slogans towards corporations going to bring you the latest from stays in nationwide protests. that evening happy to leave wednesday to you every twenty nine times seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy captain of you're watching our team well depends secretary leon panetta was back on capitol hill again earlier today for yet another round of hearings on the defense budget now panetta said that the nation's debt is a major national security issue but warned lawmakers against any additional cuts to the country on budget the military is already planning to slash about four hundred eighty seven billion dollars over the next decade but that's nowhere near enough to

fix the budget deficit for that insisted that that money would have to be found elsewhere there's a defense secretary at yesterday's senate budget hearing. if you don't you know if you're not dealing with the two thirds that's entitle misspending if you're not dealing with revenues and you keep going back to the same place frankly you're not going to make and hurt this country you're going to hurt this country security. right well is that the case writing that this country security let me break it all down is retired lieutenant code lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer he is also the author of operation dark heart and a senior fellow at the center of at banstead france studies welcome back to the program it's great to have you know so you believe that the prevailing logic seems to be money in equals military might money out equals national security threats by this logic no i don't there's two problems with it first off we're still dealing with an infrastructure which was put together here are key during the cold war so we've never stepped forward past that purdum so you're talking about

a system which is completely outmoded for what it's supposed to do now secondly we have yet to actually understand all the money all the things we're spending money on the f. thirty five for example the navy version can't be used because it can't prep you can't let alone an aircraft carrier so you're talking about huge corruption if nothing else unlike within the pentagon not looking at what the real threats are or how we're going to build capabilities to defend those threats so we're right now at a time when you're you see the infrastructure itself the pentagon brass all digging their heels and saying we can't do anything more they're not thinking about it they're protecting replaying it to game of chess checkers and not understanding that to play chess for it to be smarter working to find its words and then build capability around the stress not just continue to have money or whatever we think we need to have an attorney i mean you're not some left wing you know you have war and so i don't know where you can recall the republican you have right areas with the military you understand how these things work that most americans haven't necessarily served in the military don't necessarily know what war feels like most lawmakers don't necessarily have direct military experience so when the head of the

pentagon comes and says guys we need this money otherwise it's a huge threat i mean how do you cut through that isn't the pentagon in a position to sort of manipulate who they are and they need nuclear the president obama said look to go option for afghanistan which we're all seeing the results of that now and the other thing they're doing right now is actually you have a you have democrats and republicans and you have a bureaucracy so the pentagon has a huge bureaucracy that things for its. for the men of that that third party if you will is huge and they own the territory so when i go in and talk to secretary panetta and say x.y.z. what are you going to do it is no x. a b. team a red team looking at what they're saying to actually discern if it's a truth or not so we've got to take a hard step to look at what the truth is regarding our requirements and again not just our picks up what the pentagon saying because a lot of these folks have vested interest in having money come into gold or empire and keep the status quo as it is and i do want to get into the stats but very briefly to her you know military manufacturing went back and found here is one

hundred twenty three percent greater today than it was in two thousand this is more than double the rest of the manufacturing sector has shrunk and given that we do have sort of this unfortunate military industrial complex and speak are we have right now where removing that we're making these cuts could actually devastate the u.s. economy in the short term that's exactly why the supercommittee did work you had patty murray in washington and pat toomey and ken and pennsylvania who wouldn't make it wouldn't do to the big difference because of boeing so you're seeing folks with overlapping loyalties here and that's what that's why we've got to have someone come in who's totally objective and say these are the things we need to focus on and get the politicians and the bureaucrats out of the way maybe a commission maybe something else but you're absolutely right we've got to look at this from a mind your door calls a comrade to commerce where we've actually become so wet on having these defenses come in with big budget items and it does keep the economy humming but not for the right reasons and i don't what are these guys i mean you know we're hearing about it a lot on all the time we're hearing about the threat of china i mean i think is valid

threats these are the two most popular i guess for us right now let's let's be honest here the north koreans iranians are equal threats and they understand brinksmanship and understand how to walk up to the line and make a staunch every time the north koreans are doing again today but you know threats that merits well and spending or diplomacy i think diplomacy should be always be the first option is a warrior really words don't want to fight our job is to not fight if we can avoid . with that said i think we need to have a very strong military which is focused on the real mission issues i believe stories for most should be kept open i think the u.s. for better forces always defended lines of commerce and that's what a thing but you don't need to have the scope and breadth of the defense bases for bases that we have now so again we need to look at what's real what are the real threats what could the arena's do at this point in time no one can really define that and i'm one who says i think you've already done so what we've got to figure out a way to prevent a larger issue of a sunday is sunni shia cold war where nuclear weapons are develop of both sides and

i was looking at that and i this is where we got to figure out what the real issues are and we haven't been right and that is a huge threat now very briefly on the north korea issue you know is that do you see this as evidence of diplomacy working or do you think it's just well look i don't think it's i think it's one of those things wishful thinking the north koreans are hermit kingdom have always been about one thing regime survival if you will you understand that you understand everything else they do i think this is one more time that we're going to try to get him to do something i don't want to do and it's a sham obviously now you know i don't think actually and i don't think so no they're not going to give it up but they're going to get they've been contained for the past you know since fifty four right nothing tells me they're going to change that time soon and who are very pleasing those who think that the clumsy doesn't work are pointing to iran for example hasn't in the area where perhaps a military strike would be in order or at least support of strike with the israel i want to bring into the discussion growth media you know we've talked about some of the revolving door and we have generals and and you know who are hired as the dispassionate on our analysts still serve their pentagon interest our defense

contractor interests glenn greenwald that's the lawn had a great piece about a general who has been briefing n.b.c. executives the actually about the imminent threat of iran how does this kind of thing affects the focus i mean if well let's fight for policy these generals come in and a lot of these guys would be very blunt here susan because they're great at the door and they become part of the says. from which they came up through the door we're talking about i believe reflects the whole of mccain over and i thought that's very mccaffery mccain a lot of these guys will say whatever they're being told to say and have and have no ability to think for themselves and that's part of the problem process going to run their generals out there personal friends of mine who do you think will say what's on your mind which you have others who are actually engaged in this information operations if you will trying to convince people thing of things which are necessarily true or are in our country's best interest isn't and it doesn't seem to be working i mean what was that pew poll that found that fifty eight percent of americans would support

a military strike against iran if sanctions failed i mean our world view is essentially reflecting the sense mike and i think it's part of probably going to tell you about the blatant fact fact is you would have to take over three hundred sorties of his aircraft missions to hit just the known sites within iran so what we go from there what's next so we've got to be careful about how we do this i'm not saying that there isn't another threat i think there are elements within the iranian government which would like to see something but there's a rational side as well we're not among them on with the threat that's right i believe we should actually try to encourage the iranian people the persians to rise up against their government and they're not happy with the government either but democratic change is ultimately answered they're not bombing going back to the stone don't you think the kind of rhetoric that we're seeing out of for example our presidential hopeful some people in the political leadership could essentially unify our country that feels like it's under attack and that's going to have upset absolutely i've said this on your network i've said it on another network to the more we poke them the more their central government and so you see we have enemies

out there you can tell me to be with us and therefore we help codified that bad government and the people standing behind it we would do the same thing here in united states if someone started taking shots at us the americans we would. formerly government supported this is one of things we tend to forget about the fact if we do work others are going to have the same effect of helping that government tends to maintain control absolutely and one i think i want to get into i mean the new budget proposal makes it very clear that we're sort of shifting away from our focus on iraq and our focus on afghanistan even though we're still spending our health every that's a different conversation what what kind of weight does that leave i mean i can't stand is certain by all the metrics i feel here in terms of our mission despite everything issue yes the basic premise is this they want to do counterinsurgency which is basically to establish the conditions for the people to support some from government what we've seen instead is us pushing the people towards a corruption for government they know it and we give them a hobson's choice either to take the central government is corrupt or the telly but

most people are picking the taliban that's why you saw seven days of uprisings against us and the karzai we are a proxy the karzai so the best thing that we can do is this except the fact that we're not going to bring a concern for the people of the twenty first century for psychically the cars i was corrupt and let him sink or swim on his own third to really shoe has been always has been president obama said in his lowest point speech two years ago pakistan the pakistani still control the taleban i can tell you for a fact that you. recent reports say yes and so that in another general a good friend of mine did a review and in country recently and said the taliban don't have sufficient mass take over afghanistan without the help of the pakistanis so the truth is with me focusing on pakistan plus pakistan is that you can go up and so all roads lead to pakistan and afghanistan should be left alone we can do what's necessary there with special operations forces we don't have to be occupiers to do what we have to keep national security interest of may not make them more like us well a lot to talk about with the pakistanis and so i hope we can have you back i love near future to really hone in on that thank you so much for your time that is

anthony shaffer the senior fellow at the center at dance defense studies on the author of the book operation dark heart. i will israel's prime minister sets off this week on a u.s. visit clouded by a deepening rift with washington which is worried about a potential israeli attack against iran's nuclear program now israel says that it has not decided whether to strike but it has signaled some readiness to potentially do so a move that of course would have deep worldwide implications now while some have cautioned against a military confrontation with the wrong position does have significant support among at least a handful of u.s. lawmakers as well as some g.o.p. right house hopefuls public opinion it would seem is also not in iran scorch we mention this in our earlier segment but again a resurgent puce research survey found that a majority of voters would support a strike against iran if sanctions fail now that survey also found that a record number of americans now believe the islamist republic is a u.s. public enemy number one but earlier today we had a guest who is not one of them twenty seven year old sean stone the son of the

infamous or famous controversial director oliver stone made headlines recently over reports that he has converted to islam he was in iran earlier this month and also joined me in the studio today let you explain his opposition to war. well i would ask in terms of the polls that american people are being asked about attacking iran preemptively or as we did with iraq i would say if that was just as easy to type in iran you know that's one thing but if that was the world war three are you still so sure that you want to do this and this is but ultimately what's the point is to prevent or stop what i think is we are walking into world war three at the moment between syria being destabilized and iran and on its border being threatened by israel in america to me it's really very dangerous time and we don't recognize what the causes consequences would be not only not only regionally but for the world because russia has stated that it be you know want to see the

overthrow the syrian regime or the iranian regime because these are countries in its backyard and basically on its border across the caspian sea so we are in a very dangerous geopolitical situation having studied this is sturrock lee i recognize the great game that is being played out between british imperial factions using america against the russians and the american people just don't have this background or knowledge to recognize what's at stake here and they're thinking as though we're talking about ground and knowledge and what's at stake here but the rhetoric that's coming out from our own politicians that we as americans are rap elected into office does not seem to support what you're saying it seems to support the idea that iran is a giant threat how do you account for that. well i can't for it from the fact that we have no diplomacy engaging with these people we you know in america we don't really understand that for example the president of egypt who you know being alleged as a defendant of his i'm not trying to defend him he's not on trial but he's not this

is the military commander of that country i mean he is. he has to say you know basically answer to the supreme leader to this parliament he cannot similarly poor nuke. the fact to my mind is this what's happening is we are now in a state of martial law and war a global i was told back in december by a very close friend of mine who has time who who knows the former presidential candidates disclose who that is this candidate's office told my friend by march of this year he should consider leaving the country and i didn't understand i understood why because the n.b.a. but i didn't realize it and the a national defense authorization act actually comes into effect tomorrow this act that obama has called for and signed stipulates that even american citizens can now be targeted by the military picked up and imprisoned indefinitely without civilian trial thus throwing out our joint process articles corpus clauses so we are now in the state of martial arts of tomorrow which obviously if you carry now the use of drones on u.s.

soil the fact that our president has assessed that american citizens everything is now it could bring conditions for a total war state i mean mccain called for the whole of america becoming part of the so-called battlefield that america is not a battlefield the whole earth is about a field so rather than trying. rather than trying to address our continued economic depression and the reforms necessary to nest the cli what we're trying to do then is create martial law state using using iran as a terrorist enemy or a threat and you know even making these claims that iran is rates use terrorism abroad you know you have instances like the iranian in thailand who clothes and so i thought this could be a false flag instigate. well different country to make you look like a terrorist so you see everything is now in motion as a pretext that you can go to martial law here and war bride and obviously the war brought has tremendous consequences because if you attack you run hezbollah and hamas and israel which then brings in america potentially russia into the equation

so this is a horrible situation people i think educated as to what's really going on and short of that if that is indeed the case then who would profit from that kind of sort of push towards martial law push towards war who would benefit from that. i mean my calculation what you're dealing with is an economy that wall street economy that is not really become heard from you know from their overall deficit deficit or their overall debt i mean they basically have to have their attributes that are still unaccounted for they ultimately can't really you know get good things going in obama's you know continuous bailout of wall street and europe as well by the way is not actually helping the common working people so if you go towards an austerity program for example i mean you could ultimately lead to fascism in this country and in western europe and. america is america trending towards fascism do you think that that's the trend right now. well in terms of advocating a constitution that's already in place i mean the fact that the what is happening

now is its critics there are an outcry about this the idea that u.s. citizens can be picked up by the and it taint by the military without civilian trial with you know where is our constitution where the outrage that this fact because we're so scared of terrorists i can't believe american people this frightened of terrorism i mean if you said you can't if you study the cold war you remember the communists were also in our backyard and they were godless they were trying to destroy our way of life so you know if you study history you know that you know war and terror is a part of history you cannot but over react to destroy republican values your your constitution your tradition from fear all right and yet it seems that fear is period of precisely what's dominating started the agenda here and i want to praise you a little clip of some of the republican candidates for the white house and i want you to sort of react and let me know what you think about the fear in this soundbite what's happening. listen john we have a president who isn't going to stop or he is going to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon if you think

a management is about to have nuclear weapons and you think that made man is going to use those nuclear weapons then you have an absolute moral obligation to defend the lives of your people but a limb and aiding the capacity. we must not allow iran to have a nuclear weapon if they do the world changes america will be at risk and sunday nuclear weaponry will be used as a song you're talking about sort of educating the american people one of these guys could be president of the united states what's your reaction. well my reaction is we already have obama as president that's bad enough what he's doing is a very dangerous game he's not making it clear stand even though he's joint chief of staff mc and the military i think are very much opposed to the danger that israel of israel preemptively striking iran obama has always stood by and said we are you know an ambiguous the supporting israel we're working hand in hand with them this is not a clear message or a good message we do not want to let israel instigate something that can escalate

into this world war i think obama has to be much clearer in trying to first already to war with iraq we're at war with iran economic larger sanctions now economic war exactly in the point is that you can't you can't engage people diplomatically if you're already trying to isolate them and what are you basically creating is more radicalism on their part because you're trying to push them into a corner and that was the test that they've been running you know by example killing their scientists in tehran this was is an act of terrorism by mossad which i dean is working hand in hand in tehran if it happened in america for example we've gone to war i'm sure right away and sean i mean you just came back from iran you know a lot of the rhetoric here sort of paints the iranians in these crazy people who might be a threat to america their leaders are crazy i mean that's what we're hearing from the media how do a rainy and the americans what it was what is their perception of our leadership given all this war talk. well i would say if the iranians think that if people

think iranians hate americans why would they let me come into their country and greet me so warmly it's just it's misconceptions and misconception on our part to really believe that the reinstate the americans the have the loathing for imperialism and this is historical it goes back to the british and russians it goes back to the shah who was backed by israeli and american regimes and frankly you know the shock in his of arc for example the secret police were largely trained by israelis and american so there's a lot of antipathy to the regimes that governments. abroad because of that but when it comes to the american people i mean i never once felt any kind of danger or threat from iranian people very sophisticated very much like americans my first instinct and i still believe this is the iranians israelis and americans will become good friends again as they were historically you know until the overthrow bashar and then the iraq iran war where forget that iraq was the supreme sponsor saddam was it was being sponsored by the americans against the iranians so there is

you know there was a lot of anger this is a long it's a track that you're conflict that killed many iranians and so the fact that there still is calmness they are sophisticated in this regard to show that we can deal with these people i mean i had great conversations with many politicians including one of the top advisers to the supreme leader these people are sophisticated trained in the west and many of them trained in america one hundred europe speaking english national culture i don't interrupt you but we're almost out of time and so i can have a dialogue. we're talking about dialogues here we're talking about your experience there and i want to bring in very briefly before we run out of run out of time the role of the media coverage or not this because you know a lot of the coverage that we're seeing here in the u.s. doesn't really reflect this view that iran is a sane sort of rational actor and in fact your trip got a very specific tinge in the media coverage i want to play a quick sound bite from your recent interviews on c.n.n. fox. look look look the one thing that he said that's undeniable was he said that

the holocaust never happened and once you get into that kind of a fringe lunatic assessment i don't care if you please us i don't want anybody around when you mention the g.'s bring out this denial of the holocaust that he keeps approaching i mean he seems very perverse that you would wish to spend much time with this guy given you'll find the upbringing dealing with a guy who is an extremist he's a fanatic and it would be like if you were in germany in the one nine hundred thirty s. and you were talking to him lorraine so here you are trying to talk about the threat of war there talking about your relationship but often i did it out what does that say to you about the role of u.s. media. well it's the role the media played in the bill to the iraq war i mean my father's done a good job of trying to point this out in his documentary spin cycle and chavez and castro try to get the other person's point of view across why can't you know rather than trying to build a fire the guy but it's true at least here is point that's the nature of dialogue that's the nature of diplomacy but if we're trying to become an empire and act as

an empire would in terms of forcing policies down the sovereign nations throat this is exactly the trajectory that we're following as far as the holocaust by the way i mean i'm not trying to say that in any way agree with anyone tonight the holocaust i don't go to japanese still don't acknowledge their holocaust the chinese and southeast asians are more to be retreating partner you know since since we dropped the bomb since forty five so the question is you know it's obviously not a question of principles and morals there's an agenda here you know and the fact of which they're trying to create a war with iran it helps that purpose by saying that a major there's some dictator which is simply not he doesn't have that power in his country and in terms of whatever you may or may not have said regarding israel i try i would love to see more of a dialogue opening up in regard to israel the west bank in any case in jerusalem specifically all right well unfortunately we're out of time but i want to thank you so much for your appearance here and you know a lot of that a lot of critical issues we don't really see an honest discussion of the actual threats the u.s.

faces in the media by our politicians and sometimes it just takes folks from non political lines of work i guess to call attention to all that thank you so very much that was filmmaker xan stone. well from occupying wall streets to shutting down corporations that was the focus of today's protests in almost ninety cities all across the country more than a dozen people were less arrested but the protests were for the most part these folks now the occupy wall street movement has been relatively quiet in the months since the police have clearing plantains all across the country from new york to oakland to other major cities actions were going on behind the scenes we've seen occupiers targeting foreclosures and other sort of movements but this today was the largest coordinated occupy wall street protest since the fall essentially demonstrators were out on the streets in the point of today's rally is essentially was to get money out of politics how they did this well for that let's turn to

another guest that i had earlier today he's a contributor to the daily kos his name is justin the director is a frequent guest of ours and he joins me from new york to explain what it is actions were about well today the focus is really on the fact that not only are corporations really just we see me entire american public put the system is just so broken that in a democracy of one man one vote is what do you people without money are totally voice was sold the idea is really to focus on the fact that a country that only benefits the wealthiest one percent quarter profiteers is a country that is no longer a democracy and very good to see people getting on the streets and do it i'm about you know one of the sort of targets at least in some of the blog coverage the media coverage of today is to protest actions is this shady organization that's known by the acronym alec i want to play you a quick sound bite sort of try to explain what this is and what are about it. the american legislative exchange council or alec is an extreme right wing membership

organization comprised of state legislators and powerful multinational corporations including the corrections corporation of america so who are these guys and talk more broadly about the symbolism of groups like this and their role in u.s. politics well alec is a trade organization comprised of some of the largest companies in america and what they basically says is in a more or less words a shadow government they set up legislation to be distributed to corrupt lawmakers across the country so that you see the same anti worker anti consumer bills coming up in state after state the basic fact is some of these corrupt politicians believe in the outsourcing so much they outsource their own stupid ideas and it's not a democracy if it doesn't matter who i vote for are going to get the seam special interest written legislation a matter who ends up in office how can we possibly call this freedom how can we call democracy so i think that really strikes at the heart of what i was she was talking about as well as millions of other people in america russia syria around

the world the idea that bridge working class people are voiceless in this is them and it's a total force of democracy to prevent anything otherwise but we're talking much of marcy here and i just want to bring in sort of the security issue here because we're seeing it seems to me at least increasingly lawmakers cracking down on occupy wall street out of a national security threats right and i thought it a market response at freedom of speech congress on monday approved a bill called h.r. three forty seven it's the so-called trespass bill which essentially would give the government the power to bring charges against americans protesting anywhere in the country would make them better and it would make it i don't know a perfect sense to disrupt any events that's attended by a person with secret service protection even if it's accidental now this may be an isolated bill obviously we don't know if obama's going to sign something like that since a lot but the question is what does that say about where we're trending. it says that we're moving away from a free society you know when we really look at society in general you can either

have an open society or close society and bills like this trespass that push us towards you know people often say the dissent desires form of patriotism now how can we possibly say that we're free if we don't have the freedom to dissent and especially given the fact that our first amendment is the heart of the idea of the american justice system to say that you would have to ask permission from your government in order to protest that government is silly but the say that we garner allowed to be in certain places so secret services there is a total farce the reality is this bill is an attack on our most basic freedoms the right to assemble and to meet with other people in public spaces and talk about the issues that matter to us and i guess my only real question is this is obviously a travesty of justice but where are those freedom loving tea partiers who are so vocal in their dissent against this president i wonder if they're aware that many of their own house of representatives like the tea party members just voted to take away their right to protest president obama i wonder how they feel about that.