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 to wouldn't be the first time that unfounded fears have to lead to conflicts and the way us politicians are talking these days it certainly won't be the last because all this war talk justified director shawn stone will tell us why we shouldn't fear ron. and tough budget cuts for all it would seem except for the pentagon the military is defending its spending priorities warning that any more any more cuts could hurt national security troops or high we're going to break it down. and from occupying wall street to shutting

down corporations new protests all across the country are targeting corporate influence of politics going to bring you the latest from today's nationwide actions . good evening it's wednesday february twenty ninth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine and rushing party. well israel's prime minister cites off this week on a u.s. visit clouded by a deepening rift with washington which of course is worried about a potential israeli attack against iran's nuclear program and well israel says that it has not yet decided whether to strike but has signaled a readiness to do so a move that would have worldwide implications now while some have cautioned against a military confrontation with the country the position has significant support among a handful of u.s. lawmakers as well as republican white house hopefuls public opinion it would seem

is also not in iran's court a recent pew research survey found that a majority of voters but actually see support a u.s. strike against iran if sanctions bailed now that same survey also found that a record number of americans now believe that the islamic republic is u.s. public enemy number one or that's not a view that's shared by all over stones son twenty seven year old sean made headlines recently after converting to islam on a visit to iran but he's back from the islamic republic and he joined me earlier today to explain his view is. that what's being done is that rather than trying to address our economic opportunity comic depression and the reforms necessary to mystically what we're trying to do that is create more should last eight using using iran as a terrorist the enemy or threat and you know even making these claims that iran is ready to 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 instigation. 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 and march a lot here and war abroad and obviously the war brought has tremendous consequences because if you're to actually run hezbollah and hamas been unleashed on israel which then brings an american potentially russia into the equation so this is a horrible situation people are being 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 a push towards war who would benefit from that. i mean my calculation you're dealing with is an economy that austrian economy that is not really recovered from you know from their overall deficit spending that deficit there with all of that i mean they basically have to have their attributive that are still unaccounted for they ultimately can't really get 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 be the to fascism in this country and in western europe and. america is an asset 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 no one is happy you know it's christmas there are an outcry about this the idea that u.s. citizens can be picked up and detained by the military without a civilian trial which you know where is our constitution where the outreach is fact because we're so scared of terrorists i can't believe american people this frightened of terrorism i mean if you study khan if you study the cold war you remember that you know 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 overreact to destroy republican values in europe in your constitution your tradition from fear all right and yet it seems that fear is period precisely what's dominating sort of the agenda here and i want to play 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 this here in this soundbite let's let's play that clip. listen john we have a president who isn't going to stop he is going to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon if you think a married man is about to have nuclear weapons and you think that my admin is going to use those nuclear weapons then you have an absolute moral obligation to defend the lives of your people in 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 someday nuclear weaponry will be used for us sean 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

a clear stand even though his joint chiefs of staff dempsey and the military i think are very much opposed to the danger that israel of israel preemptively strike iran obama has always stood by and said we are you know an ambiguously supporting israel were 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 they can escalate into as i said world war i think obama's the much clearer and. first already to war with iraq we're at war with iran and i like arthur sanctions now to commit 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 try to push them into a corner and that was the test that they've been running for example killing their scientists in tehran this was attacked an act of terrorism by mossad which i mean it's 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 as these crazy people who might be a threat to america their leaders are crazy and that's what we're hearing from the media how do a raining 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 the iranians hate americans why would they let me come in to their country and greet me so warmly it's just it's misconceptions and misconception on our part to really believe that the iranians hate the americans the haven't 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 sharpie has survived for example the secret police were largely trained by israelis and american so there's a lot of antipathy to the regimes of the 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 that 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 they'll forget that iraq was being supported sponsored 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 they are still is calm as they are and sophisticated in this regard goes 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 really them trained in america who was in europe speaking english national culture i don't interrupt you but we're almost out of time and so i can have a dialogue. or talk about dialogues here we're talking about your experience there and i want to bring in very very briefly a program not to run out of time the role of the media coverage in all 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 change in the media coverage i want to play you a quick sound bites from your recent interviews on c.n.n. . but 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 should be soft i don't want any more. when you mention did you bring up this denial of the holy ghost of the kids supporting i mean she seems very perverse that you would wish to spend much time with this guy given you found the upbringing dealing with a guy who is an extremist is a fanatic and it would be like if you were in germany in the 1930's and you were talking to him alert so here you are trying to talk about the threat of war there talking about your relationship but often identity what does that say to you about the role of u.s. media blitz the world and media played in the bill to the iraq war i mean my

father's been a good job of trying to point this out that it's documentaries for example on chavez and castro trying to get a person's point of view across like you know rather than trying to vilify the guy but your piece here is point 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 then this is exactly a 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 you it's not the holocaust so it's a japanese still don't acknowledge their holocaust but chinese and southeast asians are more for two and they are great trading 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 and the fact of which they're trying to create a war with iran it helps that purpose by saying there is something that dictator which is simply not he doesn't have that power in this country and in terms of

whatever he may or may not have said already israel i would try i would love to see more of a dialogue opening up regarding israel the west bank in any case in jerusalem specifically and i was filmmaker song sound. well defense secretary leon panetta is back on capitol hill for a second day of budget hearings panetta once chair of the house budget committee and today he's revisiting his old stomping grounds to try to sway lawmakers against any more defense cuts the military the military is already slashing spending heaping several were killing several weapon systems cutting more than one hundred thousand troops and calling for two new rounds of base closures but anything more than that lawmakers are told would pose serious risks to america's national security affairs leon panetta speaking before the senate budget panel yesterday. if you don't you know if you're not dealing with food with two thirds that's entitlement spending if you're not dealing with revenues and you keep going back to the same place frankly you're not going to make it and you heard this country

you're going to hurt his country's security. so is that the case well here to help us figure this all out so the reality of defense spending and cutting is the retired u.s. army colonel douglas macgregor thank you so much for being back on the program my first question for you as the pentagon is already planning four hundred eighty seven billion dollars in cuts over the next decade is not enough not at all in fact it's very marginal and so modest as to be almost irrelevant book let's understand the larger strategic context first of all the united states government the federal government is insolvent we're effectively broke we're in the run up to an election anything we do no takers on the margins none of the really substantial reductions will occur until after the next election the navy was largely spared any serious cuts the marine corps got off very lightly the air force a little bit a little less so and the army took the brunt of the cuts the rest of the services are going to be under assault after the next election but right now we're going to

grow the margins and that's what we're talking about today's marginal change but if you look at the rhetoric coming out of the pentagon at least i mean we heard leon panetta speaking earlier martin dempsey that and see if that staff there said the u.s. quote would no longer be a global power if we slash any more of the pentagon budget i mean these are pretty stark terms to these guys know something that you don't perhaps know first of all we don't know in the world contrary to popular belief so we don't need to be everywhere all the time there is no existential military threat to the united states and it hasn't been since one thousand nine hundred ninety the threats that are out there are threats that we can easily manage and cope with so i think what you're listening to are these sort of exaggerated expressions of fear and after all you're talking about enormous bureaucracy and bureaucracies don't usually volunteered to be dismantled and that's really what we're talking about the bad news is that we have been cutting soldiers and sailors airmen and marines people to

actually do something to deploy and fight we've kept all the general officers all of the headquarters. all of the big programs that's unsustainable that has to change well this thing that you say that there is no sort of the central threat facing the us that we could in effect are reduce our per our overseas presence at the same time you know you're not a lefty activist you're a retired general a decorated retired colonel sorry colonel a decorated combat veteran but most americans. don't necessarily have to experience most lawmakers and capitol hill don't have direct military experience and so when the head of the pentagon says hey guys this is a big danger we need more money to fix it i mean how people are expected to see through that and what we need to know because first of all none of the general officers or the animals that you have today have risen to their positions as a consequence of a war of having done anything we haven't faced an opponent with armies and navies here forces here defenses we're talking about some of the weakest adversaries we've

ever encountered certainly the week is since probably the banks that could war the special burden war and they're not even organize so these people are not where they are because they've demonstrated some remarkable performance or capability under fire absolutely not they're part of a bureaucracy they are due course promote peace that in most cases they've been promoted over the last twenty years because of their willingness to go along with essentially whatever their political bosses wanted regardless of whether or not it made sense for the political boss of say we don't come out on well leon panetta i think went over to defense with the best of intentions to do things that made sense it looks like he's capitulated he's essentially hung it up he's decided it's too horrid and i suspect that after the election he will be gone and someone else will come in who has to clean it up because this is this is an overly large bureaucratic mess we are stretched all over the world it's costing us an enormous quantity of money and the world has recovered this is not one nine hundred fifty nine hundred sixty or one hundred seventy the rest of the world has come back with

a vengeance japan korea europe especially. many russia these places have largely recovered from the distant distressing conditions that they faced and they could defend themselves at the same time i mean you know we're talking about sort of the these large threats precede threats the united states and yet if we look at for example the u.s. economy right this is the top issue right now everyone is concerned about how to pay the bills how to put food on the table they're not necessarily concerned about how stretched our military is and you know what bases need to be closed and whatnot how do you bring home to the american public that these overseas experiments project standing is iraq lee tied to their day to day lives well first of all i think we need to give the american people a little bit more credit than they're getting these days less than fifteen percent according to most recent polls of the american probably lation favors any sort of military action against iraq and that's a dramatic drop from where we were sent out according to pew well that's not what

i've seen and you've got to look carefully what he says that fifty eight percent is responding to see his questions you know the notion that somehow or another iran presents a threat to us is ludicrous nonsense it doesn't iran is a sister a country with a broken economy a dysfunctional society a government that is highly unpopular but the one thing that all the iranians can agree on is that they need some form of nuclear deterrent because they live in a rough neighborhood they are worried about pakistan on one side israel on the other the russians to the north and others but they're also worried about us because if you go back since the end of the second world war who's led most of the interventions that have precipitated these conflicts and wars see about it states they have a legitimate concern that we may attempt to intervene in their country i'm not saying that i welcome the arrival of a nuclear deterrent but i can certainly understand it from their perspective but that doesn't change security here at home it doesn't threaten us they are not going to field large numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles and again if you look at the intercontinental ballistic missile because recently an israeli foreign

minister said that's a devil that's coming if they try to launch it. to fly over russia ukraine and a number of other countries that are not going to be very friendly to iran if they are informed it in a crowd in a ballistic missiles about to be lost should the united states over their territory so i think it's all nonsense we just needs to stop what we need to do is understand we don't know the world and we don't want to own it it's of bad economic advancement economic prosperity here at home rebuilding our prosperity is the number one priority the military needs to shrink we need to go back to defending the united states and its concrete tangible interest it's very different from maintaining a large military establishment designed to intervene on a moment's notice in other people's countries. interesting point of view there unfortunately in doesn't seem like it's one that's necessarily shared by a lot of folks over on capitol hill or running for the white house but as always thank you so much for your time that was that generated a combat veteran and retired u.s.

army colonel douglas macgregor. i'll from occupying iraq straight to shutting down the corporations that is the focus of these protests almost ninety cities all across the u.s. now more than a thousand people have been reportedly arrested so far in what has been the largest coordinated our wall street action since the floor and today's protests are aimed at ending corporate influence in u.s. politics the target being a shadowy conservative group best known by its acronym our take a look at. 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. sounds ominous but what exactly is it and what is the do and more importantly why is it the focus of all these protests over the answer that we turned to journalist leave thong take a look. the american legislative exchange council has existed for thirty years it's

a nonprofit and for a long time it's existed under the radar it's essentially an organization that brings together state legislatures state legislators excuse me of any state senators state assemblyman state of representatives together with corporate lobbyist and those corporate lobbyist are paired with these legislators and help them write legislation that's helpful to corporations that the lobbyists represent the lobby on example well one of the most. famous ones in recent years. the corrections corporation of america this large for profit prison corporation and work with alec twenty years to privatized prisons in states across the country and also to basically put more people in jail they they were behind a three strikes push throughout the ninety's that led to really mass of our separation from places like california they've also been pushing drug laws that put

more people in prison that's sounds i mean it again does this sounds pretty shocking how how does this actually work i mean is this a dark room where you know a bunch of people smoking cigars sit down and literally right the bills is it a corporate interests trying to sort of hob nob and have drinks with lawmakers and said yes let the legislative process mean how does it physically play out. well you know it's kind of button on a scratch scratch that because it's a little bit of both what you describe a conventions sponsored by how i can you know there publicize they are a secret but they do kick out journalist you know i've attended some of these events and in recent years as the group has received more scrutiny they kicked me out and i was kicked out of the last one actually pretty violently but you know if the legislators cared with an alec lobbyist it's given draft legislation and then those corporations that would benefit from that bill all coordinate their campaign contributions to help that legislators amount to only our legislators getting ideas

and actual draft legislation but once they kind of get connected with a network of national lobbyists or whether it's from south chemical or coal company then those corporations bottle money to the campaign coffers of that legislator so they can make that bill a reality so basically is here a new law maker right and say these these folks that alec that's just some legislation that may or may not sound kind of ok to you if you sign on to this and go through with this here pretty much guaranteed to get a whole bunch of campaign contribution money the big loophole here is that bill a lot of states have you know fairly strong lobbying laws and they want to provide transparency to the public to see which corporations are making contact list legislators and what's issues are being pressed but because the american legislative exchange council is organized as a nonprofit as a charitable organization these legislators are going to tend their events hobnob with obvious already even be reimbursed for their hotel and transportation they

never have to disclose because you know it's an out of state organization that organized as a charity so i think a lot of people have ignored it for that very reason because they haven't been able or they have ignored state law because for so long interested some like a shadow lobbying group just under a different much more i guess. easier to swallow name now what about what accounts for the they renewed focus on this group why is that an occupy wall street protest with ninety cities it's pretty huge why this attention now. well i think that there are two things that happened simultaneously wine there's this kind of consciousness . with many people on the left that no matter who you elect and what happens in government there are very powerful institutional forces that are only scratching back they're always privatizing public services that are always overriding and and repealing good laws and so i think there's

a lot of people in the activist community that are not there turning away from regular elections and looking at these big institutional forces analogy is an obvious choice for them to look at at the same time in the two thousand ted midterm elections there's a sea change a lot of people talk about the tea party congress the real change in power happened on the state level if you look at the sheer number of state legislators who rip up republicans who were elected in two thousand said it was the biggest state wide sweep in all of american history for the republican party so in places like wisconsin and north carolina now it has just back to legislative power their members now have majorities all over the country and they're writing laws and not only just like in new hampshire now now they have a veto proof majority so you have alec lobbyist literally running some states now played on the flipside of that is of course if it's harder to sort of influence and change than trying to speak favors here in washington it is sometimes a little bit easier on a state level do you think that because these occupy wall street protests are local

perhaps this when you the tension on our life and corporate interests sort of do influence in politics could that perhaps. cause any sort of change in behavior i mean maybe if local citizens you know associate their lawmakers with bad corporations and see these protests on their very own local streets maybe back with sort of wake people up to how do you see this playing out. i think that's fair you know alec is not only a state organization making many ties in congress a lot of times when a lobbyist can't get something passed in congress they turn towards alec for help on the state level so i guess it works both ways that being said also many powerful alec state legislators are groomed to run for congress if you look at the leaders in congress right now everyone from congressman mike pence to congressman tom brady and tom price they were start out legislators were given awards for doing such a good job of promoting a corporate agenda and they started in the state level and then they moved up the

ladder into congress so the fact that occupies now working at the local level and moving its way up i think makes a lot of spent at least for what they're trying to achieve all right well that's really interesting i you know it's not that we've covered at length here before but i hope that we have you back to break it all down again in the future as this is certainly an important story thank you so much reporter elise song with the republic report dot org. the crisis in syria continues to escalate its government troops reportedly begun a names or ground offensive on the city of homes this amid reports that the death toll has topped seventy five hundred now somehow have called for arming the opposition in syria this r.t.s. maria for the ocean reports weapons are already flowing across the borders. the borders the walls and windows to a state despite international isolation series borders have remained opened and easy to pass through and that may have played a crucial role in the militarization of the country's conflict almost immediately

after the crisis began here last march they were reports of baffles been smuggled through to arm president al assad's opponents one thousand dollars for a truck full of weapons capable of delivering wholesale destruction and death that's how marshall kaiser will pay to smugglers usually iraqi or lebanese drivers according to the ismail chief of the customs service on the border with lebanon. these people bring with him here to destroy our nation to try to kill syrian people on the syrian territory to our enemies. syria has more than two thousand kilometers of front year with five states israel iraq jordan turkey and lebanon the syrian cities where the most violent clashes have taken place homes and there are all over the an hour of the border is a fact that some believe has determined their fate or destiny is. this is one of three checkpoints on the three hundred fifty kilometer syrian lebanese border in

the last year as we've been told here there were only three attempts to smuggle weapons across your business confiscated thousands of bullets dozens of guns and hundreds of court rooms all legal not all pieces like this one used to maybe put these horses main concern and make little clothes like this one but parts of the border where the reason any security at all but here look at this in the middle of nowhere there is nothing only one road across the road right now and at the same time crossing the border and i'm already in lebanon. and further south she remains extremely vulnerable the city of tire all the cradle of the syrian uprising it all started here and it continues to play a role in the country's crisis with the border with jordan just several kilometers away from here and numerous reports suggesting that foreign weapons and troops can easily flow through it has become one of the weakest points in the country's

security the city has become the scene of fierce and bloody clashes at least twice in the conflict twelve month history here sorties have claimed that many of the so-called free syrian army have in fact come from across the border. they appear shoot and kill and then they disappear immediately they arrive from abroad but they're not from jordan they use this country's border many of them are from africa. we're showing the weapons allegedly seized in military a free sions now. in the army we don't have weapons from israel and america sniper guns and night vision binoculars advanced developed weapons we don't have it in syria just what we confiscated was killing innocent people and kill even more. while the international community condemns the other side regime and supports its opponents many believe all sides in the conflict should be held responsibility.