so the want to comes to preventing iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon i will take no options off the table and i mean what i say. president obama talks tough to a pro israel crowd trying to break the ice in the frosty relations between himself and prime minister netanyahu spoke with our cozy relationship with israel mean another war for u.s. troops tonight we ask who's really running the show. that used the phrase cheerful split screen. so she feels she has to because they keep us in two or three concessions both feet and while the jewish lobby cries foul over iran's nuclear

program human rights groups are outraged over the treatment of palestinian prisoners back in israel and maids are now starving themselves craving some of the justice the country preaches we'll show you what the so-called administrative detention really looks like. and from hunger strikes through drone strikes the u.s. certainly doesn't have a sterling reputation when it comes to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles so it's often touted as the safest smartest type of warfare but what about all those civilians killed casualties of war or a good reason to think about a change in policy with school. redeeming it's monday march fifth eight pm in washington d.c. and christine for you watching our team. well it seems the clock is ticking that's according to many leaders both here in the united states and in israel as well as

much of the mainstream media that something must be done soon about iran's alleged nuclear program iran was the central topic at this year's american israel public affairs committee conference apac hosted multiple high profile speakers president obama israel prime minister benjamin netanyahu is speaking this evening but earlier today the two leaders met to continue the discussion and archie's less well has more on apac and what the presence of these high profile leaders could mean for the world. it's an annual tradition of more than thirteen thousand people gathering in the nation's capital for the american israel public affairs committee annual conference it gives people from all over the country to come and revitalize their approach it is very important the united states will back up israel and indeed the united states is committed to israel well apac is considered

to be one of the most powerful lobby groups in america and they host this conference here showcasing american israeli unity just how much power this group has over u.s. foreign policy there is controversy speaking at the conference president obama reiterated america's dedicated to posturing strong ties with its closest ally the want to comes to preventing iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. i will take no options off the table and i mean what i say. but it was all over months of american power statements like that make the world wonder is war with iran just around the corner. and the israelis are pushing us into a regional war that. does help cataclysmic potential a tax court or jewish boys for peace and many jewish americans are in this kind of heat we're not on the side of the net the reward protesters outside of the

convention say israel and apac are dragging america into war with iran position held by many antiwar groups represented at that i've brought it back but they're also protesting the lobbying groups enormous impact on u.s. politics politicians know that if they attempt to speak up on this issue they're going to be not just vilified they're going to be defeated apac affiliated groups tom exorbitant amounts of money and political campaign and a meeting in the white house israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu told obama that israel and america stand together we are you and you are us which are good and while netanyahu stressed israel will always be a master of its own fate obama insisted the united states will always have israel's back when it comes to israel secure this after israel has warned they will launch

an attack against iran without giving the u.s. notice atack has a lot of power and a lot of that is due to the fact that congress and the media. just eat it all up so the question remains with israel ramping up pro-war rhetoric and merit dedicated to supporting them another war in the middle east all. but inevitable in washington because wall. iran obviously central to the discussion and as the language get the elevated and calls for war become more numerous there are also calls on the other side including a full page ad in the washington post today you might have seen or put it up on the screen for you what you see here is a photo of obama and netanyahu with various quotes by top officials the current and former secretaries of defense the chairman of the joint chiefs of chiefs of staff all essentially saying the consequences of attacking iran are too grave but now is

not the time and below that you see a letter written to the president asking him to resist the pressure for war with iran and one of the signers of the out letter on that full page statement retired army colonel and former chief of staff to colin powell lawrence wilkerson. we wanted to do what little we could to give the president so in the political space some of the room we see with congress now in the low teens if not the single digits with the american people none the less using its power to paint the president into a corner congressman like lindsey graham and others who are of that he will we want to let the president know that there is political space there is room for diplomacy there's room for economic financial and other actions just as he said in his speech today let's talk about i mean we have senators lindsey graham i always often group together with senator john mccain and joe lieberman often making this call none of whom have ever served big day on the ground in combat and i might

point out. making this call reminding the americans how dangerous iran is and the importance of standing for israel what is their reasoning for this i think it's somewhat political opportunism because i have to admit that i can find no other focus or reason for the existence of my party today the republican party other than the political objective of getting the president out of the water that's so a lot of this is not aimed at america her security israel her security it's a the political prospects of the republicans who are now engaged in a circular firing squad amongst rick santorum and those two other lesser lights mitt romney including there. are going to commit suicide they are going to get so big so badly in the fall and i think many of them know that they're desperate for opportunistic attacks on the president and this is one that gives them a great deal of. the whatever it's got is regarding how

a lot of our callers to attack iran or to warrior and fear iran are not new they've been going on for years now twenty years or so right and i'm wondering that's what i watch me learning for twenty years i want to ask you i mean when you say. under secretary of state colin powell i mean how have things changed do you think in fact that we are closer now than ever or are these just sort of reiterated and repeated you know pieces of language that are being thrown out there well i think if you want to. scrub a strategic purpose to it at that time we thought we had iran contained but we also thought we had iraq contained and lo and behold the neoconservatives came along vice president cheney came along and a whole lot of people came along with a lot of words to the contrary and before we knew it we were at war in iraq and we all know the outcome of that we would rather not see that process per repeated and this is not iraq this is not a right this is seventy plus million people who will have

a national cohesiveness that iraq never dreamed of having especially if we attack them and we need to consider this very very deeply and it's a profound problem we can deal with it other than through military force and as the president said if we do have to ultimately use military force that's going down the road it's not any we're imminent and it's not in the sense that some people are saying existential right now do you think most americans are aware of that fact that iran is not i mean most american fame to be very happy that we're out of iraq regretting that we ever went there if we're going to spend another two trillion dollars and be engaged in another land war in was from the asia more power to them i don't think that's the case in more than just the money i mean as you say this is a lot of people a whole different ballgame in terms of the type of country that it as i do you think americans are aware i think the polling i've seen of late shows that if you ask the right questions you get the right answers or the answers that i think are

more indicative if you do so you're you're in favor of taking iran out if it gets a nuclear weapon fifty to sixty percent are going to say yes but if you begin walking down all the things you need to walk down and ask him that question and you get a good sixty percent that says no we'll. so it diplomacy what other measures work out i think that's what needs to be done new conservatives don't do that they just throw out the question you know iran existential israel you've got to you've got to be on our side you know no one wants to ask the sophisticated questions of people more sophisticated than these people give them credit for absolutely sometimes those sound bites that come out sounding so well that people just sort of laugh more americans turn off the day on t.v. yeah i think you're right about that i want to put up something i know iran's supreme leader ali how many i give a foreign policy speech a little more than a week ago i just want to put out something that he said that sort of addressed the issue of nuclear weapons he said it before and he said it again he said the iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons there is no doubt that the decision makers in these countries opposing us know well that iran is not

after a nuclear weapons do you think he's telling the truth to a certain extent i think probably within his religious edict he is grave concern about iran though in that respect the same concern i have about this country after all john mccain is not barack obama losing graham is not barack obama there's a wide divergence of power in tehran right now there is the r.g.c. increasingly taking over more and more power there's no doubt in my mind that certainly the leaders of the revolutionary guard corps would love to have a nuclear weapon there are other elements in iran that probably would side with that group too so. there's no we like to say that the ayatollah is the supreme power it's just like any other country in that respect there are lots of power centers and iran would love to power centers in this country to witness what we're seeing right now so it's not it's i don't think it's fair to say will the ayatollah was sincere and then conclude that iran is not looking for

a nuclear weapon makes them i'm wondering when you turn on the t.v. especially a lot of the mainstream channels there's a couple different narratives out there going on one of them is that obama is weak when it comes to iran that he's hitting. you know you prefer sanctions to action and then there's another narrative that obama and the rest of the u.s. congress is basically in a back pocket of israel are either of those kind of more right than the other are they i hope this is the case that the president is a very. strategist not just a tactician but a strategist he after all has brought my party to virtual political ruin and they're going to realize that in november this evening that he has brought his party his his attempt to reach out to them repeatedly rebuffed him on the party has made clear to most of the americans who are going to vote in this election that my party is not interested in good governance my party is only interested in getting

rid of the black man in the white house and so they i believe that he's engineering some of this by his very forthcoming this is willingness to compromise and so forth and with the collapse of their own he's going to clean up their own big and it's not going to be him climbing down is going to be the american people could have been you know i wouldn't be surprised at all to see a third of the congress or more essentially thrown up in november and i would be interesting to think and i want to put something up on the screen this is a graph i found that compares the military capabilities of israel versus iran and i think it's important to put out there you see iran is there in blue and israel is in red and when you look at tanks and aircraft and these are all conventional measures of my things we found out one of the things the russians found out the soviets if you will in afghanistan one of the things we found out in afghanistan and found out in iraq and we will find out in spades in iran is that the conventional military power is for middle is it may seem it is not all it's cut out

to be so you're saying it doesn't matter that israel out spans and out man's and out tanks are surrounded by four hundred million potential guerrillas that's a very dangerous situation. i mean and it's a very dangerous situation to be unique you think that your conventional military capability is the standard by which you measure that threat well i think that's a good point i mean i think it seems to me at least a lot of people in israel know that they're surrounded by these threats and that's the reasoning that you hear time and time again for them wanting to the way you deal with this threat is not military force you deal with this threat the way the opposite way for example israel's been dealing with within its own borders increasingly israeli jews or ostracizing arab israelis increasingly it is as bad as it's been since nineteen forty eight that's how you create these guerrillas that's how you create the problem that is not conventional

but is asymmetric that eventually will eat your lunch and believe me i've watched this ever since i fought in our our first occasion for this in vietnam what's happening is nuclear weapons conventional military might and so forth are great if you can go in and do something decisively with overwhelming force as my boss used to say and get it done and get out but if you have to linger if you have to stay the guerrillas are going to eat your lunch and israel is positioned in the midst of all these guerrillas and she'd better start dealing with them starting with the palestinians from really going to words there i want to switch gears if i have you here because something happened today senator john mccain now went to the floor of the senate and sort of made the case for airstrikes against syria and he basically says that providing military assistance to the opposition groups is not only necessary but that that is not enough that for now airpower is needed as well talk a little bit about what you think is behind this and where this is going to spar

syria well just geographically this is not libya this is not have a place from which you can throw up lines of the french aircraft carrier for example this is a very different problem the movie about what your audience that libya is seeing thing well. a success right now in fact it's looking north every day so intervening in syria where it truly is i think a civil war with bashar al assad responsible for say sixty percent of the casualties the opposition responsible for another forty percent so there's blame on both sides in terms of humanitarian problems and needing to take care of those problems the i.c.r.c. is in there and they know they're the best people to be in there understand they're in homes now that's that's that's the kind of humanitarian assistance needs to be being rendered but dropping bombs on who you going to drop bombs are going to block drop bombs on the syrian army the syrian army which is doing what it feels is its responsibility and incidentally very few are defecting even though the media in this country says knox are defecting what the opposition is doing is killing the

syrian soldiers and dragging them across the line as it were and saying they were defecting and it's crazy we need to have a better analysis of what's going on and we need to refrain from any interference that's going to exacerbate the situation and john mccain is doing this god bless john mccain because he is opposed to the man in the white house so is lindsey graham so is joe lieberman so are all these people who call themselves independents and republicans and who just cannot stand the fact that president obama is sitting in the white house and they're not pretty interesting theory is that you don't think senator mccain is able to get enough people on his side in terms of action in syria i don't think so i hope cooler heads prevail i hope heads of nato and elsewhere understand that this is not live you know this is a very different situation and they also understand i hope that what they did in libya is not necessarily blooming like a flower or i think it's a good plan i think a lot of people thought the task and destruction of coffee and his family and that v. for victory let's move on now i tell you something else in that eastern libya

a pocket of rebels that began this were the largest number of al qaida in iraq by a factor of five the war on al qaida in iraq killing our soldiers killing our marines came from eastern libya. very very interesting to think about really appreciate you being here and a lawrence wilkerson thanks so much and i want to turn on to another story something not discussed today but it is bringing about quite a bit of discussion is also criticism about israel and that is the practice of administrative detention basically holding people in prison for months or even years without charge or trial the issue is gaining even more widespread attention internationally after a palestinian man hunter odd man came close to death after a sixty six day hunger strike it was a protest against his own imprisonment but more so against israel's practices in general and his case is just one of many and this growing movement is worried about various efforts to protest administrative detention in general i spoke more about

this earlier today with human rights advocate ken o'keefe here's his take. well it's as if we're living in people times now isn't it i mean there there is no no due process of law in israel i myself have been in israeli prisons on more than one occasion and i have experienced what the treatment is like somebody you have political tension you can imagine what it's like for the palestinians including children who are put into these dungeons stripped of any kind of right that any human society with any decency would would keep all of us it is frightening as the young man testified to in your report just now i have met dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of leaders in palestine who have been imprisoned every single one of them have been tortured well they're in prison and it is grotesque and it gets we had a guest on our earlier show who said that one of the sort of methods here is to first arrest the children the young people there to get you know testimonials from

them also through torture whether physical or psychological and sometimes they use that as evidence how prominent do you think that practices and how much do you think people in israel actually know what's going on. well i think the american people are as stupid as the the israeli people both heavily indoctrinated societies most people in the west are obviously not doing enough to stop their governments from being complicit with israel i find it reprehensible that we as people don't recognize that these people are brothers and sisters we should be treating them as such and doing everything we can for them as we would our own brothers and sisters despite this reality instead what we do is allow our criminal governments in europe america to. take out some lip service every now and then but give israel all the support it needs in the form of arms in the form of financial support political support un resolutions vetoed everything that we can do as

a society that claims to be civilized we're not doing our governments are just as criminal as israel and this will continue to go on as long as we think of these people as less than our fellow human beings and when you talk about some of the legal arguments being used here at least from what i understand part of this practice does fall within the law to not disclose evidence against prisoners they often say that the evidence that they had you know the prosecuting attorneys that it comes from palestinian collaborators whose lives could be endangered if the evidence were disclosed of course that means the person in custody and can't extend himself. to what extent do you think that that the people using these practices have been held accountable or did that just go on in just about every case. it just goes on it's a matter of course and you know apartheid south africa was just slightly more honest about it israel has you know laws that are supposed to be broken they haven't institutionalized as much as apartheid south africa every law however that

might be there to actually protect the palestinians doesn't matter because the palestinians in the eyes of the power structure within israel are subhuman in fact many dogs will be treated better than the palestinians are treated on daily basis that is just a fact as for secret evidence and whatnot as well again i've been in israeli jail on two different occasions i've been beaten while in jail i've had secret testimony used to deport me as a court security threat from israel so it's been done to me personally it's been done to the palestinians every single day what do you think can i mean this case hotter i do not has certainly gotten a lot more people talking about it if you look on twitter and facebook more people certainly than even a week or two ago i talking about this now about this to what extent do you think this has a fact an impact on changing things i think it's absolutely massive bobby sands in ireland is loved till the end of time for what he did sacrifice he made in fighting the british tyranny and these brothers and sisters shalabi who is now in day

eighteen of the hunger strike what a beautiful young woman she is love and respect of her and all of her family and it's much as i don't want to see any of my brothers and sisters die and i think it would be well for them to go in mass on hunger strikes and needs to happen but many more do i guarantee there will be that many more people around the world who will see what israel really is a truly rogue state that is threatening the safety and security of all people on this planet not just the palestinians were eight percent with hugh grant attempting a third world war and potential nuclear armageddon this is the state of israel that was you know as advocate can. well it is a new age when it comes to warfare and the use of drones is often touted as a solution to specifically target enemies without putting any u.s. troops in danger but was often discussed are the innocent civilians that are killed during drone strikes and there have been more than seven hundred so for so far according to

a report by the bureau of investigative journalism now some of the families of the victims of u.s. drone strikes in pakistan are coming forward making public pleas that the u.s. abandon its drone program and also in a formal complaint against the killing of civilians they filed with the organization reprieve it's been sent to the united nations but only come out of this and how likely is it that the u.s. will scale back its drone program david swanson is a campaigner with roots action and is in charlottesville virginia. there david let's even forget about scaling back the program i mean from what i understand the pentagon is growing the drone program are there any chances but that changes. not in the foreseeable future short of a popular movement here and in resistance and legal actions from abroad but we saw the attorney general today make a speech defending the legality of murdering anybody including u.s. citizens in particular describing incidents that have been accomplished with the

use of drones as it says it has been established as bipartisan except in respectable behavior in the government in washington and they are not at all worried about whether the cia does it the pentagon does it congress finds out information about it i mean it's purely in the hands of the president we saw the attorney general elaborate on how the president personally will will accomplish due process for anybody and be judge jury executioner so it's not on washington's radar screen at the moment to change these practices again and runs are sort of a new generation. and newer weapon is there anyone that you know based on any rules or doctrine it is supposed to give this license to kill or as a test that a president. well i mean under all kinds of laws international and domestic this is all illegal under our constitution you have to declare

a war beach before you do anything that you call a war under the charter in fact in the u.n. charter and of course the u.n. special repertory is a month those who have made it changes to this practice but we again saw the attorney general of the united states today declare that this is the new kind of war and it is everywhere it is without limits in location or time and it is purely in the hands of the president and they interpret the constitution bizarrely in that none of this is in there as giving the president this personal power to be able to launch these kinds of strikes without you know and they will routinely inform certain individuals in congress and tell them they can't repeat it which is not the same thing as congressional oversight or judicial due process or democracy he says this is all purely in the hands of a single individual whoever is president and according to attorney general holder who gave that speech today it is of course it has words in the name of keeping this

country safe and secure and i want to talk about the other side of drones that because there are certainly a lot of people not just the president and his administration who think that they're a great idea who say you know what we were both on the ground means fewer people will be killed. there are others who say that drones have served as one of the largest recruiters for those who want to do harm to the united states of america to whether it be. or other you know terrorists or whatever there may be able to say drones tell my family. here's how i get back right well it all depends on how you define people rate i mean when you read us newspapers through the past ten years and you read the death count in a war in iraq or a war in afghanistan it's purely us citizens it leaves out those killed committed committing suicide those dying on the way home and so and so forth but it's just us citizens it leaves out that ninety nine percent of the people dying in the wars who

are people but are not americans americans have no idea how many people die in our wars and when you look at the use of drones they kill far more what intended targets then the intended targets and of course is that it's the intended targets that we're talking about is this outrageous policy that lacks any sort of of legal process where they've combined warmaking with criminal law enforcement in a way that perverts both of them and of course it creates more people hostile and angry toward the united states then it kills so it is counterproductive on its own terms but it's very pleasing to politicians who don't want to see those body bags coming on to the united states and israel briefly david i mean what do you think about this statement filed on behalf of these families of these that downs with propre sent to the u.n. i mean does the united nations step then do they issue a warning today for

a lot of talk about perth or is it sort of a formality if the united nations wants to maintain any sort of respect in the world as an institution that is not completely under the thumb of the united states then yes. that doesn't mean i put a lot of money on it but it it's certainly ought to we can imagine if this were happening in our country and it was our family members of good americans complaining about drone strikes from some other countries drones in our skies what that position would be i think it's a really good point and interesting to think about then it's ones that can't. with roots action joining us from charlottesville virginia and that will do it for us here for this evening but for more on the stories we covered be sure to go to our web site r t dot com slash usa also you can check out our full interviews and stories that's on our you tube page on youtube dot com slash r t america and you should of course follow me on twitter actor.