call it an arms race some u.s. lawmakers say that it's time to arm syria look rebels but not everyone is ready to pull the trigger on president bashar al assad's regime really show you how a few congressmen are trying to strong arm their way into syria. and speaking of government crackdowns americans are singing bye bye to their first amendment rights the new national defense authorization after the so-called trespassing bill are we being stripped of our freedoms. and he may not have won any of the primaries last night around fall short of a good fight whoever it may be that they're pointing to this fantasy candidates even just to win the white house but perhaps change political discourse we're going

to bring you more on that story in just a bit of. good evening it's wednesday march seventh five pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy captain of you're watching our t.v. we begin in syria where an end to the violence is seemingly nowhere near in sight after almost a year of bloody offensives the government of president bashar al assad seems unable to regain control of the country meanwhile the opposition groups are too weak and too fragmented to overthrow his regime and amid the bloody stalemate and that's what it seems like it is a debate here in the u.s. about whether this country should intervene on top of ministration officials leading lawmakers and presidential candidates have all weighed in on senator john mccain's proposal to launch u.s. led airstrikes to hold the violence in syria but there's still no consensus on the costs and the benefits of entangling the u.s.

military and another armed conflict in the middle east now in testimony before the u.s. senate today defense secretary leon panetta seemed a bit cautious about military intervention but he also didn't rule out syria as the next u.s. war to look. we are reviewing all possible additional steps that can be taken with our international partners to support the efforts to protect the syrian people to end the violence and ensure regional stability including potential military options if necessary. now at that same hearing the joint chiefs of staff chairman made it clear the pentagon will be ready should it be called quote defend u.s. interests in syria well president obama yesterday cautioned against unilateral military action here's a ministration is moving to provide direct assistance to the syrian opposition and it is a major u.s. policy shift towards a more aggressive plan to oust president bashar al assad it's

a complicated situation where the end goals are murky and any missteps that have dire implications for the region and with me to make sense of it all is robert ray first he's a contributing editor for the nation and also the author of the book the devil's mass i welcome back to the program it's great having you back in studio here because i want to begin a minute when you hear these u.s. official statements on syria sometimes you feel like you are such a read between the lines how do you interpret the u.s. official position toward syria at the moment when it comes to military action i think i would say pretty strongly that the likelihood that the united states will go into syria is very small at this point i don't think there's any appetite in the administration either in a broad sense or within the military to start a war in one part because obama has been trying to wind down two wars in the middle east including afghanistan if you want to count the greater middle east to refocus on the pacific and and china and other matters and i think the last thing he wants is to get involved in another conflict in syria or for that matter in iran and so.

i think has proposed rules from people like senator mccain and others who've talked about let's bomb syria let's start using our air power are really not getting much support even from the republican party even from some of the republican candidates who who kind of said like romney did well i don't think i want to go there yet so. at this point i think it's way too. much of an overreach to think about the united states getting directly involved in syria at the same time we are hearing language about how you know. there's this that's that interest and sort of protecting the syrian people against assad right and what we saw the take away lesson in my view from libya is once you once you end up using military power whether it's arming or actual intervention to protect the people against a leader that's in power it's very difficult to sort of put the brakes on and stop short of actual regime change so could we see

a push towards that i mean where does this arming the rebels i guess fit in with well i think we will see a put a push toward it but i don't think at this point there's much for receptivity inside the administration but libya does sort of very bad precedent not just for syria but it makes the iranians think well wait a minute libya gave up its nuclear weapons or its nuclear program and then united states went after them we better not do that so it makes it more likely that iran will hold on to its weapons in the syria case. the idea of arming the rebels maybe sounds good to some people but exactly how you do that who gets the arms then what kind of control you have over how they're used all these questions are you know have been looked at by the military and by the united states government and they've decided this is really really hard to answer at this point we don't even know who would be arming and of course we learned the blowback lesson in afghanistan where we saw that arming people we don't know very much about in order to defeat an enemy that we may not like could have some dire consequences when we talk about syria i

mean it's the standing with the rebels necessarily doesn't necessarily translate to standing with the people because it's a vast country there's a lot of different sectarian divides there are a lot of different competing interests so who are the rebels i guess and what are the different groups that have a vested interest in opera you know the united states has been in afghanistan for ten years and we still haven't figured out that country we don't really know who's who we don't know how the tribal system really works we were just scratching the surface and we've been there for a decade i'm sure that there are a handful of syria experts but as in the case of iraq where we went into. someone said we invaded not iraq but a country that with the iraq of our dreams we don't know anything about syria we know little bits and pieces we work we would certainly be like a bull in a china shop and i don't think the kind of delicate ethnic and other balances that exist in a country like that once they're shattered they really don't get back together very well it could take a generation or two for iraq to put itself back together so i think shattering

syria would have very dangerous consequences of course that may happen anyway but there's no reason to go in and great at this point so what about this whole notion of responsibility to protect them well you know it's a nice idea in concept but i'm very suspicious of it because it's the kind of doctrine that can be cited by almost anybody almost anything done if we really wanted to protect people who were being harmed we probably put together a global test for us to look at central africa the congo and uganda and other places where we have been millions of people killed some of the hundred thousand one hundred times as many people or a thousand times as many people as have been killed in syria. so no one's talking about that because there aren't any strategic interests at stake so i think when you see strategic interests at stake. that becomes much more important than

the responsibility to protect and then people use that our tepee idea to advance strategic interests and i think that's really the problem with that with our partner in oh and then the next obvious question is what is the strategic interest for the u.s. is it as simple as a proxy war against iran in syria or what syria's true i don't think that's so simple but i think that's a huge part of it i think that there are a lot of people now in washington who think that because we can't. necessarily organize an attack politically we can organize an attack on iran at this moment and it might backfire any way that we can weaken your. knocking off its chief regional allies i think that's a big part of it not that this whole rebellion in syria is manufactured then there's been a rebellion throughout the entire arab world it's still going on in places like yemen and who knows you know got to come. but i do think that part of

this rebellion that's happening in the middle east now is being shaped and sort of pushed and polled by the most conservative bloc the the saudis and the arab gulf states who are really scrambling almost desperately to try to make sure that this tide doesn't reach their shores and so in some ways they're putting money into a lot of countries including syria to support in serious case the sunni rebels who are kind of have an affinity for the saudi outlook and i mean with the saudis being u.s. allies i mean how much do you think there's a discussion between the countries that are out this whole notion of arming rebels i mean do you do you think that they is there any indication they have bought about even a stray she might sort of let the saudis take the lead on this and not necessarily you know have to intervene or supply arms on their own knowing that our allies are already potentially joining us. i think that the saudis are very suspicious right

now of the united states and they're not necessarily on the american team when it comes to for instance afghanistan where the saudis and the pakistanis have supported the taliban for many many years and now they're finding themselves arrayed against american power in afghanistan certainly the united states wasn't too happy about with the saudis didn't bahrain where the united lotteries happened yes we didn't because we have a base in bahrain another problem but. and the saudis were very angry at the united states for more strongly supporting mubarak in egypt so. the saudis do have their own policy but on the other hand i think they really depend on us and i think that saudi arabia really wouldn't get too far off the reservation so i think there are things that ignite states could do if it if it seemed like saudi arabia was crossing some red line perhaps if there was some overt supply of weapons into syria which so far i haven't seen any sign of talk but not necessarily have it and i

guess final question we're almost out of time but do you think that a diplomatic solution of some sort is still feasible or have we sort of passed that line and. i think we're probably past the point where assad can survive. but as we saw in yemen the transition can take a long time that was brokered by the saudis by a by the united states by other powers who who who got in there and and the difference being of course that the president of yemen was a sort of an ally of the united states that assad is a different case. i saw that the chinese recently proposed a peace plan which the syrians say they have accepted you know that made or may not lead to anything important but yes i think it's possible because i don't think there's a military solution as long as assad holds on to the military command that he has.

at the end of the day it's definitely a dire situation and not a lot of clarity unfortunately whether it's media coverage or our politicians i thank you so much for sitting down with us and sort of helping us and i put you through the fog of war that was that robert ray first a contributing editor for the nation and i thought of a book that else came out the united states helped unleash on the mentalist. thank you now as the saying goes america is the land of the free beacon of democracy and freedom is legally enshrined as constitutionally protected civil liberties for all citizens except it hasn't really been looking that way as of late so let's review there's a so-called trespassing bill which now awaits president obama's signature and that effectively serves as the nail in the coffin on the first amendment issue or three forty seven to criminalize this protest by making it a federal crime to destruct it by accident and event attended by someone with secret service protection and there's of course the infamous national defense authorization act which would have faded into obscurity as another random funding bill if not for a little provision that effectively destroyed due process in the united states

thanks to the n.d. eighty us president now has the power to effectively kidnap any america anywhere in the united states and hold him or her in prison forever without trial and speaking of due process don't expect if the government thinks you're a terrorist on monday attorney general eric holder explained when and how it is allowed at the u.s. government is allowed to kill its citizens and the endless war on terror it is national security officials and not the courts who get to decide whether to send a deadly flying robot to vaporize you but health missile ferry doesn't seem to have much time for due process it seems well it's a disturbing trend and a lot to discuss here so let's turn to ray how the advocacy council for human rights first thank you so much for joining us tonight on this program before we get into sort of these different legislative. disturbing bills the ability to talk about what is your overall sense in terms of where this administration has taken us as far as civil liberties concerns are concerned as far as constitutionally

protected rights are concerned do you see these as sort of congressional pushes that don't necessarily say much about the obama administration or do you see this as a something a sign of perhaps something more dire i think it's going to related and we ultimately view of obama administration needs to take responsibility for signing these legislative proposals into law or advancing certain theories. regarding executive power and how it can be wielded in a war on terror but certainly congress has has the brunt of blame to take for some of these proposals and really pushing forward various measures that would for example codified indefinite detention or keep guantanamo open so there's plenty of blame to go around but i think it's disappointing that the president and his administration hasn't been more forceful in leading in protecting civil liberties consistent with national security interests and how serious of a threat is this i mean it's easy to sort of say oh well these are just different disparate bills they sound scary but i'm sure it's not all that bad i mean should

american citizens speak concerned about their civil liberties in light of legislation like this absolutely for example the n.d.a. that you mentioned is the authority of the military to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects without charge or trial and that is one of the greatest threats to our liberty and security. in the last decade so i think certainly americans should be concerned and that they are terrorists or bad guys i mean how easy is it for the government i guess to confuse between who is a terrorist and who is just a protester or regular citizen well that's exactly the point the whole reason we have due process court review criminal trials where guilt has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt is to separate the true bad guys from from those who may be innocent or who may have no intention to do us harm whatsoever so there really isn't a tension between liberty and security but the reason that we have due process is to promote security of all individuals and i think that for this reason these this

erosion of rights is something we should all be concerned about and on the targeted assassinations issue you know that your group had when eric holder had announced that he was going to hold the speech that was a press release saying that its support in fact in the plot in for sort of giving this legal justification now that he's given it what do you make that are you are you happy with the reasoning that the obama administration put out. where it just doesn't go far enough that's the problem we welcome the fact that the obama administration is out there trying to provide some justification for its targeted killing policy but really the american people don't know who is being killed in their name and i think that's the big problem and what does it really need to be a and b. combatant or a militant or someone the united states government believes it can target for lethal force and i think it's especially concerning that a lot of these targeted killings are happening away from the so called hot battlefield in afghanistan in yemen or even then somalia which i think further calls into question what the government believes is its legal reasoning and i think

that that's a concern that gets heightened in the case of constitutional considerations when you're talking about an american citizen in the murky war on terror i guess every day every place could potentially turn into a battlefield unfortunately h.r. three forty seven i don't know how familiar with that spell it but it's the so-called trespassing logic essentially criminalizes accidental destructions of an event or secret service person is that not as dire as detention or targeted assassination but since it does raise this whole issue of the protest movement in the united states i wonder if you see or perhaps fear a convergence of this war on terror sort of mixing with free speech and and protest actions in america since protests are heating up and don't seem to be stopping anytime soon if that is as far as occupy wall street goes right well i'll be honest the i'm not that familiar with that particular bill although i'm aware of it but i do think that there is a overall you know concern about counterterrorism you know authorities expanding and reaching into traditional areas of civil liberties that we had not

expected in the past there are new stories of the new york police department surveilling muslim communities for example as well but i do think the national defense authorization act is really the kind of a pity me of you know where we are ten years after nine eleven after osama bin laden you know has been killed with al qaeda on the ropes. as we're preparing to withdraw from afghanistan i think there's a real question about why we are in the business of of further legislating against our civil liberties fair fair drives a lot of this now yes my question to you is is it is it too late i mean now that you know the n.c.a.a. has passed your targeted assassinations now have legal justification so that's ok i mean how do you go back how do you undo these steps that sort of erode our liberties well i think it's one step at a time and i don't think it's too late you know most recently the obama administration quite a lot of we has passed regulations that seek to curtail some of the negative aspects of the n.d.a. those were released last week so that will limit the cases in which mandatory

military custody will be will be employed for terrorism suspects and i think we have to push the administration to you to be more forthcoming about the legal reasons that are being advanced for targeted killing and certainly on guantanamo it's disappointing that we're you know three years out from the administration's top promise to close the facility and not enough has been done over half of the detaining essential there for this place at this time that's right i mean many detainees have been transferred but many are still there over half the existing population is cleared for release and congressional restrictions have presented prevented that from happening but this this administration has an opportunity to transfer some of those clear detainees and make progress on its on its own stated policy goals a lot of obligations and i guess it remains to be seen whether that progress will actually take place thank you so much for taking the time to join us today that's what all advocacy council for human rights first. well super tuesday came and went but despite the media hyperventilation it was more of

a super bled down frankly now there is a bit of a debate over whether mitt romney won or lost by clinching six states yesterday but it's hard to imagine that someone could win the most delegates the most states and the big prize of ohio and still come out of it bloodier and more bruised than when it they began form of the former massachusetts governor lost to rick santorum in tennessee oklahoma and north dakota news great gingrich won his home state of georgia the state that he used to represent to congress and ron paul well they were high hopes but not a single win for the texas congressman but the paul campaign has been focused on picking up delegates in low turnout caucus states but despite an all out push in north dakota i don't know a whole and alaska last night the three states are well known for their strong libertarian streak ron paul well essentially came away empty handed but still the congressman congressman says he's not succeeded he is vowing to push on and his approach may not be enough to win the nomination so what is the congressman asked

or will for that answer i'm joined by brian jordi he's a senior editor at reason magazine he's also the author of the upcoming book ron paul's revolution the man and the movement he inspired welcome bryan it's great to have you back on the program now can we read at last night's election results is anything but a major disaster but for the ron paul campaign. well it's a disaster for the goal of actually winning if you see nominations this year despite what some people say ron paul did hope to intend to have that victory but unlike the other candidates he can win something without actually wooden the nomination and what that thing he can win is what he's been working to build his entire political career which is a lively activist in gage movement for his libertarian ideas so i think his ability to march on to the end which he does have he'll be able to continue to fund raise he does probably have more delegates in the bag than most

people reporting because many of this caucus states straw poll results are nonbinding what the delegates actually end up doing is something that remains to be seen so as long as he can still be in there fighting still gather fans still have a public voice as a presidential candidate he can build things for the future that will benefit him in the cause that he's fighting for and you think that despite that i mean you've written essentially about how you know ron paul has can still plausibly claim to be the most viable alternative to romney a thing that has to happen money the fund raising ability as well as that nationwide infrastructure to keep competing and the republican convention and all that but if he hasn't won a single state so far won't that money and at some point viat. no it won't actually arrived with since ron paul unlike the other candidates does stand for a set of ideas that people are passionate about and you saw this in two thousand and eight as well as long as ron paul still wants to be in there fighting and as long as ron paul is still asking his people to support him he'll be able to do that

i do want to add however that santorum so bizarre rise and ability to keep winning states complicate that narrative entirely a lot of ron paul's hopes early in the season relied on the notion that being rich and santorum would be knocked out pretty quickly by romney and that didn't happen which is why things have not been as bright for politicians have been i think looking at what happened in virginia yesterday is an interesting sign of what this race might have been like if those two had disappeared ron paul actually got forty one percent of the vote in virginia the state nearest the beltway which again well it doesn't add up to a victory in the presidential race is a very encouraging sign for what paul and his ideas can and will mean for the republican party moving forward in later elections well speaking of pollens ideas one of the things that sort of stood out to me from some of the exit polls listen to this question about whether he may be reaching for the wrong types of voters because if you look at the exit polls from yesterday he's actually doing really well among liberals in vermont for example romney did the paul

a forty twenty six percent but called up forty two percent of the democratic vote thirty eight percent of independents in ohio he seemed to do best among those voters who strongly oppose the tea party which is a movement that he's been you know sort of labeled the grandfather of so my question is how how can paul argue for influence over the our public in the party if it's not clear that his followers will vote republican. the. two points i want to get out with this one that it's very good to remind people who are interested in the larger future of paul's ideas which is you know what i'm interested in to note that how well he does among g.o.p. primary and caucus voters who are a very narrow slice of the. electorate is not necessarily the best sign of how lively and effective his ideas will be and as to why he does what he does within the republican party well there's systematic barriers in america and ideological barriers as well toward third party success no matter how popular your ideas are

there are so many americans who just simply will not step outside the democratic or republican reservation so anyone wanting to push these ideas has to do what ron did which is sort of attach itself to the machinery of one of the major parties and as to why it was the republican party well historically and rhetorically dating back to the goldwater era in the reagan era the republican party has talked to the best game about ron paul's the core issues of limiting government limiting government spending limiting taxation so it seemed like the natural place for him to make a run but we are in fact seeing especially with his his sensible foreign policy that it's a little bit too sensible for many republican voters and i think that's the core ideological problem he faces with republicans is they are way too jingoistic about this notion that america needs to run the world but there is a sizeable constituency out there in america for these ideas that just may not be concentrated all in one party so what

a future politician pushing paul's ideas have to do actually leaving those two parties is not really a choice but he has to be able to run a campaign that deliberately tries to appeal to the independent voters and democrats are willing to cross party lines and that independent block really is going to be the key to america's political future because actual strong partisan identification on a national level is getting weaker and weaker unfortunately when it comes to voting in party primaries and caucuses the independents don't always or come out interesting well and let's talk about very briefly sort of these these ideas i mean when paul you know this is a spared run for the white house even back in two thousand and eight when he was are dismissed as this prange you know crazy type of guy whose ideas didn't really resonate with the mainstream and how do you see the country changing in terms of his ideas resonating perhaps in all our. i think the most important data point on that is to see that when you compare how well he did in

a given state this year versus how well he did in two thousand and eight he's always doing better in most cases he's doubling or more his vote total so just on that very basic level you are seeing that more and more people are willing to come out to a primary caucus and pull the lever for ron paul the key to how is ideas will influence the future really relies on how right you think he is because the core of his message is that american governmental overreach overseas are overreach in monetary policy or overreach and taxing or overreach and spending is leading us to the edge of a debt crisis that is going to be really crushing and awful and even worse than the economic crisis we've been living through for the last four years which ron paul warned us about by the way whatsoever on polls correct about any of those things politicians are going to have to grasp on to his ideas they're going to have to realize yes we really can't keep deficit spending you know trillions every year we actually do have to cut spending we actually have to rethink what government's

purpose is we have to realize we can't be the policemen of the world this retrenchment has to happen and it doesn't happen because people actually listen to ron paul and agree hey you make sense you saw this coming it's going to happen because reality is going to force that to happen america is going to end up in a situation like we're seeing in the european union now where the debt crisis really just becomes unmanageable and then i think ron paul will seem a lot more precious to more people than he does even now and i pressed my dad and be a little bit she laid by very briefly i do you see his his role in the race right now he has that already shift that all of the rhetoric coming out of the other republican candidates perhaps i've had that happen had an influence in terms of his ideas sort of seeping into the debate. the direct point where you can see that happening the most is about the federal reserve and monetary policy ron paul used to pretty much be literally the only politician who seemed to even know what the federal reserve was he's been you know inveighing against his entire career and now

earlier in the campaign you had rick perry you know calling ben bernanke a traitor newt gingrich talking in the ron paul line you know hundreds of republican politicians are writing letters to ben bernanke telling them not to do any more of this quantitative easing i would say on monetary policy his influence has been obvious on foreign policy is influenced sadly seems to be nil every other candidate still seems to think it's our job to you know turn the entire world to democracy on fiscal passing matters most republicans are good about holding the line on raising taxes but ron paul has been the most serious about offering a budget that had a trillion dollar cuts in one year and a forty three year path to a balanced budget without raising any taxes and the other candidates are going to have to follow his line on that if the public and the republican party is to survive all right well interesting and i think to see how this conversation is may change if we are back here in twenty sixteen talking about it at the chef in the country thank you so much for your time that is.