some call it a necessary humanitarian intervention and others are proxy war no matter the justification several u.s. lawmakers are willing to do whatever it takes to aid syrian rebels its arms airstrikes or another form of intervention the u.s. really ready for on that of war. plus they are the words for it by our founding fathers we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect union establish justice insure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense but you know what let's stop right there because sometimes self-defense needs forsaking personal liberty i'll tell you how. and there's

a little bit of a diff bates' about whether mitt romney lost by winning six states on super tuesday there's no disputing that ron paul had a bad night by winning zero so is that if the trucks as congressman well not quite stay tuned for a look at why. good evening it's wednesday march seventh pm here in washington d.c. from lucy catherine of and you're watching our t.v. well we begin today in syria where an end to the violence is seemingly nowhere in sight and the government of president bashar al assad seems on the able to regain control of the country the opposition groups are too weak and too fragmented to overthrow his regime and they made this bloody stalemate a debate right here in the united states about whether this country should intervene a lot of talk but still no consensus on the costs and benefits of entangling the

united states in another armed conflict in testimony before the senate today the defense secretary leon panetta seemed to be cautious about intervention but also didn't rule it out. 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. so what are the u.s. policy objectives in syria robert wright first is a contributing editor for the nation and he explains 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 wars in the middle

east including afghanistan if you want to count the greater middle east and to refocus on the pacific and china and other matters the last thing he wants is to get involved in another conflict in syria or for that matter in iran and so. i think it's a pose little's from people like senator mccain and others have talked about let's bomb syria let's start using our air power or. are really not getting much support even from the republican party even from some of the republican candidates who we've 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 vested interest that's sort of protecting the syrian people i can't stress it right at all we saw the take away lesson in my view from libya is once you once you end up using military power you know whether it's

army 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 what i think we will see a push toward it but i don't think at this point there's much receptivity inside the administration but libya does set a 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 the united states went after them though. we better not do that so it makes it more likely that iran will hold on to which 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 and then what kind of control you know how over how they're used all these questions are you know 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 training for us we learned the political lesson in afghanistan or 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 higher consequence when we talk about syria i mean it's 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 either 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 i was in the case of iraq where we went into as someone said we invaded not iraq but the country with iraq of our dreams we don't know anything about syria we know little bits and pieces we would certainly be like a bull in a china shop and i don't think the kind of delicate ethnic and 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 break it at this point so what about this whole notion of responsibility to protect. well you know it's a nice idea in concept but i'm very suspicious of it because it's. kind of doctrine that can be cited by almost anybody to get almost anything done if we really wanted to protect people who are being harmed we probably put together a global task force to look at central africa the congo and uganda and other places where there have been millions of people killed on the hundred thousand one hundred times as many people or a thousand times as many people as have been killed in syria. so but 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 r t p idea to advance strategic interests and i think that's really the problem with that with that doctrine well and then the next obvious question is what is the strategic interest for the us is it as simple as a proxy war against iran and syria or what syria 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 we can iran by knocking off its chief regional allies so i think that's a big part of it not that this whole rebellion in syria is for manufacturing only like then there's been a rebellion throughout the entire arab world and still going on in places like

yemen and who knows you know what 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 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 the u.s. allies i mean how how much do you think there is a discussion between countries about this whole notion of arming rebels i mean do you think that there is there any indication of the advantage obama administration 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 intentionally injuring 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 united states wasn't too happy about with the saudis didn't bahrain where the united arab emirates happened yes we didn't because we have a base in bahrain and other problems but. the saudis were very angry at the united states for not 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 the united states could do if it if it seemed like saudi arabia was crossing some red line perhaps if there were some overt supply of weapons into syria which so far i haven't seen any sign of talk but not necessarily happened 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 passed that line in syria. i think we're probably past the point where assad can survive. but as we saw in yemen in transition can take a long time that was brokered by the saudis by 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 may 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 onto the military command that you will at the end of the day it is definitely a dire situation and not a lot of clarity unfortunately whether it's media coverage or politicians but thank you so much for sitting down with us and sort of helping us move through the fog of war a bit that was robert draper's the contributing editor for the nation and also author of the book the devil scame how the united states helped unleash a fundamentalist islam or less the same goes america's the land of the free the beacon of democracy where freedom is legally enshrined as constitutionally protected civil liberties for all citizens except that hasn't really been looking that way be something so let's review we have the so-called trespassing bill which now all of a awaits president obama's signature h.r. three forty seven criminalize this protest i need a federal crime to disrupt even by accident any events attended by someone with

secret service protection there is the infamous national defense authorization act which would have faded into obscurity as a relatively. insignificant annual funding bill if not for a little provision that effectively destroyed the notion of due process thanks to the m d a the us president now has the power to kidnap any america any any american anywhere in the us and hold him or her in prison forever and speaking of due process don't expect that if the government thinks you may be a terrorist or called targeted killings but as of monday they had legal justification thanks to the attorney general eric holder 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 be a prize you the hell fire missile ferry does not seem to have much time for due process it seems well human rights first attorney raoul wallet told me that both the white house and congress are to blame for this disturbing trend take a look. i think it's it's going to related i mean ultimately the 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 the blame to take for some of these proposals and really pushing forward various measures that would for example codified indefinite detention or keep one ton of 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 good friends just to build a sound scary but i'm sure it's not all that bad i mean it should american citizens be concerned about their civil liberties in light of legislation like absolutely for example the n.d.a. that you mentioned codified 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 they all terrorists are asking me how easy is it for the government to get to confuse that 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 and the reason that we have due process is to promote security of all individuals and i think that for this reason these erosion of rights is something we should all be concerned about and targeted assassinations so i know that your group eric holder had announced that he was going to hold this. beach there was

a press release saying that it's support the facts from the problem for sort of getting this legal justification now that he's given it what do you think about you but you happy with the reasoning that the obama administration put out for 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 a targeted killing told the but really the american people don't know who is being killed in their name and i think that's the big problem what does it really means to be a and we can that and militants are someone that 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 and 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 that's every every place could potentially turn into a battlefield unfortunately h.r.

three forty seven i don't know how familiar with this bill but it's the so-called trespassing law that essentially criminalizes accidental destruction of an event for a secret service person in fact not as dire as it happened at the tension 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 hear a convergence of this war on terror sort of mixing with free speech and and protest action in america and protests are heating up and don't seem to be stopping anytime soon at least as far as occupy wall street got it right lol i'll be honest the are not that familiar with that particular building where but i do think that there is a overall 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 that. the

national defense authorization act is really the kind of appeared to 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 further legislating against our civil liberties so fair fair drive a lot of this thing that's my question to you is is it is it too late i mean now that you know the n.b.a. has passed the targeted assassinations now that the legal justification that's ok i mean how do you go back how do you and do these steps that sort of a road 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 weight has passed regulations that seeks to curtail some of the negative aspects of the n.d.a. that was 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 to be more forthcoming about the legal reasons

that are being advanced for targeted killing certainly on guantanamo it's disappointing that we're you know three years out from the administration's plan promise to close the facility and not enough has been done over half of the detainee not essentially they're there for the first time that's right i mean many detainees have been transferred but many are still there elder half the existing population is cleared for release congressional restrictions have thus far proven present 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 and 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 right while at work at the council for human rights first. well super tuesday came and went but despite the media hyperventilation it was more of a super down frankly now there is a bit of a debate over whether mitt romney won or lost by clinching six states yesterday although 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 bloodier and more bruised than one of the they began form of the former massachusetts governor lost to rick santorum in tennessee oklahoma and north dakota gingrich won at his home state of georgia the state that he used to represent in congress and ron paul well they were high hopes but not a single win for the texas congressman the poll campaign has been focused on picking up delegates in the low turnout caucus states but despite an all out push in north dakota i don't hold an alaska last night the three states that are well known for their strong libertarian streaks ron paul well essentially came away empty handed but still the congress a congressman says he's not defeated he's vowing to question on and his approach may not be enough to win the nomination so what is the congressman after well for that answer i'm joined by brian doherty 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 brian it is great to

have you back on the program now can we read at last night's election results as anything but a major disaster but before the campaign. well it's a disaster for the goal of actually reading that you should 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 win 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 engage movement for his libertarian ideas 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 are reporting because many of those caucus states those 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 fame and 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 i mean even written especially about how you know ron paul can still plausibly claim to be the most viable alternative to romney saying that he still has the money to fund raising ability as well as that mission right infrastructure to keep competing the republican convention in august but if he hasn't won a single state so far won't that money not support. no it won't actually since ron paul on like 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 will be able to do that i do want to add however that santorum those are raw is the inability to keep winning states complicates that narrative entirely a lot of ron paul's hopes pearlie in the season relied on the notion that gingrich

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 paul's they should 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 would disappear ron paul actually got forty one percent of the vote in virginia the state nearest the beltway which again while it doesn't add up to a victory in the presidential race is a very encouraging sign for what calling his ideas can and will mean for the republican party moving forward in later elections well speaking of paul and his ideas one of the things that sort of stood out to me from some of the exit polls sort of this question about whether he may be reaching for the wrong types of voters because if you look at times of polls from yesterday he's actually doing really well among liberals in vermont for example romney did beat paul at forty twenty six percent but paul got 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 republican party if it's not clear that his followers will be republican. the. two boys who 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 know that how well he goes amongst g.o.p. primary and caucus voters who are a very narrow slice. of the american 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 of the democratic or republican reservation so anyone wanting to push these ideas has to

do what ron did which is sort of attach himself 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 core issues of limited government limited government spending limit in calculation so it seemed like a 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 sizable constituency out there in america for these ideas that just may not be concentrated at all in one party so what a future politician pushing paul's ideas has 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 the party primaries and caucuses the independents don't know he's a come out interesting well and then let's talk about very briefly sort of these these ideas i mean when paul you know this is the third run for the right house even back in two thousand and eight when he was are dismissed as a sprained you know crazy type of guy whose ideas and really resonate with the mainstream how do you see the country changing in terms of his ideas resonating perhaps more. 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 totals 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 his 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 get 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 are 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 pass to happen and if 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 of course by then and by a little bit too late by very briefly i do you see his his role in the race right now he has that already chef that all the rhetoric coming out of the other republican candidates perhaps has had that happened 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 wrong 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 the monetary policy his influence is be an

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 matters most republicans are good about holding the line on raising taxes but was paul has been the most serious about offering a budget that a trillion dollar cuts in one year and a four 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 you know we're public and the republican party is to survive all right well interesting and i'll be interesting to see how this conversation is going to change if we are back here in twenty sixteen talking about sort of the shift in the country thank you so much for your time that was brian doherty senior editor of reason magazine and also the author of an upcoming book ron paul's revolution the man and the movement he inspired. and that's going to do it for the news i don't go away the big picture is coming up at the top of

the hour host tom hartman and i tell you why super tuesday was all i know and he's also going to question whether mitt romney is actually in better shape to win the republican nomination after last night's results and later economist richard wolffe will break in on how soon we can expect to see the crisis of perfect capitalism come to our shores. in the meanwhile it's goodbye for me but overuse lots more for you on our website at r.t. dot com slash usa and if you hear the new i cloud is out which means that you can watch me wherever you go just make sure to subscribe to the america you tube channel and use that to go in the meanwhile if you want to weigh in on anything that you might have seen this evening or tell me what stories you'd like to see our team cover for you to be shy or spawn me on twitter my handle is at lucy catherine of and i want to hear from you but for now have a great night.