so. but of the alone a show at the real headlines with none of the mercy if you live in washington d.c. now it's not going to look at the horrible events of the weekend u.s. soldier allegedly killing think fifteen afghan civilians including women and children in the middle of the night massacre that will host a panel discussion with our monday hangover to talk about everything from voter id laws to crashing the justice system and the difference between democrats and republicans when it comes to the prospect of war with iran and as greece implements

the biggest debt write down in history we're going to speak with william black about the dangers of losing economic sovereignty and what other options are out there that should be discussed so have all that morphine tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to. so to start off today's show first want to go back to yesterday if you watch the news this morning you'll see it the mainstream media is for once actually covering the war in afghanistan due to this person massacre of civilians over the weekend allegedly by one u.s. soldier was unfortunate that it takes an event like this to get the media to question whether or not the war in afghanistan is a failure after ten long years but that's what it's come to now is go back to yesterday to something that happened on one percent the morning talk shows where the issue of be targeted killing of u.s. citizens that came up that's something which the media thus far haven't really

considered to be that big of a deal and i fear that it's going to take ten years other horrible events for them to realize that thanks for the war on terror the fear that we've all been fed the constitution and of protections afforded within it have been completely trampled on anyway here's candy crowley talking to democratic senator harry reid about attorney general eric holder's speech and how people are arguing about president needs to get this is of course in holder's view people are arguing that the president needs to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a u.s. citizen overseas. he said this is just not accurate that due process and judicial process are not one in the same if you have and this is creating quite a stir do you have any problem with that do you understand what that means exactly no i don't but i do know this the nonsense of the american citizen been killed overseas or carers and frankly if anyone in the world deserves to be killed those three did deserve to be killed and these are the three that were killed in yemen

and understand that not just are you at slightly uncomfortable with the idea that the united states president whoever it may be can decide that this or that u.s. citizen living abroad is a threat to national security and kill them well i don't know what the attorney general meant by saying that i'd have to study a little bit of never heard that term before but i think the process is and play i think it's one that i think we can live with and i think with the international war on terror is going on now we're going to have to make sure that we have the tools to get some of these people who are very bad and comply with american law and you think that the president should be able to make that decision in conjunction with the folks in the administration without going to court without going to you all and there is a war going on there's no question about that he's the commander in chief and there's been guidelines set and if he follows those i think you should be able to do it. all right so let's walk through a couple of these rails of this horrible exchange shall we harry reid first says

that no he doesn't understand what the difference is between due process and judicial process i don't care is about understanding the legal language that this is ministration tries to use right because directly after that he says with certainty that the three individuals who are american citizens who have been killed abroad deserved to be killed now as far as i know the legal memo that the administration's use to justify killing are a lot he was only shared with a very small national security panel so unless harry reid somehow got in on it how can he say these people deserved. to be kilt not to mention of course that if harry reid actually gave a damn about the constitution the laws in this country it wouldn't matter because they would know he would know that they have protections that should guarantee their day in court regardless of whether he thinks they deserve to be killed and finally the three individuals that we're talking about here anwar locky samir khan who was killed in the same strike as a lockie and. that's anwar lottie's sixteen year old son he was killed in an air

strike in yemen last october along with eight other people u.s. officials have never said why the only thing that officials have said anonymously of course to the press is that he was at the wrong place at the right at the wrong time but according to harry reid this is sixteen year old american citizen deserved to be killed that's quite a statement to make that is quite a horrifying reality of how our government functions these days and i completely out of hand this war on terror has become not only do we have democratic leaders fully supporting policies which they apparently don't understand yet which anyone with a basic knowledge of our constitution could figure out is illegal but we have a press to also let that slide and i'm happy that candy crowley asked him the question but you think a little follow up question to be in order as to how we so sure that these people deserve to be killed without ever having seen a day in court especially a sixteen year old and so here once again ladies and gentlemen we see why so many of these dangerous policies are allowed to slide why this war on terror is

perpetuate it probably only get much worse when one day the press corps realizes that hey there's a problem for now unfortunately they continue to choose to miss. arts and i love to talk about this gruesome massacre of sixteen civilians in afghanistan thirty nine children and three women an american soldier there is some conflicting or poor. locals say they saw group and heard simultaneous shots and u.s. military officials insist that there is no evidence that there was more than one shooter and the story so far from what officials have released shows like this around three am on sunday morning thirty eight year old army staff sergeant left the coalition out outpost in the punjab my district and out of kandahar he moved through a number of homes where he shot and killed sixteen civilians some of the bodies he later piled and burnt in the shooter then allegedly walk out to the post and turn

himself in a horrible story that's received condemnation and i'm president hamid karzai who president obama called after releasing a public statement expressing condolences and shock and it follows weeks of protests and violence in afghanistan after the inadvertent burning of korans also and photos of marines urinating on taliban corpses that came out at the start of this year and the afghan parliament is demanding a soldier be put on public trial so could this actually be a turning point or how the public already realized that the war effort was due to ready to discuss it is retired lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer senior fellow for the center for advanced defense studies and back to america also author of the book operation dark heart and i'm also joined by david x. freelance or correspondent jim i want to thank you both for joining me tonight and david i want to start with you what do you think of this the fact that there are conflicting reports here that the u.s. military saying that it was one rogue lone shooter and locals are saying that they

feel that there was a group. i'm not sure that the locals have better information than the military has at this point the attack apparently happened early in the morning and the press reports i've read had some of the neighbors of the victims racing to the crime scene after the shooting it's taking place so i think i can only assume that that you have folks who heard but did not see the attacks and are projecting from what they heard assumptions about the numbers shooters if you see an automatic weapon it may have sounded like more shooters and were actually present in military says one shooter and until we have more information that's that spirit buyable i believe that. you don't think you think there's anything suspicious about power does that make sense to situations i know for him to do what he did i think he had to be very stealthy i mean the idea of leaving post at that ipad hour of the

evening was not easy to do he had probably tell someone he was doing something totally live but one guy said googling out by himself was probably the way it would have been done i do believe this. let's talk about obviously there's a lot of conversation about perhaps psychological trauma the idea of our soldier serving multiple tours because this guy wasn't a newbie here already served three tours in iraq he came to afghanistan in december and so you know i what other possible questions can arise as to that because it's not like this is somebody who's never seen war before never. had to deal with it face to face or are there differences between being in iraq and afghanistan well clearly there are some twenty iraq and afghanistan huge differences doesn't excuse the action i was actually on b.b.c. last night without knowing the details we know today i predicted this this guy would have been on his third or fourth tour so we know that the stress of multiple to words has a huge weight to additional factors that this guy had with others did not perhaps regarding afghanistan secondly he's been working special operations forces out. the

war training working with the afghan public i think that that is a key moralizing sort of missions because the afghan people really turned her back on the whole mission secondly along the same line is the fact that the afghan military who were working was his turn to be not a good partner by the fact you've had it the koran burning to us so this is u.s. soldiers shot in the back of the head and this is not the first time this has happened you have an infiltration of the very people we're trying to help by sympathizers and frankly it's got to be difficult for our go our u.s. soldiers to wake up every morning to go faced is very difficult environment i think that plus the stress of other tours now expects using what you do but i'm saying those things did have a huge impact on his mental state i think the result of him breaking they want to give your opinion on what you think. you know we can say about the reaction that's hard because after there was inadvertently. the president we saw protests we saw riots we saw

a lot of violence in afghanistan that stemmed weeks after this we saw early from the reports i've read a couple hundred people gathered outside the outpost to protest but do you think that we're going to see riots do you think that we're going to see violence in the same way is there a big difference for afghanis when it comes to burning a koran versus women and children being killed. i do believe that the reaction will escalate a lot of this news it's going to spread by word of mouth especially to some of the more isolated eastern and southern communities where folks that were the divisions already exist between the locals and the coalition that sort of facilitate a wider middle violent reaction so i think given given a few days we're going to see a pretty good response to this that could equal the the riots in the wake of the salon bernie. i i'm i'm reluctant to comment on the distinction between afghans

reactions to the koran burning versus their reaction to these murders and i tend to believe that it's going to be a pretty violent reaction in both cases running out of the area where no we're not going to see anything you've seen probably the worst of it already i'm going on a limb here obviously but i think the reason is this we've already seen this sort of thing happen before we've seen the american strike brigade having spork killings a couple year of last year that convicted these guys this year you know we're spots we had journal karen who was relieved over the use of use of force and killing civilians again no no major protests so no i don't believe sad as it is i don't think we're going to see much of a reason being is that for better or for worse the value of life and the core of the world is less than ours so this would be tragic but this is one more prend that we've seen happening for years now and as sad as it is i think it should be something that tells us it's time to step away and let the afghan people seek their own future without a single us of us there saying perhaps that these are two cultures that either we

just can't understand it's actually also what about the fact that these people have lived with a constant occupation and live in war for the last ten years because you know we talk about it is american say this is been america's longest war but it hasn't been happening on our soil but let me hit it real quick you know three or four when i was there i was a tipping point my book talks about it we were there as as basically the. their right has been good and we were doing what was necessary to achieve our military objectives with with ten thousand troops one tenth of what we have there now we're being successful because we were trying to push we were giving to the afghan people hobson's choice we were trying to say you've got to pick the karzai government you've got to take the tahlequah we've got to get the tribes they were over the wars with their war now we've made them pick and i think what's why we become the issue and that's why the afghan people are now railing against us they have no provision of a central government even though they've been occupied the british tried it the soviets and tried it and it doesn't work you can't form a central government we're where there's a culture that does not want to suffer government well it calls for doesn't want

and i guess we say the afghan parliament wants right now they want some form of justice and so they're actually calling for a public trial of this soldier if it is just the one to be done in afghanistan which i can't really imagine the u.s. military allowing for that to happen but i mean you know what's what's your take it what do you think the chances are of that is that something that would appease afghan civilians if they saw something like this carried out publicly sure it might but it's never going to happen the military and the white house will allow that but i'd like to revisit the bit of conversation that a better assessment that he would see if you seem to agree upon that life means less in afghanistan than it does say here elsewhere in the world i don't think that's true the there's a little town in eastern afghanistan called mars shack and about six months ago the taliban murdered a single person in that town and that's a road taliban town after that murder that's how neglected to join the coalition and form a volunteer police force and invite in the army the u.s.

army to go troll base a single murderer can be a big deal afghans and do value life and if americans and the coalition are perceived to be murderers equal in brutality to the taliban but it's going to have a profound influence on the course of this war. by the way i'm asking the questions here i'm not agreeing because i have not you know i haven't been to afghanistan i said what use is why i bring you guys on to talk about it so if we want to talk about an influence on the course of this war whether there really will be a turning point do you think if there were if there's a new a.b.c. washington post poll that came out this weekend it shows that sixty percent of americans don't think that this war is worth fighting anymore over fifty percent said that we should basically cut and run not finish the training mission and leave and this was actually before any of this happened so far we seeing some kind of turning point where was that was the public opinion already there beforehand as it already is the course is already set in stone and on its way i think the american people public are wise to what's going on there to classified reports out which back up the idea that we need to change what we're doing i'm not

a running i'm saying would you change your mission from one the work that's losing that's the coin strategy to one that we were winning on can win again which is the anti-terrorism strategy lower footprint focused on only what we need to achieve to achieve national security not making it more like us with that said the see this being we do think that you can compare this to the my lai massacre in vietnam we're going to get it right going to be that there's a lot of heroes of the vietnam war recently did a search and it is said you know we see you know progress being made it was almost it was more than life you know let's hold the seat of our leadership regarding this war they're getting good intelligence telling them the national intelligence estimate says we're not going to win and vaster crocker said in a classic top secret memo thereby knows about it says because we've never addressed the safe havens in pakistan strategies never going to win the white house has all this year they pretend otherwise. david what's your take care and say before we wrap this up do you think that this is really going to be a turning point not only for the way that it's perceived in afghanistan by the

civilians but by the american public and i think that we already see in terms of some of our politicians here newt gingrich right this is become suddenly a popular position for one of the g.o.p. candidates to take is that we should leave immediately but what about for everyone else i think we've seen the end of the war i think. we need to take political and game. game in the sense that. people are going to want to remove troops immediately are going to are they going to say ok go along with the plan it's already there to be out by twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen immediately it's not possible just speaking. the plan to withdraw most regular troops maybe initially fourteen could be accelerated and i think you've seen enough leeway in the rhetoric to make that possible. we can't move up any quicker than a year best case you've got to switch some troops out bring others in i talked to a former commander sort of come out of this directly and you can't move much faster than twenty thirty without said if you're telling it's all about you're leaving

those who are left there to take on this thankful mission will be left in more danger than ever i think we'll see more events of like this unfold i gentleman thank you so much for joining us tonight and another horrible event from this war thank you. hi guys it's time for a quick break well we come back time for our money hangover for gas whether or not americans should crash the justice system adequately just ignore all that pesky u.s. intelligence when it comes to iraq. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so poorly you think you understand it and then something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

wealthy british style the sun. rises on the. markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cars reports on . the world with the. science technology innovation all the moves developments around russia we've got the future coverage.

he called from the. mission for. forty dollars. from. our guys it's monday and we have quite a few things on our plate to discuss the rest aloud after this big weekend as the obama administration blocks of texas voter id law and that is taking their case

against a voting laws all the way to geneva before a u.n. panel that author pens and an author pens an op ed in the new york times suggesting that if everybody actually refused to plea out insisted on our sixth amendment right as guaranteed in the constitution to a trial and the entire justice system would crash and a new poll shows that there is a difference between democrats and republicans when it comes to what they think the likelihood is of a war with iran so here of the scots with me is matt welch editor in chief of reason magazine and said rely communications and outreach coordinator for united republic and writer for united republican blogs republic report that work gentlemen thanks so much for joining me tonight at seven ok voter id laws is something we brought up a lot on this show because right now there are fifteen states since last year that have already passed these new laws i think over thirty states that are trying to make it specifically a voter id law and so what do you think of just part of justice is going to have to do right and. sense of this texas law they said that this would risk the

disenfranchisement of thousands. of voters and so they just have to go state by state and this is going to be a train they did it before i presume so yeah i mean bill you go state by state or try to get some kind of broad class action kind of thing going on here the problem with the political discussion of this is that you have one people all on the side of the issue saying you know of course this is been a historical way to blunt the aspirations and to deny voting rights to especially african-americans but on the other side of the issue we grow anything else the voting system in this country sucks i mean how many times have you gone to the polls and seen your name twice or some dude living in your house there's a powerful emotional argument for saying hey look shouldn't you have a system that's a little bit more airtight so this will be a political issue for as long as we still have that kind of voting says i mean isn't there another way to try to reform or at least fix i guess you could say our voting system rather than requiring everyone to have

a government issued photo id if there is i think twenty one million people in this country that don't have one of them because they might not have the proper documents in order to get it or because of the fact that it costs money right they have to go to the d.m.v. to get it. i think very few people are given voting system i mean you have so many people turned away every single year because they're not the right thing they don't know where to go their name wasn't listed and that's why you know voter i.d. ends up being you know sort of bird some sort of way to handle the problem i mean i think there are definitely ways to reform the system and there's some states and districts are actually going to start experimenting with online voting and sort of online verification for voting a lot of especially elderly people who tend to be disenfranchised by voting i.d. laws they like to use their like medicare card or social security card. for registration for id so there's a number of ways to tackle the problem but you know i think just today it was in judge threw out their voting id law so i think these laws are very divisive and honestly there it kind of a solution is searching for a problem because there really isn't any sort of rash outbreak of sort of voter

problem it's mostly just media factored. well i mean it's true he talked about that on the show too you know it might be frustrating or he might say how many times have you gone and seen your name written down twice it's never happened to me and i've never been able to get people to really notice it since it takes don't show their voter fraud really is a huge problem what it does it undermines people's confidence a member seeing great power you might have in your show once or twice before the two thousand and four election saying very confidently we know that they've stolen the election the only question is how exactly we're going to do it there is a built in belief that the whole system is rigged against whatever faction that you're part of and as long as the voting system has sort of you know swiss cheese irregularities to it you'll have that but it's also a reflection of our federal system we don't want a one size fits all federal solution for voting and i think that's actually for the good i mean it allows for experimentation and kind of regional differences within other broader kind of fourteenth amendment issues yeah i mean i guess of bothers me more is the fact that we have an electoral college that i feel that some states get

a little more say than others do or certain votes when you just read about it well part of the id well let's move on to you ok michelle alexander is an author she's written about our criminal justice system the war on drugs houses all considered the new jim crow and so she has this op ed in the new york times basically reminding us that more than ninety percent of the time people actually don't go to a full trial with a jury if they're arrested for something they have to just take the plea bargain and usually go you know serve a little bit of time in jail but she says that the system could actually be crashed if everyone took advantage of that sixth amendment right do you think that's true totally one thousand percent true yes of course i mean we don't have a criminal justice system at least those original vision we have a plea bargain factory system and that's it so the government says you have committed even a first time offense you've committed this thing we have a jailhouse snitch that pins you at this crime that you didn't commit and you can

either go to jail for ten years if you fight it or. we'll give you one year on the side to match what all of this does why is it like that right i mean there's even a supreme court case that said that they're allowed to threaten you with life in prison. with this plea bargain deal and that's totally legal to do you know i think i think the professor she actually mentioned this and. this is some of that set up right now is really skewed against particularly poor people and racial minorities and you know the only person who brought this up in any sort of presidential forum was ron paul you know talking about particularly systems getting its minority because typically these people don't tend to have the education of their own and the access to this sort of legal knowledge to defend themselves or a lot of these cases so they'll just take the lead are you know whatever the circumstances of being and i think the professor was absolutely right it was actually started standing up for their rights and demanding you know what it takes and i mean that and the rest of the bill of rights guarantees that they would crash as a legal system really is not better but now the actually deliver a fair statement because it's supposed to be a system based on fear where they where they go in and they say if you actually want to take advantage of the rights that are supposed to be granted to you by the

sixth amendment you might face more time in jail that seems like the most backwards logic to me completely and let's not forget that it's very expensive to for anyone to go through good and at every step of the way they have people who sort of punish you for standing firm and holding on to your beliefs but i mean it's easy for us to say oh yeah of course you should fight it but then get there you're so that's one thing right yeah i think you have to risk the possible consequences lastly before we go if you say there's a new poll this is a poll position found the fifty's person is a fifty seven percent of republicans believe that the u.s. is going to attack iran this year attack iran this year and twenty two percent of democrats think that and so it kind of just brings up a little question obviously there are a whole lot of people who between that don't necessarily want to call themselves a democrat or republican but i've had two questions that one poll asked were interesting and i want your answers are republicans then engaged in this wish fulfillment thing meaning that you know they believe that it's likely because they really want

a war and in fact they are getting people. ages eighteen to twenty nine actually thought it's more likely that war of the image is not a reflection of the last ten years you know where you think that your war is normalized i think that especially the last one is very interesting the young people now this point are so cynical because we're always going to go to war the the interesting number there is that twenty two democrats don't think it's going to happen necessarily and they probably don't want it to happen in the rank and file level and it does over if the democrats are more in denial because they don't want to doesn't it matter what they think that is the point it doesn't matter if your faction is is pro-war anti-war you're going to have war you know i think there's just as likely a possibility is that obama would somehow get involved militarily with iran as a republican president would at this point or a president romney at least this year might be slightly bigger chance for romney but democrats cannot impose their own anti interventionist feelings on their own party because there are so quick to say republicans are evil knuckle driving nazis and we have what we have i mean i think matt has

a good point in terms of particularly young people don't see a big difference between the parties of foreign policy and in particular under obama have a get there as there hasn't been that big of a difference but i do think it's it is unlikely for there to be a war and the primaries there isn't because the parties have a different philosophy of it because i like the other countries the united states has gone to war with recently iran has a huge set of deterrents that would cause a lot of pain for the united states and its allies and i feel like this is a little bit more of a deterring effect for them versus the other countries that have gone to war with so i'm hoping that hopefully the young people here are a little too cynical because the war would be really really bad for you know us and for iran i hope you're right you know i kind of fall into this whole cynical category specially have people we had a clip you don't find a plate of henry kissinger saying that our intelligence agencies say wrong once a nuclear but we still we know is it and this is a this is the logic are you guys thanks so much for joining me tonight. hi thanks for another great weekend back and you said it i read it.