welcome to the capital account mr. well going to be alone a show where we get the real headlines with none of the mercy we're going live to washington d.c. now tonight we're going to talk expanding shadow wars and the back and forth between russia and the u.s. over syria retired lieutenant colonel tony shaffer joins steve zune is on our panel then you're just a few billionaires were all the entire world carlos slim sheldon adelson just to name a few names if they want something they throw money at it but how does that affect mean you are going to all of that market and i including it as of happy hour but first take a look with mainstream media decided to miss. so

i'm surprisingly the economy is still topic number one and as usual the mainstream media isn't giving you any real details about the economy they're not even making any connections between the love fest for jamie dimon on the hill yesterday and the lack of regulations on wall street or anything like that but no instead they are still going on and on about the back and forth between obama and mitt romney in mainstream media land the battle of words is all that really matters disappointing new jobs numbers came out this morning as john boehner is asking democrats what is being done about it he's been talking about a jobs plan that he would like to see that congress is the pleasure to be going back to that message today that he needs to remind people how the stimulus how the auto bailout how some other actions of his administration have indeed help dig the country out of the hole it was in when he took office president obama and governor romney getting ready to speak out on how to fix our struggling economy or closures

in the united states went up nine percent last month that's more than two hundred thousand properties the economy is getting worse all the employment is eight point two percent president obama and mitt romney will offer dueling visions of how to fix the economy a lot of people are fed up with congress for not working together to get the country's fiscal house in order here is what he said the other day for a low budget carney on the. yes i inherited a trillion dollar deficit. we had a surplus they turned it into a deficit built in a structural deficit that extends for decades obama continues to connect romney the former president george w. bush. when i hear governor romney say his twenty five years in the private sector gives him a special understanding of how the economy works i my question is why are you running with the same bad ideas the broader economy to the brink of disaster the one. now we played that clip yesterday as well and as our guest david dayen pointed out his points are true

a new cvo analysis shows the exact same thing but i want to take this in a different direction today because you notice how the president still talks about the two wars that he inherited well true he did inherit iraq and afghanistan and despite the heavy contractor presence in iraq is technically over and afghanistan will be if all goes as planned winding down over the next few years but there's one thing he never really hear this president talk about and those are the shadow wars that he has expanded all over the world i mean that's something that he cannot blame on the last guy we constantly talk about pakistan and yemen where we've been waging a very aggressive drone war and one of these days i hope it won't be too far to go down the road but one of these days maybe the administration the american people will actually take note of the numerous accounts that are out there which show that this strategy is backfire making the anti-american terrorist problem even worse just today there's a new op ed in the new york times why a twenty three year old yemeni saying that exact same thing the headline reads how drones help al qaeda and keeping all that in mind i find another story out there to

be incredibly interesting so we've got a special operations forces some wild presence in africa for years we know that we've launched drone strikes in somalia and banks and jeremy scahill is reporting for the nation we know that there are proxy prisons that the cia has a hand in there as well and this week news a spreading that next year a grade of brigade of three thousand soldiers if not more is going to deploy to africa in a pilot program and what they tell us as if they'll be training foreign militaries and aiding locals taking the time to learn regional cultures the language is trained for a specific threats and missions but they promise they won't be interfering in the conflicts that plague so many of these african nations just and according to major general david hawk he's the head of the u.s. army africa and that is the short and sweet version of the army times report that but then you get into the really great in-depth report that's out there by the watch. and to post that to anonymous officials weekly leaks cables and contracting documents they pieced together and there are quite

a few gems in there for example did you know that about a dozen air bases have been established in africa since two thousand and seven we have hubs in burkean afonso mauritania uganda ethiopia djibouti kenya the seychelles and there are plans to open a base in south sudan as well now for now they're just using drones over east africa but they could expand the whole continent if they wanted to also according to these anonymous u.s. military officials our special ops forces well they're doing a lot of surveillance work out there but they also have teams dedicated to tracking and killing terrorism suspects and it's not just special ops contractors are out there too now that we've all heard plenty about al shabaab in somalia by now but the post outlines other networks that were monitoring al qaeda in the islamic magreb boko haram in nigeria for example those are names that i'm pretty sure that most americans have never heard of but it's always going to be that way we keep expanding our military presence to every single corner of the globe inserting ourselves into what are often local conflicts not goals of world domination by most

of these networks and how long until it backfires how little are americans going to know about the shadow wars that are being fought abroad in their names these are all questions that need to be brought up that need to be asked and yet despite picking over every single word the president says the mainstream media as usual passes over the substance they parse over the words but not the actions so no shocker ever expanding shadow wars i mean three media chooses to miss. so let's continue on tonight with talking about this expanded african presence do we need three thousand troops and air bases and drones and special ops teams in africa or do we face a pos. ability of making things worse and i also talk about syria while the fighting and shelling and civilian deaths continue it's now turned into a war of words between the u.s.

and russia with hillary even twisting the truth a little here and there to make a point joining me to discuss this is retired lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer senior national security advisor with the task force on national and homeland security and author of operation dark heart and dr stephen soonest professor of politics at the university of san francisco where he chairs the program in middle eastern studies john i want to thank you both for joining me tonight and i want to start with syria because i think they have a feeling that this is somewhere where you probably disagree and so stephen you know you've you written about this and said that we do not need to intervene in syria and so i just want to hear you make make your point state your case for most of all i do support your position and i do believe it was. asked to be done by the syrian people themselves majority of dictators that successfully of the throne have been. actually people so oh you have foreign intervention like in libya that

is very very messy and. i'm sure. we're absolutely great powers and i'm trying to make it do great power when it really is a people's you're. all right we've lost tony for a minute so i'm just going to stick with you but i mean what do you say is that it's again to the point where the international community is just going to call it a civil war and you know once you get to that point then then this case for trying to intervene when it's a civil war becomes a lot more difficult doesn't it. and there's one problems with. them i don't want to make moral judgment against people who are most in people like me who have to take up arms to solve the trans was huge it's a big mistake because the first six months when the switch was overwhelmingly nonviolent you know they didn't have support in the world there are groups who are among the syrian people but when the arms on the so-called free syrian army begin to. roll became wildly morally legally.

it became more an excuse for those who are. sure to escalate and support the syrian regime and for the united states and western allies the school of those who are the opposition so i'm curious to get your take on what's been going on lately because this week we saw hillary clinton. accuse russia of selling brand new helicopters over to syria which that it turns out wasn't really true and defense officials are saying that the as she just twisted the words a little bit then you have of course the russians coming back to hillary clinton back at the u.s. pointing out some of the hypocrisy and reminding us that we are also weapons dealers around the world here and then i got to show you this clip on fox news that we saw earlier today where they they spliced together so some footage let's play it for the audience and we'll continue russia was selling attack helicopters to the

government of bashar assad choppers that were being used we were told to rain death on innocent women and children we got a horrifying reminder of the violence being unleashed by the assad government against the syrian people yesterday. we have our the promo video for the helicopter and dying syrian children immediately but you know what i'm curious in terms of what you think about this and hillary clinton statements in the back and forth and is it becoming like a a shame game. well i don't know if there's any truth to your accusations or not on the one hand secretary of state clinton other u.s. officials have been known to twist the truth on these conversations other hand and now the russians have provided a lethal weapon that's been used against innocent civilians what strikes me more than anything is the fact that the united states has been supplying all copper gunships to murderous governments around the world amnesty international yes the spoken out against eating syria they've also spoken out against the u.s.

aiding israel meeting colombia eating turkey with these very high is it all cops or gun ships had a great death on civilians and you couldn't and you do it for the bad i'm going to solve how was it civilians killed by other car gunships i mean i mean that in fact you know when when clinton when obama first came to office there was an explicit call from zero national just sees the supply the helicopter gunships that israel given the hundreds of civilians were killed in the gaza strip and the media and they must ration summarily rejected that so the heartless problem from the us they said on this is really outstanding i salute god tony shaffer back finally a little technical glitch there for a minute it's a tony you know jump in here in terms i want to get your take i mean you've been saying that you feel like that we do need to do something that syria but i want to get your take on that on this back and forth between clinton and lavrov and the helicopter deal well it's very clear that helicopters have been use are going to continue to be used by the saudi government russia will continue supplying the

question becomes do we want to do something or not. i am one who says look. i'm out of the press or the people need to throw off the yoke of the dictatorship however i don't think they can do it on their own i think assad's got about forty percent of the population behind him right now they are well understood they're well organized and well i don't believe we should be involved in my state u.s. forces i don't support john mccain calling for air. strikes i think we should look at how we can do things to be helpful to the opposition we've done this with other countries where we help the opposition and i think this is where we would be on the right side of history unlike libya where i don't believe for a minute no market up was about the murders people in this case they are bigger in their people the other thing here is a factor relating to the iranians because well frankly i don't want to be about this but you know his ball is less effective and and lebanon right now because

syria doesn't have time support so this is actually being in some ways by a very up to use got mention helpful just to make sure other areas are focused on however if it goes on long enough you will see chaos and sue everywhere but the thing is the iranians and the iranians are clearly back in the saga and we haven't had an issue with the iranians right now so right now i think the best thing we can do is try to find and support the opposition as best we can through the arab league and try to put pressure on the soccer team and i don't believe sitting on the sidelines is a way to do that get him by issue with iranians to you know that in the sense that he was also refuses to allow iran to be part of the negotiation process and so at this scene of peaceful dealing and diplomacy doesn't really seem like it's working at the moment but i want to switch to what i started the show with which is this expansion into africa yes we've had people there for here is but now we found out that since two thousand and seven we've been building a lot of air bases that we find out that we're sending three thousand troops there

next year there are intelligence operations are increasing and so why why is this necessary tony just tell me why we need to cover every corner and every inch of the planet well the honest answer is we don't need to i ran an operating base which covered all sub-saharan africa and i did it with less than two dozen folks i think what we're seeing here is the defense industrial complex looking for a new mission to put people out there frankly if you build infrastructure you're. building targets that could be targeted by the terrorist you're trying to prevent the attack and so i don't think it's in our best interest to do so and the second thing here i think we would all agree on this is time for air and sometimes we need to have a clear understanding of strategy i talked to a four star general former commander of central command recently he said one of our biggest problems within the context of both defense budgets and what we're doing with things like africa is we have no strategy we have no global strategy so basically what you're seeing here the reason we're doing it is because we can't because it's easy to do i think that we may have lost tony there

so stephen back to you. talking about and talking about this expansion in africa to if we're doing it just because we can that's great but do you think if this is one of those things that might end up back firing at the end of the day you know like i said that increasingly we keep hearing more accounts from people in yemen right there that are saying there are drone program there are drone strikes are only backfiring and working against us and so now if we start inserting ourselves into a lot of local regional conflicts within africa is the same thing going to happen. and you know the actual star thing in addition to the mills are industrial complex . that the other the other guest mentioned the fact is that oil exploration and oil discovered and west africa has expanded dramatically and the united states in. the middle east is going to do us a big piece of that another is that china's becoming

a major player in africa or for a number of reasons mostly economic interest in life in new york city is trying to challenge that but again this is going to get some trouble are you seeing something new on some of it's on the problems for example in mali the coup there was a direct result of the us training officers now taking advantage of the situation that became militarized as a result of u.s. intervention and and in the army i can see is an error somewhere to live america or all these assistance programs supposedly to stop. you know the extremist or terrorists or whatever end up with another round of military because it's just one that the continent is slowly going itself into a democratic direction leading the lead by his own people to end the domination of the military and so the more united states militarized is the region more united states were actual militaries it is they're basically taking the side of the theory of forces that hold the continent back for most of the decade since independence

are going against the equal we want to have a future in their own hands and you know one of the biggest problems too if you ask me is the fact that so much as of this is happening secretly and under wraps because it's the special ops community it's the cia that's doing it and so you know they we don't even know if i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight stephen and thanks tony as well though if it was only with us part of the time. are just ahead in the show just tell long until a few billionaires really do run the whole world out of the discussion we're going to after the break we'll have the discussion about how successful businessman to be calling all the shots to stay.

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right with money at the center of our political process these days and politicians so easily being bought do you think we're ever going to get to the point where every law is just can resemble the desires of a few billionaires now we all joke about rich people ruling the world but seriously isn't it true two good examples come to mind today sheldon adelson the billionaire casino owner just made a spending total this election cycle bump up to thirty six million dollars by giving ten million more to romney super pac and he said that he's willing to spend up to one hundred million to beat obama then carlos slim the mexican telecom mogul who's the richest man in the world he called for increasing the retirement age to seventy to reflect a longer life expectancy rates easy for a rich guy to say right but seriously in their world are the rest of us just out of

luck here this gus is with me is richard ask out senior fellow with the campaign for america's future and host of the breakdown on we act radio in washington d.c. and j.p. frere senior communications strategist with new media strategies. gentlemen thank you for joining me tonight i know this seems kind of like a fun funny topic but i couldn't help it when i was poring through some of the headlines this morning are not not fun but you know but the immediate thing that came to mind is rich people rule the world you know how low you know i mean look the other example we saw of that that you didn't mention is i mean there are stating that i mean you know here we have you know you have carlos slim saying we should push the retirement age back seventy and you have jamie diamond pushing the simpson bowles plan that basically does the same thing up in front of a group of senators only two of whom haven't received campaign money from jamie diamond then how can you avoid thinking that these guys are really calling the

shots and that neither party is really standing up to them well i mean it's interesting that you would bring this example up i think it's a great example and it works very well with the point that i want to make which is that when we're talking about citizens united and money and politics we're talking about people trying to convince other folks of their own perspective they're not funding candidates they're just trying to get their own message out now there's a different thing from when you're giving contributions to a particular congressman so i would say that it's a good thing when you enable people to not have to give money to a congressman to get your message out and that's one of the nice things about citizens united but what do you think a man like sheldon adelson right that's what we we've seen people spend a hundred million dollars of their own money to try to get themselves elected right if you think of bloomberg very think of the meg whitman's in the world but romney but book or romney but why is it in sheldon adelson interest what is the message that he wants to get out there if he is just just so desperately trying to get obama reelected hundred million dollars it's a lot of cash but i mean is he trying to curry favor or is he trying to mask you

know what he well i think i think that he's trying to convince other people of his point of view which is that he doesn't think that i don't really know what its point of view would i want if it was saying that obama want to be like well he i mean there's a quote out there that sheldon adelson accuses obama of running us. socialist style economy so you there you get a sense of where he's coming from he's trying to convince other people that i think that him spending his money to convince the rest of the american people about that that's a positive thing for america well you know i think that's why i like my friend over here i think that's an extraordinary point of view in a country that used to express the ideal of one person one vote to say that one person can inject hundreds of millions of dollars in a political campaign because we all know that changes the outcome of elections you can use that money in very pronounced ways jamie diamond is another great example because jamie diamond in the group of people he represents particularly after citizens united are basically going to pick the next senate the next congress this is why the democrats haven't been stabbed is one of the reasons why the democrats

haven't been standing up to them so you have a guy now who's bank has committed numerous crimes but so many that it's had to get a billions of dollars in fines getting a cake walk through a senate hearing committee because he owns them or what's a bargain started laughing when you did you think that they were tough on jamie dimon yesterday because i can't look at you with a straight of eight years if you honestly believe that of course of course they're pretty light headed they barely understand the issues but let's be clear that part of the reason tell us how to regulate that would give us advice and this is in this kind of capture this kind of regulatory capture happens all the time but let's be clear that if you want to prevent incumbents from remaining in office and beginning to you know we're not the largest of the over the wealthy if you want to prevent these selections from happening in places other than sorry if you want to encourage people to have a voice in the election rather than smoke filled board rooms where just the party is responsible for picking people then you want to encourage as many people to get involved in the process as possible that includes very rich people who want to

spend money and by the way let's be clear that in the new york times if you have an opinion writer that is extolling a particular perspective on an election he doesn't get regulated under. you. no but i mean i his for it is this is an example this is first of all what it is to do so using corporate means right i mean he has the distribution of the new york times to hide behind where it doesn't run a newspaper so you need supply an ad to do that i think that that's what i was showed little sense just folks you know i mean i think that we've got look we saw in the b.p. oil spill we saw it in the lack of response to the wall street financial crisis we saw it in the lack of indictments despite an overwhelming preponderance of evidence suggesting that major crimes were committed we saw it in the settlement to the foreclosure for which was massive you know technically perjury forgery that we have money ruling the system and i'm sorry the idea of the show has

a right of free speech that includes trying to hide from the public how much money he's giving you know this kind of notion of money is speech it's the only speech that anybody describes where you have the right not to be heard while you're speaking with it you know the money you know that secrecy and so on you know the same people who say money is speech fight the disclose act that would let us know who's giving money where so i mean i think this is just. it's. a show that adelson you know is one of these people that you actually do know how much money is getting because he's being very public about it and he actually likes the attention but so the problem is maybe even less so people like sheldon adelson it's as if it really well although i still think it's a problem because the hundred million dollars of insane just coming from one person but it's more those that do want their contributions and their spending to be not disclosed i want to move on to this issue of seventy years old. retirement age this is not a brand new idea it's nothing novel we've definitely heard it for a long time because life expectancy rates are going up and cancer life expectancy

rates are going up for wealthy individuals if you look at you know minority women that are poor their life expectancy rates are actually going down and it hasn't really gone up as much as people imply you know people love to throw around statistics for exam. like saying well when social security was created life expectancy was sixty three and look at it now but life expectancy for someone who lived to age sixty five was only three or four years less than it is today so you know there are a lot of false issues being thrown around but again you have democrats embracing what used to be a republican position because carlos slim and other people his equivalent in this country are pouring money into make sure that that's the only point of view that's represented unfortunately in the entire republican party and now in larger and larger sectors of the democratic party as well what's your take i mean i think that it's fine to also want to overhaul social security and means test it so that we people who actually need it get those benefits i don't think that we should

eliminate the security net that catches a lot of people but let's be absolutely clear that the way that it works is currently broken i mean if you're going to retire you're going to rely on your social security savings i mean you're you're crazy or out of your mind you're not going to be able to afford very much and we should be able to support people who need that kind of support and we should not get people who are who are purchasing cadillacs and driving around in miami providing them with these benefits that they don't actually need but i don't want anybody that i had first of all i'm old enough to remember welfare cadillacs although i was just a kid but you know i've done social insurance financial planning for over twenty countries ok in a past life and the fact is if it weren't for the fact that so much more of our national income was being captured by the top not just one percent two point zero one percent social security would be in perfect shape for many years to come so the answer is to increase the payroll tax cap and do other things to bring it back that's just that's fair that's reasonable and if you really think that billionaires shouldn't get social security why not tax them well i mean. not as

accurate and we have an i.r.s. let's just do that well actually this gets into a nice little merge that we can do here which is to talk about what we mean by corporations and what we mean by billionaires and who these people are i mean when . we're talking one we're concerned about carlos slim and we're so concerned about sheldon adelson giving a lot of money so that they can purchase ads we are then omitting the fact that people would like to incorporate create a nonprofit for profit whatever purchase a bunch of ads and start messaging on elections they should have that freedom to do so and try to influence the outcome of an election that's a perfectly american thing and to say that they need to be repealed in the course of doing so the most important example of anonymous speech influencing in important outcome for america was the federalist papers and it had hamilton and madison and john j. had been exposed at that time they might have been drawn in court so i think a little we all know that we're not in that kind of society anymore right i don't

think you need i don't have to ramp it up i'm ok all right i think you're right it's how we got ahead of break but i want to thank you so much about joining us tonight you. have to take another break but coming up next julian assange is one step closer to standing trial in the u.s. and the ira and da isn't just about pentagon funding we're going to tell you about some other provisions then they're flying under the radar. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to rule the day.