outrage in anaheim spills into a ninth day hundreds of protesters rally against police brutality all this in retaliation to a string of officer involved shootings the latest from california for the head. plus nearly ten years and trillions of dollars later the war in iraq is still draining the u.s. economy as well as the patience of the iraqi people but with the amount of money taxpayer spend they expect results had we'll find out which results if any have come out of our reconstruction efforts in iraq. plus there's so much for job creation tens of thousands of federal employees could be getting pink slips in the

near future coming up we'll take a look at the automatic cuts congress and the president agreed upon and how it will play out heading into the two thousand and twelve election. it's monday july thirtieth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for his hour and you're watching our team. let's begin in anaheim california where over the weekend hundreds of protesters took to the streets in response to a wave of police brutality there. and this is actually the ninth consecutive day of protest against police initially sparked after the shooting death by police of two men twenty five year old manuel dia's and another man joel us of a down they say police targeted them because of their race and where they live and have been calling for systemic change ever since nine people were arrested in those

demonstrations yesterday and to talk more about all of this i'm joined by community organizer ron go chaz ron i just want to get a sense from you i'm not sure if you saw the protests if you were there or saw some of the footage on t.v. what do you think this was about you know we've been in the streets than i am and what this is about this is not just about the killing of these two men this is about generations of repression and violence on behalf of the anaheim police department against the people of anaheim and in particular. in anaheim so i think the frustration finally it blew over people came out and you see that anger against what's happening that's a treatment that our communities facing so i'm not surprised by this and i think that if we don't if we don't have some real justice for the cops who killed these two men in the last week you know i think this violence may continue in anaheim we're not calling for violence but we understand the community is outraged at what's happening and sometimes it just cannot be contained and i know that this protest took place it was a march to disneyland talk

a little bit about why disneyland and what the significance of that is. well just yesterday there was three different protests all over anaheim at the city hall in front of and police department and disneyland the reason why they wanted this in there because obviously design is an internationally recognized place brings in you know millions of dollars to the city and a lot of people believe it really runs the politics of the police department of anaheim so people want to go so that all of the tourist all the people coming from all over the world to anaheim to disneyland can see that just outside of the doors it isn't that you know the people do not think it's the happiest place on earth there's a lot of violence against poor people in anaheim and there needs to be called out so i think that's where some of the organizations decided to do go to disneyland to see exposed everyone so the realities of anaheim and i know our correspondent ramon girl window was actually at the protest as well this weekend and spoke to a few of the people there i want to hear from one of those protesters

do we have after him and what this is shooting and just shooting literally a couple days after. finally contacted my mom and she basically said there's no video surveillance there never was a video surveillance you know we have witnesses say that they actually the police went on the roof and they got the camera and that was one of the most interesting things ron i mean we heard from from witnesses here who say police were actually coming to their doors trying to purchase a cell phone video from them talk a little bit about these specific shootings. yeah the local media here in los angeles reported that at least four different people were offered cash on the spot by officers of the anaheim police department because obviously they didn't want this for this to go viral so these shooters like i said you know that they're part of a systematic problem in anaheim just this year alone there's been eight killings by the and home police department most of those of people who are unarmed like what just happened this last week so the people are tired this is not something this is

not one one case this is really a systematic problem that's been happening for generations in anaheim in a city where more than half of the population there is latino fifty three percent of the population is that the you know they don't have any political representation and they feel that the police department really use you know racial profiling and brutality against them so that's why that soon saw the community i mean mothers were you know with strollers all kinds of people from the community coming out these aren't even activists they're just people who are completely fed up with the treatment they receive from the police and in response we now see the famous video where the police you know sic dogs on people they shot them with rubber bullets these are women and children who were not activists they weren't anarchists they want people trying to cause problems they were simply just denouncing the brutality that the police use against their people in their community and run as you say and as so many protesters have said to us this is a systemic problem and a lot of them blamed racism and they blame you know flaws in the system i guess i'm

curious what specifically people are calling for and also you know if as you say this has been a problem for so long why they think things will change now. i think most immediately that we need to see justice we need to see that the man who shot these young mexicans here in anaheim they need to be brought to justice they need to be charged with murder and that's where here locally in los angeles today there was a big press conference to demand that come along harris which is attorney general california that should bring about an investigation into these murders not only that obviously it's paying for this pain for the obvious that the officers of the anaheim police department need some sense training so that they don't you know shoot first and ask questions later this is some that's been gone for way too long so those are the things that need to happen so that there can be some change in the community how can the community feel protected and go to the police for help if they feel that they're going to get one more victim of the police department so it

is not you know just one that's just one case but we see this happening all over the country that's why even though we're in los angeles we're going to anaheim to support our brothers and sisters there who are trying to organize themselves to defend themselves unfortunately from the police wrong when you read about these incidents in much of the mainstream media you read about people provoking police before they were shot you read that they were gang members that they were not cooperating but witnesses tell what you know when the witnesses do talk they tell a very different story they say well at least one of the victims might have been running he wasn't provoking anything i guess what i'm suggesting here is there seem to be some major discrepancies between what witnesses are saying and what police are telling some of the media. that this is it's always happened throughout history we see that when you know when someone gets killed or particularly a person of color you know the police says that they were either on or they were they felt threatened in some way but like you said the community is a very different story you know in the case of mentally as there was absolutely no

crime reported in the area it was simply a case of three young men who saw a police officer and given the relationship that we have with the police in our communities they felt fear so they ran away and now we know that there's all kinds of evidence that he was shot in the back of the head when he was running away from the police officers he thought he did not pose any kind of a threat so the officers but yet you still receive the bullet in the back of his head i mean that speaks to how much they care about the safety of our community and then afterwards when the people came out to protest they shot rubber bullets they say are non-lethal but if one of those rubber bullets would have hit a child in the head that child would have you know with a sick dog in our community they say it was a mistake but it was a mistake these dogs are extremely train well we're showing that video order to stop they won't we're showing that video right now while you're speaking run video of that dog that was accidentally released as police say that that attack that man we heard from the woman who had you know was holding her baby when those dogs were released they came at her first. the video aspect i think will help in the future

police can deny all they want or paint the picture that they want to paint but the fact is when you have stuff on camera the media are going to be forced to have to look into what actually happened here appreciate you weighing in with us ron i know you're always out there on the scene whatever seems to be happening there and you have a good perspective to give us a community organizer ron go chaz. so i had on r t you might not be able to put a price on freedom but there sure as heck is a rather large one on the us reconstruction efforts in iraq so what does all of our billion dollars spent in the country actually gotten that answer next. r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to u.s.

. cities. but in the loan itself you know there's a real headline with none of them or the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and for what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. . a lot of american power continues. things are. might actually be time revolution. and it turns out that a killer drink or starbucks or surprising him really here. well

folks we are in a political season and one of the main topics of discussion from our pundits from candidates always seems to be our financial woes and there's always this common perception that there's just a few things that are to blame. reason why we have the national debt at the level we have is because of spending and also the dramatic expansion of entitlement programs without paying form this is a budget busting health care bill that i think is going to bankrupt our country bottom line. we can't protect these entitlements and also the national defense we need to protect us in a dangerous world. and title men's health care education very rarely do we or people say defense spending needs to be cut and in fact most people are constantly saying we're more defense spending well here's something to think about the u.s.

inspector general for iraq reconstruction now says that taxpayers have been funding a two hundred million dollars program to train iraqi police that is not wanted or needed by those it's aim to help it's called the police development program it is actually the largest state department program in the world so it definitely begs the question what if we get for our money to help answer this i'm joined now by michael o'brien author of america's failure in iraq michael thanks for being on the saturday first question what did we get for our money in iraq well you know this is the one hundred eighty or two hundred million is just the tip of the iceberg i was part of the reconstruction and from zero six to seven for fourteen months so when i was over there and some of the news that's come out about this police program. billions have been spent on training the iraqi police and the iraqi army. and of course it's all the result of paul bremer's disbanding both organizations the entire iraqi military the iraqi national police so when it comes to the police

however which is part of the iraqi ministry of interior of there was when i was there there were. i was on the ministry defense side but the guys i work with were on the ministry of interior side training iraqi police and the fact is they had to start from scratch from from nothing because they had been disbanded so what have we gotten i mean the news that's coming out right now with the craziest thing it since it's insane be because we didn't even get the iraqi government permission to do this well they didn't even buy they didn't even know about it there was no buy in of the host government there was no buy in that there was no commitment it's just so crazy if you think about it i know you know when i joined a gym i had to fill out lots of paperwork. to sign my name on the dotted line that i would commit to that jim for at least a year that if i got hurt it would be my fault that there was there is no paperwork from anyone in the iraqi interior ministry government anything that says that they

were interested in this program that they wanted to be a part of it well the thing is. it's intuitive if they didn't know anything about it and they were involved in the decision and they didn't even want it even asked it was a one american idea so was most likely. the state department possibly d.o.d. but when i was over there d.o.d. was involved in training both the iraqi. national police as well as helping stand up the iraqi army now the state department is very very much involved again it was an american idea has to have been an american idea it's american money so somebody probably in the state department because i'm saying that because the state department is acting actively defending the program yeah we name names here assistant secretary of state carol pereira's told auditors investigators looking into this that the program was working she said that they got they were assured by principal deputy interior minister i've non allah saudi that iraq is committed to

the program so the authors actually talked to him and he actually called the program and this is a direct quote useless so where is this communication breakdown well it's the united states cannot say we wasted money of us officials cannot say we blew it we wasted money i probably should have done it somebody wanted that program could very well have been driven by a contractor who went to state and said well you know you need to spend more money and of course a lot that's another thing it's always about the money it could have been we've got money we need to blow you know if we don't spend it it'll be taken away from us we've all heard stories about that so it could be. of things but. bottom line is it was two hundred two hundred million dollars of u.s. money that was spent in the in the quiet didn't even know about it or ask for it and that's that's ridiculous of course nothing will happen nobody will be there

will be a slap on the wrist or anything like that it'll just be just another expenditure of u.s. dollars and life goes on let me kind of run this a little bit and this is where it gets a little bit tricky whether we like to let you know whether we like it or not whether we went in for the judgment reasons or not the fact is this country did it invade iraq and this country are has you know left iraq and i think there is a case to be made that it should leave that country with a trained police force that should leave that country you know with something to defend itself in the case of more fighting and i think that that case i think it's fair to say all those things so how do you do that when it costs so much money when you have a lot of people who frankly want the u.s. out i mean is there a way to even do that well it gets back to what i've said many many times regarding the iraqi national police the iraqi army security of iraq in general because paul

bremmer disbanded their own security infrastructure we have nothing we have nothing to work with the insurgency began the only way to replace that infrastructure that he disbanded was to replace it with our own we don't have that many troops we don't have a draft course you can't say that the word. so i know it's hindsight but everybody said when paul bremer did it that it was insane and it still is so what the problem is that either we send in i don't know several hundred thousand have a half a million soldiers with military policemen by the thousands to augment the iraqi national police to keep the country safe or pull out and it. blows up which is what is happening now and one of the things in that article that you quoted was where it was washington whoever washington is

washington says that al qaida in iraq is not a threat to the stability of the country over a hundred people died last monday in al qaeda in iraq suicide attacks so that simply is ludicrous and it's just probably going to be this way for a long long time and i think it's important to remind people that despite the fact that the majority of troops have left that country as you say there are plenty of contractors still there and it's also important to remind people that people are still dying there not just in that huge attack that we saw last week but actually more than seven hundred and one thousand people have died simply as part of the reconstruction effort we have the numbers a breakdown here three hundred eighteen americans two hundred sixty four of which were military fifty four civilians two hundred seventy one iraqi civilians one hundred eleven third country nationals and one thousand others it seems like a lot of people are still dying in this country that's no longer in a war well when i was over there i was at phoenix space which is the very northern

tip of the green zone the international zone there were pit photographs on the wall all over the walls of american advisors to the iraqi ministry of interior the iraqi national police who had been killed. many many active duty military u.s. military many retired many retired u.s. police officers that had gone over there to make some money. it was a very very dangerous job what is so crazy about this this program this police development program the p.d.p. that's the two hundred million that was when you know flushed down the toilet. it was specifically for training the iraqi police in preparation for the u.s. withdrawal what about all the training of the iraqi police since two thousand and three right what was that all about. this is just started within the last six months or a year and preparation for our with troll yet similar to the rest of it laid out

this timeline on you know me so it was just a quick two hundred million for some for something for some contractor to make some money doing some more training of the iraqi national police he had some contacts with the state department and got the contract award and all but if somebody looked into it but that was what the story is real quick michael because we're almost out of time but surely you thought this it's very unlikely that people will be how they accountable countless surveys and polls have been taken of american people who not only have no idea how much of our tax dollars actually go to the military they don't realize how much is wasted just really quick why don't they know. well fifty cents on the dollar is wasted by the us government period i mean you just take that to the bank fifty cents on the dollar of money wasted by. it's the military industrial complex we buy weapons systems that are not needed. when we spend

so much money on defense and i'm a former army officer you know i'm all for national defense but the key the operative word is defense. what do we spend that is directly related to the defense of this country the united states if you want to talk about waste look at the entire department of defense budget and figure out what the percentage of every dollar is that's related to rickly related to the defense of this country two cents on the door on the dollar three cents on the dollar i'm just throwing that out yeah but certainly the message out there is when you cut money from anything even from a wasteful program it's o.-r. troops are going to be put in harm's way now and i think that's the thing that people really need to be careful of in this country is they just take that as truth and they don't question anything else and we appreciate your insight on this because you certainly were there you were on the front lines you know how this all works michael o'brien author of america's failure in iraq thanks for everything. well certainly a whole lot of attention has been focused on the sequester ation the defense cuts

congress let's not forget was given ample opportunity to try to come up with an agreement on where else to make those cuts about as we know so far they haven't and they saw a bright bipartisan effort by lawmakers here in washington some major lack of action could result in tens of thousands of defense contractors losing their jobs and guess what folks today marks ninety nine days till the general election so we thought it would be good to take a look ahead at what we can expect on this matter both on a realistic level and a political one welner leon is a political science professor at howard university professor leon thanks for coming here all right so this legislation as we know it was passed with a majority of people both parties and yet i'm not a betting woman but if i was i would put my money on you know these cuts coming in these are going to be obama's job cuts well that's at least how the cuts are going to be portrayed right and i think it's important for everybody to understand is

that it was a bipartisan group it was republicans and democrats that voted on this. process and now we find ourselves at the eleventh hour and the senate is now asking the white house to explain exactly how they plan to spend this money oh how they plan to cut this money but i think really though the key is we don't even have to be at this point and particularly if. both sides can understand that not only do the bush bush era tax cuts need to end but also the payroll tax suspension needs to end in fact congressman bobby scott from hampton virginia just put out this press release that says the president's f y twenty thirteen budget proposes ending the bush era tax cuts for the wealthy among other savings the proposal would produce approximately one trillion dollars in deficit reduction enough to offset

the entire sequester my proposal is to let the bush era tax cuts and the two percent payroll tax cut expire as currently scheduled in the first year the additional revenue would immediately put towards putting that money towards job creation his point is. if they just allowed the tax cuts to expire the problem would be solved and why and now you have people but those are going to be physicians who are second class or the tax cuts are on the wealthiest americans these are the job creators how can you tax the people that are going to create jobs for those very people without jobs well in the answer to that question is very simply look at the end of the reagan administration because the ending the bush era tax cuts the whole idea is to take us back to the same tax levels of taint same tax rates that were being paid during the during the clinton administration and oh isn't it amazing that when president clinton left office they were talking about the peace dividend we had

a budget surplus what it was i don't even know what that is anymore but certainly when some of his proposals were first put out there under clinton a lot of people said oh my gosh this is going to disband the economy pete exactly are going to stop investing and you're right there was a surplus at the end let me just focus pacifically on this for a little longer this program if these workers these defense workers receive these pink slips they are scheduled to come four days before the election you're poly site professor talk a little bit about the timing of this i mean it's just a legal matter i think it has to be sixty days yes sixty days but four days before the general election and a lot of these cuts would come in virginia florida north carolina these are swings california california and however is not a swing great but still a huge defense contracting state right so talk let's talk about the politics of this and the timing and especially the battleground states of these could take place i mean could this particular thing actually completely change the shape of

the election. it very well could depending on how the the obama administration manages the narrative because if the obama administration takes the lead on this and continue. to explain to the american people this congressman bobby scott has done this isn't necessary that his twenty thirteen budget addresses this problem in addresses that now if the obama administration is able to make their case then. they they balance the playing field to a certain degree but if they continue to my opinion mismanage a lot of this discussion the way that they have mismanaged it up to this point then they could find themselves in a very very precarious situation because they're dealing not only with an economy that is not rebounding as fast as they would like it to they then. exacerbate

the situation with this more than one has to wonder whether or not john boehner was was really more clever than people gave him credit for in designing a circumstance that put us where we are today yet and let's rehash sort of for our viewers some of the things leading up to this and i could have the order wrong but i know when we talk about where to make these cuts in order to you know whatever it was the president obama wanted that time in order to get that he had to i think with the debt ceiling there were a couple things that happened there was a super committee that had to go through and recommend some major cuts yes the super committee worked long hard hours and of course very suggestion were not taken right there was this bill that was signed by both houses of congress cut almost holding themselves accountable saying you know if we can't come up with a better solution these major defense cuts are going to happen it seemed to me at least that that that they were trying to sort of give themselves kind of

a bar to. you know come up with a better suggestion and so far they haven't so i guess talk a little bit about why so many failures that they know what needs to be done and it's not happening well i think we need to go back a little further to the one nine hundred eighty s. in the in the reagan administration in this whole idea put forth by david stop. and his finance or his a budget director about starving the beast that by cutting taxes cutting taxes cutting taxes that they could then create a scenario where reducing the revenue to the government which is where the tax dollars go then gives them the platform to argue for cutting social programs which is what conservatives have been wanting to do since the great society of lyndon johnson not even going back to roosevelt's new deal programs so if you go back to the eighty's and start from that premise that this is that cutting social programs because look at what the report what the republicans are even proposing now what will offset the defense cuts or will shift the money from the defense cuts over to

wear to the domestic side entitled to that entitlement programs so this is a scheme that has been that was put in place thirty years ago was my question i mean this has been tried before aspects of what you're saying right now are one by a different name before they were called reaganomics yes from what i understand all go to economics by by george bush right right so did this work and if it didn't work why is this very similar proposal being go forth again i think to ask if it worked or didn't work you'd have to do you'd have to first ask what was the initial objective if the objective was to create the predicate or lay the groundwork for cutting social slash in tired of programs look at where we are right now look at what we're discussing as it relates to the ryan budget we're not talking about what to say we're talking about what to cut all right well really on professor at howard university appreciate you being on the show and i was going to sort of look at the politics of things and.