coming up this hour on r t we've heard presidential candidates talk about everything from abortion to the economy but there is something missing from all the political promises like a plan for the war in afghanistan more than ten years and two thousand u.s. military deaths later has this become the forgotten war. plus several inmates of the one time obey detention center in cuba are finally getting their day in court but talks of torture to extract confessions those are strictly off limits for defense attorneys are to take a look at the case of trial and error. and it's a game of hide and seek for the cia as the public looks for answers on so-called that black sides officials find a new way to continue with their torture tactics we'll tell you how they're doing.

it's wednesday august twenty second five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching r.t. let's begin this hour with a look at a subject you're not hearing about on the mainstream media we're going to talk about the war in afghanistan now the wars in both iraq and afghanistan were central to discussions this time four years ago as candidate barack obama and candidate john mccain laid out in full detail their plans for ramping up and then winding down the wars there are still a few months left but this is a topic neither candidate this time around seems to want to touch shortly after coming into office president obama announced a surge of thirty thousand troops in afghanistan and that surge was to be followed by this plan we will pursue the following objectives within afghanistan we must deny al qaeda a safe haven we must reverse the taliban's momentum and deny the ability to overthrow the government. and we must strengthen the capacity of afghanistan's security forces and government so that they can take the lead responsibility for

afghanistan's future so when will that future be upon us by the time voters have the voting booth in november the war will be in its twelfth year i want to talk more about this with a man who was actually taken captive by the taliban for forty five days for more i'm joined by jerry van dyke a journalist and author of the book captive my time as a prisoner of the taliban hey there jerry thank you so much for being on the show tell me first a little bit about this experience this forty five days with the taliban and what your lessons have to offer us as a country as we look to the next chapter in afghanistan my experience as a prisoner of the taliban and i was the first american journalist captured by the taliban was the second captured in pakistan the first one was daniel pearl who was slaughtered by al qaeda i was captured by the taliban the difference between al kut in the taliban and my experience is was that i was

a guest as much as i was a prisoner they made a very clear point that while i was definitely a prisoner that they would treat me according to the laws of the country the laws of their tribe the laws of their people the questions that was called question while the questions of the largest ethnic group enough to understand and in western pakistan the taliban are pushed ins nato the united states are in essence at war against the pashtuns not against other ethnic groups in afghanistan what i learned was that they will never give in. that they're fighting the same war that their fathers as they put it their grandfathers fought the mujahedeen against the soviet union i was a journalist enough going to stand during the one nine hundred eighty s. with the mujahideen and in my experience there is no difference between the two they use the same type of weapons they have the same very deep religious convictions they are not afraid to die they will fight to the very end and one reason i think nato united states are having such

a difficult time as the soviet union had a difficult time is because they are not afraid to die for a cause which they believe we are both seen nato the united states as the soviet union in the one nine hundred eighty s. as infidel invaders outsiders non non muslims come to impose upon them what they call a western religion that is democracy therefore i don't think that today in my experience will show that based upon my own experiences that nato in the united states are fighting we have no about. the surge is drawing down there with the thirty thousand to which you alluded earlier that president obama said in will be draw down at the end of next of the end of september they've got seventy thousand are fighting with you consider all the afghan security forces are fighting about according the pentagon twenty thousand taliban and the war continues yeah absolutely and you really have a unique perspective because of this time that you spend with the mujahideen back

in the one nine hundred eighty s. and i was going to ask you and you sort of answered it that things are very similar today as they were thirty years ago but it seems to me that either the military generals those leading this effort those sort of designing the strategy that they either don't understand that or they're not really conveying that to the american people so i guess i want to ask you jerry i mean what would you add to the to the discussion here when it comes to what the american public needs to know about afghanistan as a region. i think that the united states in that you made a very good point at the start of your question there and that is i don't feel that the bush administration or the obama administration has been straight with the american public as to exactly why we are fighting in afghanistan what led to this war in afghanistan and that goes back to the one nine hundred eighty s. when or even in the one nine hundred seventy s. before the soviet union invaded in according to secretary defense former secretary

of defense robert gates in his book from the shadows as well as president jimmy carter's national security adviser zbigniew brzezinski who said in an interview with nobel observatory a french magazine in one thousand nine hundred eight we drew this we wanted to draw the soviet union into afghanistan in the one nine hundred eighty s. in order to pay it back cord into them for what it did to us in vietnam so what happened was this is the same thing today on a different level it became a proxy war in which the united states used with pakistan its ally the mujahideen to fight against the soviet union and the people who suffered most far and away were the afghans today we have another form of a proxy war which has evolved into a proxy war in my view between the united states and its allies against pakistan pakistan very clearly is backing the taliban that's one thing that i learned as a prisoner they said not a shot my jailer said while i was very much afraid he would do have there were

times when we had conversations and they never laid a hand on me he said. shots would be fired in afghanistan without pakistan's permission he has a porsche toon is a member of the tell a bit acknowledged that the role of pakistan was crucial and i think that that is the real issue here let me stop you larry i can do that that's a really really interesting that you brought that up and i think something that a whole lot of people don't know in the clip i showed at the beginning from president obama that was from two thousand and nine and he really laid out sort of a little more specifically the plan for afghanistan and one of the things he said was that pakistan and the united states were in this together that the success quote unquote success depended very largely on this relationship that was two thousand and nine as we know things have changed immensely between the u.s. and pakistan that relationship has taken some pretty bad turns between drone strikes in pakistan between you know the osama bin laden assassination in pakistan

and you know the list goes on the friendship is at best i can say a little scarred right now between the two countries so you're saying that in your time with the taliban that they essentially said they that those two countries were the ones with the good friendship. so you touched on a very very important point here and that is yes president obama did say that in two thousand and nine and the united states has had a longstanding and very close relationship with pakistan with the degree of the pakistani army almost since its inception but particularly in the one nine hundred fifty s. when it made in alliance to go against then the the spread of communism and i don't think that alliance really has changed yes you what you said is correct that the this friendship this the two allies are certainly at one another's throats to a degree now and it's been frayed to a great degree now however we don't know what is going on behind the scenes and

it's my firm belief that the united states and its allies will not be able to extricate itself from pakistan from afghanistan with an agreement from pakistan and i think that the negotiations that are going on or that have gone on are going to have to go on again cannot take place with out the back in pakistan prime example that the united states now has cornered will go back to what general former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admiral michael mullen said just before he retired when he said that the hakani network led by a man of with whom i lived in the one nine hundred eighty s. conny the most lethal the most powerful the most brutal the most effective anti american taliban group he said is an arm of the i.s.i. which is military intelligence agency of pakistan today the united states is yet to declare conny network a terrorist organization even though leaders of congress have asked the president

to do this why not most probably in my view is because we're trying to secretly negotiate our way out of afghanistan with the economy network we cannot do that unless we work we get permission from our work closely with if you want to base this upon and i believe it with the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff michael mullen said pakistan so this there is a very close tie here and what you. he said at the outset here is is true and what president obama said in two thousand and nine is also true one what he said is we must work closely with pakistan and what you said the relationship is frayed jerry gave the excellent reasons but deep down underneath behind the scenes we've got to work together to get out of there well let me ask you a question though does it matter if we leave yesterday if we leave in a year from now if we leave in five years from now in terms of how we're going to leave that country although the reading that i've done from journalists who spent a considerable amount of time in the country say these different factions these

different tribes they're just waiting and while they wait their training. it doesn't matter when really no no but i do think that they will never give in and i want to emphasize that that was the one nine hundred eighty s. when the soviets were there and the united states was backing the mujahideen or today now that we're fighting those whose sons whose fathers we backed then they will not give in either many people feel that if the u.s. and nato draw down that the taliban will have fewer people to fight there's no infidel inviting invaders on on the ground however i don't think anybody believes that the united states is going to pull out and in this war in two thousand and fourteen the pentagon d.o.d. does not want to lose this war no army wants to lose this war and right now the united states is clearly not winning this war because the taliban and its backers as we've all seen in the last few weeks with these terrible incidents of. afghans

killing the very men that are training them and what president obama said in one of the third part of his speech that you showed here was that we want to create a security system an army a system that can take the place of us and that we can therefore leave afghanistan right now it's not clear that this army that we can't even guarantee is on our side one hundred percent can stand up to the taliban but most importantly the taliban's backers the mage asa system those who keep coming across the border all these people are still very much there and i don't think that you're going to see a clear into that until such time as the united states and its allies have left afghanistan but can we leave afghanistan if the other point that the president made is that al qaeda did this does not return to afghanistan and i certainly can't guarantee sitting right here now yes certainly you say the u.s. doesn't want to leave until they know that they won't lose i think we could talk

for hours about what the definition of winning and losing in afghanistan would mean but they were out of time fascinating discussion there with author and journalist jerry van dyke thanks so much. one other major campaign issue four years ago at least for barack obama was the subject of torture and the fate of guantanamo bay today though the prison is still open pretrial hearings for five notorious inmates those accused of helping plan the september eleventh attacks they were supposed to begin today they've actually been postponed until further notice but whenever the print those proceedings do take place attorneys for the inmates say they've been banned from bringing up the subject of torture in court they also claim a number of other legal restrictions are stopping them from building any sort of proper defense in these cases which by the way could result in the death penalty are to correspond a marine important iowa takes a closer look. as the saying goes everyone remembers their first bomb tommo will be

closed no later than one year from now and us president barack obama's first executive order delivered on a promise cemented over the years as president i will close guantanamo reject the military commissions act and it here to the geneva conventions i've said repeatedly that america doesn't torture and i'm going to make sure that we don't torture nearly four years after america's change took office one hundred sixty eight detainees are still being held at guantanamo awaiting their day in court before a military commission but even then the obama administration will not allow them to testify about the alleged torture and harsh interrogation techniques some claim to have suffered according to the government there is no scope. to the advocates to defend its account of his torture in the course of treatment the government's justification for that is that disclosing that information in court

could be damaging to u.s. national security interests at a pretrial hearing at guantanamo bay the defense attorneys will challenge u.s. secrecy groups and a litany of other restrictions that experts say undermined the right of detainees to receive a fair trial and defense counsel may want to communicate or single letter you know provide the current updates on news and information to inform them of certain things that that may apply to their case and every one of those pieces of correspondence is then run through a vetting system where the government is reviewing all of that to determine whether or not it's proper material the confidences are being contaminated directly by the u.s. government over the years the u.s. military has gone as far as dosing detainees with high levels of psychotropic drugs . according to reports released by the pentagon good most prisoners were forced to

take mind altering drugs often against their will before being interrogated a story first broken by truth out's lead investigative reporter jason leopold what the inspector general said was is that detainees were interrogated while they were on drugs that is known to produce or will end up producing unreliable information so then you have the government going into the d.c. circuit ok and arguing that all of the detainees statements are true critics accuse obama of following in the footsteps of his predecessor george w. bush by continuing a system that revolves around censoring defendants in the name of national security this is not a legitimate process how do you prosecute someone cheney years after the crime when you had full control of their body and the evidence for then an entire period of

time nearly eleven years following the september eleventh attacks the us military commission at guantanamo bay is set to hear the first set of arguments in preparation for the trial of five suspects the us president meanwhile is campaigning for his second term apparently forgetting about the monumental promise he made when he began his first tour in a port iowa artsy new york. time now to check in with our web team and see what they're working on r.t. repartees there andrew blake is in the news room to tell us more i know andrew one of the big stories that we've been following for the last really couple weeks here is about trap wire anything new for us yeah well if you've been watching us online on the web or on television in the last two weeks you'll know that we're really sticking with this trap wire story we first blew the lid off of it two weeks ago today actually and two weeks ago tomorrow what we know about trap lawyers this is a massive global surveillance intelligence infrastructure that is. there's so much

involved that we can only have time to get through it all now but we do know it's creepy creepy creepy surveillance system what we found out just this week now is that trip wire is linked to something that perhaps is even a little creepy or so we have this global surveillance system that uses facial recognition software that was exposed through these strafford e-mails hacked by anonymous published by we and that's where we started digging around a few weeks back but now we see that trip wire was owned by a company called kubrick corp at least there's papers that say as much because denying it every chance they get but we have these documents that say ok we'll cubicle on the strap way or another thing those cubic runs another company at least according to the company called and trusted and what we've discovered is that and trip it has been toting around a whole other program that was used to allegedly spy so-called anarchists and if they're looking for anarchists to disrupt things in america you know where they're looking. where they're looking at occupy wall street and this company is saying

that protesters involved with occupy oakland occupy d.c. occupy wall street and even p.b.s. and citizen of radio the these. political groups and broadcasting if there's the ations what they've been doing is that there is social networks online whether or not they even realize it or being they're distributing messages through these you know evil evil anarchists who are then propagating these evil messages of overthrowing the government to occupy cat and said it turns out that this same company is run by the company that is overseeing trap wire which is also the same company that was running an online anonymity masking program so as we kind of dig deeper into trap lawyer and all of its affiliated companies we're finding out a lot of stuff about them but at the same time these affiliated companies are trying so so so hard to distance themselves from it but the more research we do the more we think that this paper trail kind of points to. putting the right people in

the right place with the crazy web they we and are we have about twenty seconds left anything else we should keep our eyes out for you know i wrote something earlier today actually if you're flying any time this week keep in mind a man who was trying to go from buffalo new york to phoenix arizona i believe over the weekend was a plane and had to kind of rearrange his whole weekend because he was wearing an anti t.s.a. shirt so just dressed responsibly ok all right good advice i know i will be heading to the republican national convention in tampa over the weekend i'll keep that in mind i do like your black flag peter and your very fashionable. ryan right r.t. web producer andrew black with a preview of what's trending today it's gross. switching gears now there's an armada of secret prisons around the world and as it turns out many of them are run and or funded by the united states now over the last few years president obama has closed many of the cia's so-called black sites where methods like waterboarding and

wall slamming were commonplace but it turns out there are ways of getting around the perception of torture and those ways are still going on today let's bring in jason ditson news editor at antiwar dot com jason let's first talk about something called extraordinary rendition where suspected terrorists are transferred to countries known to employ harsh interrogation techniques from your research now now and lately how common is this a well the scary thing is it's completely unclear how common this is it's been happening of course for the past decade since early in the bush administration and we know it's still going on because even when the obama administration promised to stop what some of the more serious excesses of torture they did say that the extraordinary renditions would continue but we really don't know the full extent of it and it's possible we never well it's it's certainly

bigger than any of us any of us know i know there's been some reporting though not much on the differences between f.b.i. tactics with prisoners and tactics used by the cia i know the f.b.i. in a lot of cases is known for using a little bit more empathetic nonphysical techniques the cia known for using things like waterboarding talk a little bit about these different approaches and what you've seen in terms of their success rates. well certainly the f.b.i. is dealing more with american citizens whereas the cia is dealing with people in some cases just kidnapped off the streets of some random country so there's a considerably larger risk of the f.b.i. getting sued for torturing people also i think i think it's a practical matter and that and i don't whims of getting information right and that to torture simply doesn't work it doesn't produce reliable information so when the

cia is doing this they can get confessions for whatever they want to get confessions out of but whether they're reliable confessions or if they're just random confessions to stop the torture who is to say i know that even after grade that was one of the first inferences that the american public really saw this was going on but even after those photos were published back in two thousand and four there was a poll that was that went out and still thirty five percent of americans polled said they felt torture it was acceptable why do you think that is. well it's a terrifying statistic and depending on how you ask that question i'm sure you could you could still get a pretty high number today i think. for one thing the american people have been terrified into believing that there are these constant enormous threats that simply don't exist and that this is the only way to prevent them and some of it is

also the fact that there haven't been major terrorist attacks in the last few years and they're taking that and saying well see this must be working. absolutely and there are some out there who say you know the u.s. is using torture a whole lot less now because they're simply instead using the tactic of assassination i guess you could say of course we saw that with us on the line we see it with the drone strikes that go on and intelligence goes back to the government that suspected terrorists or at a certain location instead of countering then sending in troops on the ground there simply bombed it or you know a drone as that sent in talk a little bit about this change and you know kind of what you found especially in your coverage of this oh absolutely and in pakistan alone we've seen well over two thousand people killed by drone strikes since president obama took office we've got the names of maybe forty people fifty people and the rest are just

anonymous suspects that we have no idea who they are what they did why they were targeted for assassination at all and. that's it's a terrifying thing but it also solves for the cia this problem of. all the people that they arrested that simply didn't do it i mean people that they brought to guantanamo bay that a couple years later they had to admit we're just innocent people that had been kidnapped by some. militia and turned over to them for a reward as a suppose a taliban they get tortured they're eventually found innocent and you don't have that problem if you just assassinating people randomly. there's no oversight to this and there's. in most cases no witness because they blow everybody up at the site. talk talk a little bit about. i know they are paper has really covered this

a lot when we talk about these black sites and we talk about these secret prisons where are they. well a lot of them we don't know where they are there was there was one in northern poland we know about which was on the grounds of a polish intelligence syllabi and the at the time polish government had approved of the current polish government suggested getting it to try to find out who approved it because of course it's a violation of both polish law and european union law as well as international law to have allowed this facility in the first place. we certainly heard some talk that there's a site at diego garcia. past that we were sure there are other sites but where they are we just don't know. to what extent that has this changed i mean a lot of people think of torture as abu ghraib or think of it as you know the post

nine eleven terrorist attack for the purpose of trying to get information from suspected terrorists really days and it seems to me this has been going on for decades absolutely it's been a problem since long before nine eleven of the government. using these questionable and in some cases not so questionable and just downright reprehensible tactics to. coerced confessions out of detainees it got a lot worse after nine eleven and it continues to this day and it's seen its own momentum and the determination to keep as much of it is possible a secret i imagine it's probably going to continue for quite some time. longer yeah that's what i was going to ask you we know so little and there have been a few reporters who have really kind of gotten on the ground jeremy scahill for the nation of course one of the most well known ones but we know so little about where

they are that these sites even exist what happens at them do you think that once news does start to get out that these exist that people are going to be outraged and call for an end to this or i mean how do you see this playing out and that's certainly the hope but historically at least in recent history it hasn't hasn't panned out when we find out about these things there's a week or two of scandal they promise that they've stopped at that site of course you close down the black site once it's discovered that you just move all those facilities someplace else and it's pretty much business as usual afterwards god only knows where and god only knows how many yeah i think i think you highlight an important point when we talk about these black sites which is they're black for a reason we really know so little about what goes on there but it's important to

bring it up and sort of talk about some of the things around in this case and it's news editor at antiwar dot com thanks so much for being on the show today thank you for having me well for us here that's going to do it but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and you can check out our website as well as enter blake mentioned r t dot com slash usa and you can find me on twitter at christine prison. you. think you. through above. the brewing.