it's a grim milestone the u.s. has been fighting the war in afghanistan for eleven years now president obama tells us will soon be leaving the country but what's the legacy the u.s. will leave behind r t questions more. a new report raises questions about the future of the telecom industry here in america two chinese companies want to expand into the u.s. but a report by congress says these companies cannot be trusted to take a look at that report coming up. and here to stay president hugo chavez has one venezuela's tightly contested presidential election clinching turned party is on

the ground in venezuela with a look at the results and what it means for those living there. it is monday october eighth four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for zero in you're watching our t.v. . well this weekend the war in afghanistan turned eleven years old already america's longest war it's a war that continues to evolve as it continues to go on and shortly after the attacks of nine eleven invading afghanistan was seen as the best option to both retaliate and to defend the homeland but it soon became clear that it would neither be easy nor short to complete the mission there. two years ago president obama sent an additional thirty three thousand troops a surge to try to speed up and strengthen the war but today the surge troops have now left and more members on the u.s. military are dying by their own hands from suicide than the enemy but the amount of

green on blue or insider attacks also continues to rise over the weekend u.s. army sergeant michael turner who served three tours in afghanistan and one in iraq and is still an active duty soldier spoke out in opposition to the war i joined the armed forces when i was nineteen after i did a spell as a firefighter a fellow fraternity and i wanted to serve with my brothers i signed up with the army as a multimedia illustrator. in the units that i usually work with just means that you make propaganda for the u.s. army i've had three tours in afghanistan and one in iraq and i was in afghanistan when bin laden was killed you're kind of with each other like war is over like oh we're going home doing tours talk up the whole deal. it never happened and a lot of good men died a year i feel like we were betrayed by our government you know. given that we were

justified in the beginning everyone that we blame for nine eleven is either dead or in jail this war isn't justified there's no reason that our brothers and sisters should die in the sand. there's no reason that their children have to go. to bed at night terrified of the next drone strike or the next kick down door it's an awful thing that we're doing and we could be using that money on so much better things education or the environment. but so many people are getting rich i think they just don't i am an active duty sergeant in in my unit that i already described and so for speaking out against the u.s. government and the army. and you know deserving the army i'm probably looking at maybe like a year to two months for a felony charge i will be turning myself into the m.p. soon peacefully but not quietly. and today sergeant turner turned himself into authorities but his story represents a growing frustration both with those serving and with the american people who also

are sort of unsure of the mission and afghanistan tony shaffer with the center for advanced defense studies and joining me now tony is the author of operation dark heart and served as a lieutenant colonel in the u.s. army. eleven years later tony what's your read on the war in afghanistan what's been achieved. i'm very impressed with the start of knowledge of the real root issues which are revealing frankly. the majority the folks we went after using authorize use of military force the you on that have been killed or captured that should have been the big indicator that it was time to think about our strategy a parent back especially one of the what we've got been a lot and said what you've seen is what my friend jerry doyle calls combat to commerce where we've actually seen a full on use of military resources to go to vote create a democracy for the afghan people which frankly as we're seeing right now before we

step away a less ready the karzai government is just that you know and most importantly you're i think as you pointed out and this is something you can go to new york times website actually look at. we actually won this and zero two zero three that the change in policy which allowed us to start this counterinsurgency strategy is the root of the real problem and let me be very clear on this is not a bush or obama problem although i would say this administration is far worse if you look at the number of troops we put into afghanistan look at the number of acts of violence and death rots so we should have focused on what we want there to do to take take care of all kind to take out the terrorists not to create nation building and not to conduct ourselves such a way to try to stimulate the afghan people western style of living which frankly is hard to overcome two thousand years of culture not hold or trying to. i think it's a really good point and some of the reporting the really in-depth reporting that's been done in the last six or eight months about the people who have gone in not

sort of embedded with the troops not you know writing off press releases put out by the u.s. military branches people who have really gone to the frontlines have talked to members of the taliban they say every time more troops leave afghanistan more taliban will rise up and that what at this point tony can realistically be tackled and fixed in afghanistan well there's three things on that report first president obama created the roots of his own policy you're not looking at second third order effects of his policy first off the rapid expansion of the taleban military left it open or filtration according to ambassador ryan crocker twenty five percent of the afghan army and police are all of on surge or are adults and secondly never tell the enemy when you're leaving and how many troops you're going to be taking out and saying we're never told we've been in combat with them or so that's another mistake

was that if you're going to use the promise of maintaining establishing and maintaining an afghan subscripted force i recommend they do what we did during the cold war we would actually bring units old units out of latin america out of what i'm all under restraint of the united states make them a cohesive relevant fighting force and send them back in and that way as you see we actually print sir counterinsurgency and ask and latin america by the fact we actually fought it in a way that actually created good governance we have not done that. frankly what we have left nato could be. moving into germany moving into a third country training them up as you this trying to create a. region right now that military force. and even with that the chances are very limited it will be right tony i mean when you talk about what happened in latin america i think it's important to point out that not everybody sort of views what happened there countries like guatemala. a beautiful success story i think

there's still a lot of resentment there and i think. there's a lot of resentment of course in afghanistan and even with a country that we worked closely with for several years and i'm talking about pakistan. last year i know they sort of gave pakistan gave us a deadline they say you have to get your drones out of this country after that drone strike that killed people every time ever since the bin laden raid that was done by the u.s. without knowledge or help by pakistan that relationship has certainly been very tarnished i guess i want to get your take tony on your role that drones have played the certainly means it's brought pakistan into the war it's brought a whole lot of other factions. well like so much during this war we have found things would start a lot of projects for example one of the issues early on that the afghans were nice were what nice words on the face of it are not an issue that should have been

negotiated away is one technique but like so many things which work you become overly reliant on the same thing with drones drones are something that should be used sparingly they are not surgical weapon i just view everything that was said especially when john brennan came out two years ago and said we're not killing civilians it's inevitable you will kill civilians and the whole insanity of that comet told me. from then on if there was no serious effort by this in this race to get it right so what we've seen here is these things that this is ministrations as a political expediency to quote a book show progress which i think the long term consequences of which will come back and bite us and i've talked to pakistanis about this members of their media and frankly what they understand which we don't understand is that by killing innocent civilians we're destabilizing their thought as a separate government and creating the next generation of terrorists who will be a pool of pakistanis and that's why we have to be much more judicious in the use of

drones and frankly the way they've done it over use of them reading walter we cannot predict the consequences there are i think it's really interesting to something a lot of people aren't talking about is looking specifically what's going on with the people of afghanistan the ones who have not been killed the way in which their lives are changing and i'll point out to headlines from today one of them says a seven hundred kilograms so that's more than fifteen hundred pounds of opium with seized in afghanistan so clearly the opium trade is still alive and well afghanistan's had to produce about ninety percent of the world's opium opium which is of course the main ingredient in heroin but this is an interesting it turns out another drug is becoming a sort of economic lifeline for the afghan people this headline in the guardian which says more afghan families are turning to cannabis cultivation so tiny talk a little bit about this increase essentially drug farmers in afghanistan and what we can learn from some of these numbers. well first off this is something we

recognize as intelligence officers become a real issue later in the war back in two thousand and three and this was not addressed and there now you have a huge problem with that said. the afghan people the farmers can only really make a profit from these these elements we've never seriously considered a grain reform and actually crop replacement that's one of the things you see now so by the fact we've never paid attention to the economic underpinnings of this country we're somehow not surprised at the results of drugs becoming the main cash crop and yet and now cannabis becomes another issue frankly this again goes to the entire flawed strategy of trying to basically. simulate ourselves into the situation and not actually do the things we promised to do and now at the end we're work supplies why do the shooters not been well reported nato has actually been as well as the afghan government helping move these these opiates which is kind of insane the very people who says we stopping this will think that they dissipated and i think again that some things will come out more and more as we draw down

troops start shutting down and yes certainly some people who have served there have talked about having to have that good relationship with some of these opium farmers in order to be able to cross their land in order to be able to do some basic things in the country you sort of have to. work with them it's really interesting what's going on and as you said we're going to start hearing a lot more about some of these less talked about issues as this war continues tony shaffer with the center for advanced defense studies he's also the author of the pop operation dark heart. so i had on r t two the chinese telecoms are wanting to expand their business into the u.s. the companies offered to be investigated by the federal government and the details of that investigation are now in what the report says when we come back.

a new report released today raises questions that could shape the future of the telecommunications industry in the united states two companies from china that produce some of the top telecom equipment in the world they're trying to expand their business to america and they offered to be investigated well the results of those investigations basically say the companies are not to be trusted and should not be welcomed here it was laid out in the investigative report on the u.s. national security issues posed by chinese communicate telecommunications companies huawei and zte that was put together by the intelligence committee in the u.s. house of representatives at the center of the findings

a potential security threat posed by the chinese telecommunications companies with potential ties to the chinese government or military in particular to the extent these companies are influenced by the state or provide chinese intelligence services access to telecommunication networks the opportunity exists for further economic and foreign espionage by a foreign nation state already known to be a major perpetrator of cyber espionage we want to break down the findings in the report and also try to read between the lines. a little bit with jim carr senior director of strategy with free press a there are ten times i first about this report i just the nuts and bolts what's the most compelling evidence laid out in this report that chua way and would threaten national security well i think that the house intelligence committee looked at the the history. in particular the founder comes out of the people's liberation army there have been mentioned before

on your show there been increased concerns about cyber security threats not only coming from iran but from china china there's been instances of hacking into both u.s. government and u.s. business interests by chinese interests we believe and so while way is very aggressively trying to grow their business to into the u.s. and to sell equipment here and this is apparently raise some some i think legitimate concerns about about whether or not they're being very honest about this they're not very transparent as a company they're not publicly listed on markets in a way that would allow us to investigate some of their some of their. their findings and so so we're you know there are these concerns are real i haven't been in i haven't looked at the full report yet but it but it sounds legitimate. the target of a story that aired on sixty minutes last night i want to play just a couple snippets from and then we can talk about it in the telecommunications world once you get the camel's nose in the tent you can go anywhere and there

overriding concern is this that the chinese government good exploited walkways presence on u.s. networks to intercept high level communications gather intelligence wage cyber war and shut down or disrupt critical services in times of national emergency huawei is a business. in the business of doing business thirty two point four billion in revenues last year across one hundred fifty different markets seventy percent of our business outside of china while we is not going to jeopardize its commercial success for any government period now another spokesperson for awhile way in the sixty minutes story last night said that the media has been less than friendly to the company certainly based on the fact that it's from china there's going to be questions raised but i don't know the extent to which there is hard evidence that it would in fact you know spy on the american people. i don't i don't know that

there's any hard evidence of that in the report there are concerns about a lack of transparency and the military history of this company i think that there is a potential for this to have a blowback effect on the united states you look at american companies like cisco systems which is very invested in growing its business in china usually what happens when you have these kind of international controversies if the u.s. acts against a chinese company you could very well see the chinese government act against a u.s. company on its own turf yeah that's interesting also tim in that sixty minutes report it was reported the huawei did get a contract to rebuild sprint's new four g. wireless network and that is until the government stepped in and basically aspirins not to go through with the deal something not mentioned though is the relationship between companies like horizon like sprint with the u.s. government i mean do you think that this is one of the concerns that huawei would be more difficult to convince to play by certain rules well yeah it's

a good point you know their concern was said that while he's too closely linked to the chinese government but here we have u.s. telecommunications companies like eighteen d. and arise in that we're working with the u.s. government the national security administration while back to wiretap overseas phone calls without legal warrant at the time so i think when you whenever you have government and corporate interests colluding liked is it's not it's not only concern for national security but it's also a concern for users consumers who are privacy has often been been hacked into phone calls have been tapped so so we need to watch all sorts of telecommunications companies especially ones that get too close to to any government yeah it's almost one of those things where you don't want to adopt a misbehaving child one that won't follow the rules and you know do what all the other kids kind of you know do in terms of what what's expected last week to mike's tended to cyber security summit at the u.s. chamber of commerce here in d.c.

and the chairman of the house intelligence committee congressman ryan mike rogers who was in that sixty minutes piece last night he spoke so let me just play a little bit of what he said. we don't have a lot of time and what people don't realize is that we are in a war today in cyberspace it's happened in every single day and this is the biggest national security threat i can think of that we are not prepared to handle in this country today. so chairman rogers of course the author of says a bill that has not become law but as the chairman of the house intelligence committee this is a common theme china russia iran they are out to get us it's time to build up the arsenal and protect ourselves so talk a little bit about you mentioned this before cyber security as it relates to some of these foreign companies wanting to expand their businesses here well politics definitely comes into play here you see it in both the romney and obama campaign an

effort to get tough against china this could very well be an outgrowth of that but also of concern is the idea of the marketplace for cyber security when there are estimates that i've seen it but this is a multibillion dollar business so it's in the interest of lot of these companies that provide cyber security services to inflate the fear to to play up this idea that we're under strad of cyber warfare representative rogers this fear is very good it kind of fanning those flames because it helps businesses that sell cyber security systems that sell systems that will allow us to protect against these alleged attacks it helps them make money so we need to make sure that the threat is real because the downside is if we really heighten our cyber security system here it could infringe upon the basic right to communicate the basic civil rights of internet users so we need to put it all out on the table and make sure that the threat is real and that this isn't just a lot of political and economic posturing by special interests yeah you know

hallway already in latin america in africa and some parts of europe i'm just wondering tim if you think there's going to be a point where people in the u.s. say hey you know if it's better and faster and more efficient why can't we have a two well it's interesting to note that most computer equipment most telecommunications equipment is in fact made in china it may have a name like cisco on it just because huawei is a chinese company making a lot of the same footman. it raises these sorts of concerns but you creasy really china is a player in the technology space and their ability to create cheap manufactured products should pose a threat to business interests overseas business not so much a national security threat so that that does come into play in this issue yes so interesting it was noted sixty on sixty minutes last night this used to be a field dominated by companies here in the u.s. and now it's almost all foreign companies that have sort of taken over

a very interesting topic should be interesting to see what comes out of this report tim carr senior director of strategy with free press thanks for joining us thank you. now on to the final frontier after signing a one point six billion dollar contract to deliver cargo and food supplies to the international space station the space exploration technologies corporation better known as space x. succeeded in going to past going to the stars this past sunday the latest launch marks the first of twelve missions the company is set to perform in unison with nasa of course not all went according to plan despite initial reports of a smooth lunch it turns out one of the nine merlin engines that propelled the cargo capsule shut down one minute in one thousand seconds on a glass top want to shut down occurred when the engine lost pressure according to a statement from space x. one the other eight engines were unaffected the space x. defended the missed the spokesperson said falcon nine did exactly what it was

supposed designed to do like the saturn five which experienced engine loss on two flights falcon nine is designed to handle an engine out situation and still complete its mission. space x. founder ilan musk tried to defuse criticism further by saying that dragon was the only rocket that could have possibly continued its flight despite an engine shutdown the question is why the rocket had to prove it could survive such an issue to begin with despite the engine hick up the dragon is expected to approach the international space station in two days' time when the crew will unload just under nine hundred pounds worth of food and supplies and replace it with one thousand six hundred seventy three pounds of cargo for return to earth so will nasa have saved money for the taxpayers in this public private partnership we will of course keep you posted on that. election day in venezuela has come and gone and president hugo chavez has won once again president chavez took fifty four percent of the vote

compared to his opponent and recreate capri less who had forty five percent of the vote now in his victory speech chavez told supporters venezuela will quote never return to neil liberalism it will continue to transition to this democratic socialism of the twenty first century. want to loose it have been obvious from the last several days reporting from venezuela and she spoke to some residents there and gives us a firsthand look at their lives and what a fourth term for hugo chavez could mean. running water electricity and a real home having spent most of her life in venezuela slums these are luxuries that anna silva could only dream of before. the when i got this department i just couldn't believe it i thought my eyes were deceiving me i'm thankful to this government for helping people like me. she was able to move her family into this home thanks to a housing program established under president hugo chavez five it's one of the many projects that has earned him tremendous popular support among the poor but

alienated him from other voters the latter have turned out in droves to vote for him rekick them three miss a wealthy businessman and a free market advocate who is pushing for more private enterprise and investment critics fear that he would bring an end to venezuela's twenty first century socialism so what we're looking at is an ongoing effort by the old venezuelan ruling class to turn back the clock represents the past represents an attempt to move. away from a path that focuses attention on reducing inequality and reducing poverty. but whether chavez has addressed that in the best way remains a question dollars haven't helped bring down the prime rate one of the worst in the world on employment and a stack leading economy has turned many away from el commandante today even as well house corruption deficit we are some of the poorest people. childless has been accused of authoritarianism suppressing the courts and silencing critics in the

press. another burning issue in the country is the quality of employment among the poor the government does implement measures to support them but there are no jobs for those in the people. they receive government subsidies but there isn't enough investment both government and private to actually provide them with a well paid job instead of just giving financial aid. it for the long neglected residents of venezuela slums free services may just trump over freedom this is venezuela's body the pitot of the largest slum in all of latin america for the thousands of venezuelans who live here had no access to any sort of medical care that is until i saw the social program to open clinics like this one here venezuelans get access. doctor checkups medical services free medicine all for free here they helped me along and this committee has helped a lot of people and a lot of children here thank you to chavez has done

a lot for us those missions are just incredible. these are illegal settlements the shacks and buildings are poorly built and for decades infrastructure was virtually nonexistent most are sprawled across the steep hills surrounding caracas but the people living up in those longs are barrios there used to be no way to get down to the city to find work or go to school simply walking down those hills you think about an hour in the house used to be no public transportation until present to about child has built these cable cars a literal lifeline for venezuela's poor life in the slums may have improved but the country still has a long way to go voters have grown frustrated with declining wages and scarce job prospects and reversing these trends in the next six years won't be easy. venezuela all right everyone that's going to do it for us for now but for more on the stories we cover today go to youtube dot com slash r t america there's also a bunch of stories that we didn't cover but our fearless web team did you can find

those on our team dot com slash usa and you should also follow me on twitter if you're not already my twitter handle is at christine. emission and free cretaceous and free transport charges free. range mincer free feel free. to tide free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects and free media and on to r.t. dot com you. more

news today violence is once again flared up the full these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are old a clue.