bowl of the river of the. arben in washington d.c. here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture tonight is round three and a debate showdown between president obama and mitt romney and if the pattern holds mr romney will be telling a whole lot whole days so what you really know about america's most pressing foreign policy issues heading into this final debate also last week new jersey became the ninth state to sign a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to get rid of citizens united which more states considering similar resolutions on election day where is the fight to overthrow the

corporatocracy stand today and many of the republican voter suppression efforts across the country have been stopped or temporarily blocked for the election but will international observers in the u.n. find that republicans are still unfairly preventing americans from voting come november sixth. you need to know the president barack obama and mitt romney square off tonight in a pivotal pivotal third and final debate in florida the focus of that debate will be foreign policy meaning on the table are the recent attacks in benghazi nuclear capabilities of iran of the sanctions against them withdrawal of u.s. troops in afghanistan and the implications of the arab spring among other things in the first debate mitt romney managed to tell twenty seven lies and half truths in the second debate he broke that record with thirty one lies and half truths so this

third debate is going to be anything like the first two. keeping separate fact from fiction right now will be a challenge and getting down to the real foreign policy issues is going to be a challenge as well joining us now to help do just that. dr ivan eland senior fellow at the independent institute and author of the book the empire has no clothes u.s. foreign policy exposed ari ratner senior fellow with the truman project truman national security project and joining us from our new york studios is you like clifton a reporter with american independent news network thank you all for joining us tonight on let me let me start out on libya for ari congressman peter king today. obama may have doctored the libyan documents this as the republican party totally jumped the shark well i think it's frankly an insulting insinuation i worked at the state department on our policy in libya and on our policy in the arab spring in general and no one is doctoring reports this is a very difficult situation very difficult situation for america and for libya. and

that this is being doctor for political purposes it's actually kind of funny considering that's the republican side that's been doctoring it for political purposes it's also not the republican tradition ronald reagan did not speak during the entire presidential campaign when he was running against jimmy carter about the iranian hostage situation except to support the president and now wants did he did he do the kind of thing that the mitt romney did you know from day one i just. seems remarkable i'm curious ari your thoughts on the movie this and do we do we yet know who paid for this thing the movie that that sort of similar ahmed movie the start of the demonstrations and this is a very difficult thing it's obviously if you see it it's a very low budget film if you even want to call it a film so it's unclear who exactly was responsible for the making of that film but but nevertheless whoever made it responsibility for the actions that happened in cairo and around the released that belonged to the perpetrators not to the people

who make the film but just to reiterate your point we have a long tradition in this country of foreign policy stopping at the water's edge and that tradition has been eroded by the romney campaign over the last several months i've been curious your thoughts on iran these propose. to add two trillion dollars to the national defense budget that's already larger than that of virtually every other nation on earth combined well it's preposterous i mean his plan doesn't add up his fiscal plan and the reason for that is the candidates often do that when they're running because they can they know they had they can be big on the details and i think it's a real bank buster and we have huge deficits over a trillion dollars and i think mitt romney would be better served if you would acknowledge that and say listen the pentagon has to be as efficient as in any other agency and the pentagon is the only agency in the federal government that can't pass an audit and aren't thing they have got into

a trillion dollars two trillion dollars they don't know where i went and that you know even if you're for national security for you know spending more money on national security which is not the same. any person whether you're republican democrat independent green libertarian you shouldn't throw money away if you don't know where it's going nobody would want to do that and yet the pentagon gets away with it and the pentagon is not the only department that's doing that but at least the state department in the homeland security department can partially pass an article the pentagon is the only agency they can't pass one at all and historically we've seen that after after a war and this spending goes down and and it seems like now everybody's afraid to say anything about reducing defense spending well the real problem is we're spending it way higher than cold war levels and in the cold war we had a legitimate threat with the soviet union with many nuclear weapons and heavy ground forces in europe and that sort of thing now we're fighting a bunch of terrorists and it's very cheap to fight terrorists and you have to put

out an effort to do it but you need special forces drones with very cheap compared to everything else so we don't need to spend as much as we did during the cold war it were vastly outspending that when did when did it become. let me let me back this up a little bit my dad my dad was the latter part of world war two i mean he he he joined the army just as the war ended and he always referred to democrats as the warriors as the as the hawks he was a republican his whole life and he would dismissively refer to a democrat there they started world war one they started world war two. when did it become that the democrats were the doves was that the mcgovern campaign you know they interviewed i don't know why of course the democrats you can argue that they has collated that word in it for years the republicans would criticize the democrats as being the war party they can't do that anymore because they you know george bush and iraq got sort of in the first bush iraq again and nixon of course

didn't get us out of vietnam so i think over time and of course reagan was a tough guy even though he ran from lebanon and some lebanon and he wanted to spend money on star wars and so he spent a lot of money but whether he was as much or as a claim probably not but i think romney would have a real opportunity as a businessman to come in and say hey how about some efficiency here you know but he hasn't done that and i think you know as a republican really republicans are the only ones that can cut the defense budget because democrats have been historically scared to do that because they'll be labeled as weak but i think also but since i don't know no republican has cut the defense right right if they haven't spent obama may have an opportunity after the election if he wins that since he got the then he's got a fairly good security record in democratic terms and so he might be able to do it too but usually it's republicans that he's not going to win the debate tonight talking about the defense budget you know he's not but i'm saying when he gets into

office if he wins. let me bring this around to the u.s. israel and israel palestinian situation. particularly the united states and israel obama and netanyahu. who the relationship is described as frigid by some of the press and yet at the same time obama brags about how often he talks with. on the other hand there are stories about netanyahu being old college buddies or or really business partners with with mitt romney you know what's the situation there one of the one of the dynamics that are at work the interpersonal dynamics that are well and i think the narrative there on both in terms of his relationship with obama and with romney are a bit tilted why that is i'm not sure if we can if we can so easily say but i mean we have senior members of net now whose government who have who have as much as literally said that this administration has done more for israel's defense and

security than for any administration before it says yes a good brock said that so i mean so so so there is there are some dueling narratives here and i think sometimes critics of the president in the states like to promote the message that there is you know this frigid relationship between obama and netanyahu government when perhaps that's not quite so clearly the case on the flip side this notion that romney and netanyahu were old chums from from harvard i think has also been sort of some number of journalists have looked into this and it seems that that might be partially a bit of a constructed narrative coming out of the romney camp perhaps to try to make their candidate seem very close to netanyahu after it was so clear that sheldon adelson was supportive of newt gingrich earlier so they were trying to put a very pro israel pro netanyahu face and message to mitt romney so i think that there is a that there is some sort of divergence from the truth there in terms of the narratives with both of them now i think tonight what we see are both of them

trying to make the case to florida voters specifically florida voters because of their twenty nine electoral votes and the high jewish american population in florida that both of them have as they would say no daylight between themselves and . who's government is that i think that i'm sorry. i was going to say that i think that when you look at polling however you see that jewish americans actually vote the way that most americans vote sure israel is important to them but it's not the first second or third item that they are voting on when they cast their ballots they vote on economic issues they vote on social issues they vote on the things that all americans vote on so i think the importance of israel in the election might be a little overstated and is it really the very best thing for israel for the united states to simply be a rubber stamp and and a large pile of cash isn't isn't there an argument to be made that as jimmy carter when he was president he won the nobel peace prize he was not going heads together basically on both sides i mean absolutely and there's plenty of israelis who would

say as much in terms of getting their government to behave in ways that they would like to see occur that the united states with their policy sometimes of there being no daylight between themselves and the government of israel has at times worked against the interests of israel's long term security as well as the united states long term interests in the region it's the interest of both countries to come to a resolution to the ongoing israeli palestinian conflict it's in the interest of both parties to resolve the settlements which both parties have pretty much said will have to be resolved at some point or another so i mean it's really the devil's in the details here but i think both sides realize what are the major big ticket items that need to be resolved how we go about doing that i think is something that we will not actually see very clear answers from either obama or mitt romney tonight yeah because nuances political suicide in a debate exactly to get to that nuance though what do you think needs to be done to help resolve the israeli palestinian situation that could be done by the united

states. i think that when you talk to people who about about who are experts on the negotiations and the peace process a very important message comes across which is that in terms of pursuing a two state solution we have tried to negotiate for decades now and it's. simply has not produced the results that any of the parties have said that they are seeking to get out of it i think it's a time to for them that states and for regional allies for a number of our arab allies in the region to to actually come together and show some leadership to lay out the ground the groundwork for what exactly a peace process would look like everyone knows what that what what the major items are in it it's a matter of the negotiated land swaps it's a matter of the security agreements and this is something that i think that both the united states and as i say allies in the region could really be helpful with were we all to show some leadership alternately it's a matter of somebody showing up and saying damn it we're going to do something here that seems. ari clifton or you i will be right back with more on this panel discussion for.

we'll do the. science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered. with northcoast terrorists the. hostages blunders into their lives and after the tragedy. still gives try to cross over the past. because their future.

i've. had. back to our foreign policy panel on the panel tonight dr ivan eland senior

fellow at the independent is. a senior fellow at the truman national security project and joined us from our new york studios eli clifton reporter with the american independent news network good let's get back to it. drones are let me start with you but just anybody feel free to jump in here is it a is it really advancing the interests of the united states to be dropping bombs on people in countries that we have not declared war against well let me say this to defend the american people the president has gone after numerous terrorists you see osama bin laden first and foremost but in yemen and other places around the world he's shown that he won't pakistan has shown he won't hesitate to go after. those who could potentially harm our troops our interests our allies but that's not the whole of our foreign policy or the predominant thrust of our foreign policy the single most important point is what happens here at home is the most important factor in america's strength around the world what happens with our economy with our education. started selling

a stump speech i mean it's true so we've got drones over the over the air in the united states to. mean they're not they're not really raises real questions the drones and i think. it has gone whole hog with the bush started and i think it was a mistake but you know by partisan i mean yes right exactly but i think we have to be careful with this because even counterinsurgency experts military guys will tell you you can't kill your way out of an insurgency and that's what we've got and that's what we're going to try to do to us in seven hundred seventy six right and it doesn't work and then the war is very effective and so is terrorism in certain respects although terrorism has less success over time but i think what we really need to do is we see the word al-qaeda and we think oh these are the people who attacked us on nine eleven a lot of these groups are trying to claim the label but the people the people that hit us in libya local group. the people of the in the margaret north of there.

well in that same area same thing so i think we need to divide our enemies you know for years and during the cold war a communist was a communist then we discovered my gosh the chinese communists hate the soviet communists and richard nixon was very effective in driving a wedge for those and i think we've got to do the same thing with these things there's a there's there's less radical islamists and then there's islamic terrorists and those are the when visiting us and those where we've got to that's what we've got to focus on i think with the drone something that's very important to keep in mind is that yes there are clearly benefits to using them and there are ways that they are used that are effective clearly they are useful tool intelligence gathering they are to some degree or another useful tool in projecting a american power but the one thing that we're only starting to realise now is that costs are incurred in our usage of them which we only start to feel down the line in that one of those is the ways in that it is according to numerous reports now that have come out saying that you know this is

a radicalizing tool for for al-qaeda this is something that can serve as propaganda against us and i think we're only started to come to terms with that now and that's something we need to look at very carefully it's not an all it's not a fix it tool for everything and it's something that comes with very well to go in this war on security in many ways absolutely but this kind of a rash or a rational analysis of it i don't think is going to happen in the debates. as we shoot first and then do this analysis later what we need to do is do the analysis first before we start and i think that's what we're trying to do in syria but but the republican side is pushing us one party the other always pushes the other party to be more macho and sometimes we've got to think before we started. i think to be fair we have to say u.s. drones in a number of places that's not the thrust of our foreign policy even in the middle you know as well as all of the number of things go to school go to a larger issue here you know iran to both the united. intelligence services and

israeli intelligence services publicly on the record say there is absolutely no evidence that iran is producing weapons grade material nuclear material no no evidence that they are in the process of doing it no evidence that they've even made the decision to do it and should they it will be a year down the road and it would be something that we would be able to detect why are we all hysterical about this does anybody have it we want to jump in on this well i think it's basically because the rhetoric is gone and there's there's no distinction between a nuclear weapons capability and actual nuclear weapons we've heard that well it's about a year distinction between right right right but and there's no distinction in the debate that oh yes there is a exactly what you're saying and i think we need to calm down a bit and take it take a backseat even in the worst case of if iran got a few nuclear warheads they haven't proved is a rational as the north koreans and the north koreans already have nuclear weapons and so this pakistan i mean it's just it seems like everybody gets nukes to be defending us and i think pakistan is probably the most dangerous country on the planet and they're our allies and one of the least stable are going to i think i

think something interesting that we just saw play out over the last couple days with reports from the new york times that the iranians and the americans have come to some sort of an understanding that there would be bilateral talks following the election when now those leaders all means united by both didn't and i both which was a very interesting thing because i mean there's this which i can i want explain necessarily the iranian side of it i'm not sure exactly what exactly they're calculus work but certainly from the american side i think there's been a shift in how we talk about these issues and it's become something we're negotiating with your enemies or negotiating even with your allies sometimes is seen as a projection of weakness i think it's interesting that right i think it's today's the fiftieth anniversary of john f. kennedy's speech about the cuban missile crisis and the narrative that i think has been repeated throughout the media today of the dominant narrative has been that what occurred was that kennedy you know laid down the line too to the soviets that that these missiles had to go and that you know by standing strong we ultimately managed to sort of force our will the sub narrative. it hasn't been told as well although there have been some journals who have picked up on it is that you know

that this was this was a negotiation and that ultimately there was a back channel deal made to remove nuclear weapons from jupiter mid range ballistic missiles from turkey so there wasn't a go she action there was some value creation in the negotiations and i think about something that we put very little value on right now i think i think i think we should be clear obviously it's not quite the hype of threat that you know that now makes out at the u.n. but the most difficult thing for the iranians to do is gather the uranium once you have the rain it's actually quite easy to make the bomb it's harder to put a missile of course but that is the also the bomb. to put the uranium and that's technically versus getting the uranium that's an easier step. to pass secondarily i mean i agree there's there's lots of reasons why iran getting a nuclear weapon isn't the danger that people make it out to be that the moves are going to you know one day wake up and nuke israel or us or someone else you can never totally rule it out because it would be a suicide act but there are many other dangers of them having

a nuclear weapon including the total probably the dismantlement of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty saudi arabia are likely to acquire when you see even egypt polls show that they want to acquire one so there's quite a lot of dangers in there getting a way to live for ration allegations the north korea got one that the whole region would go so i think the same we have to this proliferation idea and you talk to many military people we don't really have a good military option in israel israel certainly doesn't have a good military action it was a disaster all under ground when we absolutely have to negotiate a way out it was german thank you very much for being with us and thank you so much appreciate it. and the rest of the rest of the news the movement to amend our constitution to overturn the same. courts insane citizens united decision and thus to declare that

money is not speech it's property and corporations are not people are legal fictions received a big boost on thursday a new jersey state assembly signed onto a resolution expressing strong opposition to citizens united and called on congress to amend the constitution to get rid of that ruling jersey now becomes the ninth state to support amending the constitution to prevent corporations millionaires and billionaires from essentially buying our elections already california connecticut maryland massachusetts for white new mexico rhode island and vermont have adopted similar resolutions and in just a few weeks more states might join the list joining us now for the latest on this fight against the corporatocracy is david cobb national spokesperson for move to amend or david welcome thank you tom it's always a pleasure to be on with you it is great to have you back we're staring down a multi billion dollar election is that going to wake up people to how bad citizens united was well there's no doubt about it tom as i travel the country i'm on the

road constantly as you know hundreds of thousands of people are already joined move to amend in large part thanks to you i want to encourage the rest of your listeners not just to get angry bit to get active and go to that website move to amend or the short answer is yes people are disgusted by their level of money corrupting the political process in this election it's going to be by far the most expensive election we've ever seen in the history of united states for the first time in the history of the united states foreign corporations can legally give money to influence our elections but let's also be clear tom it's not just the corrupting influence of money in elections yes that path of the problem the other half is the idea that corporations can claim constitutional rights to overturn environmental protection laws and worker safety laws and public health laws i'm excited about the fact that there is a movement that's going beyond even the corrupting influence of money in elections and saying only human beings have constitutional rights and money is not speech therefore it can be regulate. and if you frame the question that way third of the

state of massachusetts will actually be voting on that issue that has both of those issues in addition to that we have two million illinois voters who are going to be voting on it you know we're pushing it moved him in a way beyond where some of our allies are and saying we have to actually be talking about both of these things together i do not want to see us go down the road of the single payer sellout or the environmental movement being sold out of the. anti-war movement being sold out by practicality we've got to be for what we're for and that's what we're doing a move to amend and this is a pretty solid pretty you know stand up thing and the corporations are not people money is not speech i've noticed several politicians of introduced amendments into the you know to to amend the constitution where they so that corporations are people. you know why the reluctance to say money is not speech you know i'm not sure tom i think because frankly the parade is not big enough yet you you know that move to man has been very clear that we're doing local organizing in communities

before we even go to congress we're about to take over a quarter million people my guess is that whenever we've hit the million dollar mark somewhere all the all the sudden a million signatures will probably start waking people up but you know we know frequently that with a few notable exceptions we have politicians not states persons in congress but as soon as we build the parade big enough and this parade is growing politicians will fight to try to get in front of it so that's what we're doing it moved to a man yeah and that's that's the perfect metaphor david we have just a little less than a minute well how long do you think that this fight is going to take you know tom my honest best assessment is from start to finish from right now a decade now that means in a decade we'll be celebrating but we'll have lots of victories along the way so i don't want people to get frustrated by the fact that it's a decade but i want people to embrace the fact that we have a cultural struggle on our hands to actually claim arse. right to sacred self-government that's the reason that we are able to reach out to principal

liberals and conservatives and moderates across party lines across ideologies this is a no nonsense effort sometimes i call move to amend well da campaign money is not speech corporations are not people only human beings have constitutional rights there you go david thank you very much thanks tom thanks for all you're doing and you too with more outside money being poured into this election than ever before now is the time to make your state the next state to join this fight against the corporatocracy go to move to amend dot org. coming up does the world's most powerful country with the democratic governing model that all of the nations look up to really need foreigners to make sure its elections are fair.

download the official ati application to yourself choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites from outside now t.v. is not required to watch all its hid all you need is your mobile device watch are to any time any of the.