do you accept that the go forces have committed war crimes against their own civilians who are fighting terrorism well making calls to commission. a perfect name for speaking of an r t exclusive r t international sandown with the embattled syrian president bashar al assad to find out what he thinks of the civil war in his country up next an interview you won't see anywhere else plus just days after president obama was reelected he's getting down to business with iran by tightening sanctions yet again we'll bring you the latest in the standoff and tell you about the unarmed drone iran fired on last week. al qaeda operatives and affiliates weren't the only ones tortured in iraq american contractors were

subjected to this treatment as well but a chicago court says these men cannot sue for their harsh treatment i'll have that story ahead. well it is friday november ninth four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching our team all throughout the day today r t will be airing a long form interview an exclusive interview with syrian president bashar al assad to correspondent so fish are not say sat down with him in damascus earlier this week and we wanted to play part of that interview for you now. do you think that at this point they could be talks or diplomacy or we've reached a stage where only the army can do nothing i always believe in diplomacy i always believe in a lot of these bills i always believed in dialogue even with people who doesn't understand who doesn't believe in him that if you had to give

a try whether you succeeded or not i think we always have postured. success we have to look for this part of success before you look for the good before you achieve the complete success but you have to be realistic you don't think that only day talk can make you achieve something because those people who committed these acts they ought to talk to one of them doesn't believe in battle if you had a extremist. and you had the outlaws have been convicted by the court years ago for the crime the latest and their natural enemy the government because they're going to be detained if you had a normal situation it's the other part of them is the people who are being supplied by the outside and they're only because they can only be committed to the people to the government who spend the money and supply them with argument they don't have a choice they don't have a decision they don't own their own decisions so you have to be realistic and you

have the third part of the people whether he's. militant politicians who can accept the title that's why we've been in this dialogue for months now even with middle and many of them give up their armament and they went back to their normal lives do you think foreign invasion is imminent i think the price of this invasion if it happened is going. to be more than the whole world can afford because if you have a problem in syria and you are this last phone call of secularism and ability in the region and coexistence i think it will have a domino effect that affect the work from the atlantic to the pacific and you know the implication or put it on the list although i don't think. the west going in that. regard but if they do so nobody can tell you what's next. if you present do you blame yourself for anything. not money you have to find

mistakes you do it with every different decision otherwise you're not a human what's your biggest mistake i don't remember to read. now but will always but i always even before taken the decision i had to go to court to consider that part of it which would be wrong but you cannot tell about your mistake now sometimes specially during crisis you don't see what's right and wrong until you overcome the situation that your so it's not i wouldn't be objective to talk about mistakes because you're still in the middle of the thing you don't have regrets yet . not know as it were when when everything is a clear you can talk about your mistakes but you definitely have the figures and if today was fifteenth of march two thousand and eleven that's when the protest started to escalate and grow what would you do differently what i would do or do what i did exactly say or for exactly to think to start to ask different parties to

for to have dialogue and to stand against the terrorist group but i always thought if you didn't start as modest it because the world umbrella was marcia's but within those motions you had militants who started tooting the civilians in the army at the same time maybe on the tactical level you could have done something different but as president you would not think you could go to think the decision or threaten you cliff which is different present a lot of how do you see yourself in ten years time. thinking through my country i cannot see myself i can see my company in ten years time this is where i can see myself more rose yourself in syria differently i have to be in syria you sort of hold the position i'm i don't see myself with the president or not this not by interest i could see myself in this country if country table country more prosperous country that was syrian president bashar al assad. and earlier today i had the chance to speak to sophie shevardnadze about her experience of being in

syria and of sitting down with president asad i asked her first how she was able to land at such a high profile interview. well we've been trying to get this interview from the day conflict started to ask late actually. we spoke to a woman who is in charge of the press ministry in syria she was here in moscow on an official visit that was about six months ago so after we interviewed her we also asked her for an interview but we never got a definite answer and then all of a sudden probably a month and a half or so ago they called us from presence of ministration and they told us that if we're willing to go then they were ready to receive us the rest was all about figure out the dates and the stay in syria and we should point out the german journalist jurgen towton hoffer did interview assad a few months ago and a lot of critics point out that they were giving you know this german journalist

was giving mr assad a platform for his propaganda what is your response to that well if you want to know my personal take on that i think no matter who goes to interview assad it's going to cause a lot of noise and a lot of uproar just because he's such a controversial figure for the rest of the world i don't think i actually saw that interview of the german gentleman and his questions were very much fact based not at all complacent to. the rest is all of you wouldn't want to hear what our side has to say which i believe some people are definitely interested in specially when it has to do with such a complicated conflict. like in syria because things aren't as black and white as we see in the media there are just so many shades of gray so i think it's worth knowing both sides of the story and that's a really good point and that's why we wanted to talk to you as well so if you were in the room with this person did you get the feeling that mr assad is that all

conflicted or remorseful about the death and devastation that's happening right now in his country. one be able to answer that because i don't know this is a man who actually controls very well he's very much in charge of the emotions. when i spoke to him before the interview i had to speak with him for ten fifteen minutes he seemed very down to earth this is not a guy who's software's from. khadafi or some other leader he's definitely not crazy he's very well read and educated and i was very surprised to find that out. he's very well informed contrary to what many people may think i think. barbara walters interview for a.b.c. that was recorded probably really freaked him out because barbara was asking him precise questions about precise examples of. cartoonist to guard his arms broken or. who got his throat slashed and he really wasn't aware of those.

things that she was telling him and i think that freaked him out so much that after that he asked to be informed of everything that's going on so i do believe he understands how complicated this situation is do i think is remorseful i don't know the only thing that i gathered from this interview is that this is a man who is determined to stay there. till the death if that's what it takes. barbara walters interview and. it was a little more than a year ago and she was spoken to about another anchor on her network on a.b.c. about her experience and i want to play really quick what she said. what you're really. george there were no restrictions there were no god. and you question. the dictator by accident. ophthalmologist he studied medicine in england he found rushed into the role of leader and again that was more than a little more than a year ago just goes to show sort of how much has changed both inside of syria and

of course the percept perspective around the world but barbara walters says this is a man who is mild mannered. the dictator by accident was that your impression. i think this is a man who is the president by someone else's choice i think he never wanted to be out of syria to start with so whatever happens to him after that is not his choice i don't think he ever had a choice to start with just like now i think it's choices that he doesn't have any choice his family still in damascus his kids who are nine six and seven i think and they go to public school there he's trying to show people that he's not running away and you know his family's with them no matter what. it's very hard for me to. to tell you whether i sympathize see him as a leader or not because things are so much complicated but do i think someone that you could talk to if he wanted to yes definitely and he's definitely in the west to

what extent is the knowledge that he has you said he wanted to be made aware of everything happening in his country so if that is in fact happening if he is in fact being told of everyone killed fighting for him fighting against his government how much is that knowledge translating into you know a motion or action that he plans to take. i think is aware of everything that's going on in this country i think he's aware of atrocities that are taking place on both sides. when i ask him personally if he accepted the fact that the government army is committing crimes against his own civilians he said something along the lines that we you know this is war so probably there are going to be crimes committed but you know we're going to deal with it and prosecute people after it's all done and of course six the war crimes that the syrian free syrian army fighters are committing. i cannot watch for any part of all of scene is that when i arrived

to damascus there were two to three terrorists a day first one happened two hundred meters away from where i was standing second one when i dare to go into the city to go to the market and buy and speak to people it was time when the elementary school kids were coming on in streets and they were flooding this little streets and i find that ten minutes away from where i was standing a bomb went off and killed eleven to twelve kids just like that from elementary school they were leaving from school to go home so i think. it's very one sided to say that he's committing crimes and his government forces are committing crimes and everyone else is fighting for freedom because one thing that really marked me is how much syrian people are scared that fundamentalists who. come to power and we'll make them leave under fundamentalist islam law because one thing that syria isn't and that's fundamentalists because all we have always been

a secular country where lots of religious divisions and sects have lived alongside each other in peace and harmony. and that was actually his own sophie shevardnadze well i want to talk now about some new developments in terms of the united states' relationship with iran yesterday pentagon officials confirmed that i'm an american military surveillance drone frank flying over the persian gulf was shot at by iranian warplanes last week they said the predator drone was not hit and was flying in international air space on a routine mission and there's been another shift inside iran as well the country has announced a ban on imports of about seventy five so-called luxury products this includes fancy high end cars as well as everyday items like coffee and toilet paper the move is in response to western sanctions which is effectively cut off the major source of revenue from the for the country sales of oil it's also part of an effort to try to promote more domestic industry but i want to talk about this from

a bigger picture with a policy director for the national iranian american council and jamal let's start with some of these sanctions these crippling sanctions by the west on iran i guess just talk about the impact that these are having on the people there the sanctions are having a massive impact especially over the past two months we've seen that there's a humanitarian impact on particularly medicine inside of iran there are shortages of cancer medicine. basically you know ordinary iranians are complaining that they are not able to get just basic and exotic medicines that they need to survive the reason for this is that. u.s. the u.s. technically allows for medicine to be exported to iran there's a general license for that but we have cut off all banking transactions with iran so if there's a pharmaceutical company who wants to send medicine they can actually find a way to facilitate that transaction and so you know while we may say we don't want

to there to be a humanitarian impact there is unless we actually take action to fix that and frankly there are people in. the united states were pushing hard for these sanctions that really do feel that punishing ordinary people is what these sanctions should be doing because the goal is not to change the iranian government's decision making it's to actually leverage ordinary civilians against the iranian government and to threaten to topple the government by inciting you know food riots or you know people who are unhappy because they can't you know their grandparents are dying and can't get medicine but there has been some talk to that at least you know initially iranian officials do seem to be ready to at least discuss proposals to roll back some of the country's uranium enrichment and this is you know for the u.s. and european allies kind of the goal is in this precisely why they're you know imposing these harsh sanctions on them so you know if people you know if these

officials inside iran are ready to kind of come to the table that's mission accomplished well it's mission accomplished if first of all if we actually do leverage the sanctions if we actually do come to the table and say ok iran you and your higher level enrichment the original twenty percent and in exchange we are willing to ease the same sions the problem is we don't know if that's actually going to happen we know that the u.s. has signaled that they may be willing to do that the iranians have signaled they may be willing to do that but there are plenty of spoilers inside of some of the countries you know here in the u.s. congress every time the u.s. and iran have talked a letter comes out of congress that says don't don't ease the sanctions do not give up the same until we get the total capitulation by the iranians we need to go big and have an ultimatum that the iranians need to give up their entire program and then we can consider easing the sanctions that's problematic that's not a way that you can negotiate the other thing about just how most things work in

terms of government in terms of diplomacy usually a lot of baby steps a little bit of time not these huge capitulation by both. yes absolutely and especially i mean you talk about baby steps we only have you know we don't have a sustained diplomatic process to actually take those baby steps so the idea that we need to have a complete capitulation by iran in a couple of sit downs isn't realistic i would also just point out that what we're talking about now is you know getting a deal that we could have gotten many years ago before we got the sanctions the iranians in two thousand and ten came to the table and said they wanted to make a deal on shipping out some of their regiment this was before they were doing the higher level enrichment and instead of pursuing that deal we decided to go forward with sanctions and now what we're talking about was the reasoning behind that the reasoning was that we had you know we had gone to the u.n. the u.s. had gone the u.n. and finally won the approval from the p five states for

a new round of sanctions and early two thousand and ten and when that happened that's when the iranians came and said let's make a deal. before that happens and the united states has invested so much diplomatic time and capital in the sanctions they were a fork in the road and they decided to go with the sanctions instead of getting the deal if we had taken that deal we would be in a much better position than we are now what we're talking about is really getting back to the point where iran is not doing the higher level enrichment that they started after we went forward with the sanctions so this notion that the sanctions have somehow put us in a better position i think is doesn't quite add up in terms of basic logic and we need to recognize that we need to now that we have put these sanctions in place anality iran has escalated in terms of their enrichment both sides need to be willing to go in the opposite direction and make some compromises and that's the question of whether or not we can actually do that what about this information jamal that a predator drone was shot at by an iranian warplane this happened before election

day but nobody seemed to say anything about it confirm it or talk about it at all and tell afterwords. i guess talk about the political implications both here and on an international level well the political implications i think are. are so significant that it's not a surprise that this wasn't brought up before the elections and there's no you know the u.s. didn't bring it up and iran didn't bring it up you know you're on wait until the u.s. unveiled this information before they started talking about it on their side and the reason is that you know there are there is not a desire for war by the people who are making the decisions i firmly believe you know the supreme leader the for the president they don't want war there are people on both sides of this who are actively trying to prevent war while at the same time escalating putting the pressure turning the pressure up and the problem is that as

we you know as we turn up the heat as the u.s. deployed aircraft carriers and you know takes part in the largest military exercise in the persian gulf as we did just just a couple months ago and as the iranians escalate by installing new centrifuges in their facilities and other things like that how long can we how can how long can we do this how long can we turn the heat up and still allow cooler heads to prevail like we saw with this incident which had there been a miscalculation we could have seen a full blown military confrontation erupt from this from this incident so i think both sides are trying to be careful to not allow this to become causes belly for an actual war between the u.s. and iran what's your sense in terms of this presidential election it's finally over do you get a sense that the iranian people are happy that president obama will be getting a second term do you feel like the majority of the country it was hoping for

a change in america or do they just not care at all you know my sense just anecdotally and you know is that everybody who. didn't want to see a war is relieved i think that you know the romney campaign's policies weren't necessarily different than obama's but there was there was definitely a willingness to talk about military options and to you know at least rhetorically turn up that pressure because a lot of the people that were running that campaign and behind the campaign were a lot of the same people that agitated for war with iraq because there was this perception that netanyahu very much wanted romney to win in order to have a more hawkish u.s. approach to iran i think that. the people of iran are relieved that there's not going to be a war but at the same time are very disappointed with what the first term of obama look like because now they're suffering under these sanctions and it's not

a very hopeful situation probably not overly optimistic one way or the other jamal abdi policy director of the national iranian american council thanks so much for joining us here. and now onto a story from chicago where a federal appeals court ruled on how responsible government higher ups like donald rumsfeld are for their actions of their underlings back in two thousand and six two american military contractors donald vance and nathan are tell claims they were detained and tortured in iraq after they accuse their iraqi run employer of illegally running guns the quote interrogation methods used on vance an air tel allegedly included solitary confinement sustained loud music extreme temperatures and so-called walling in which the men were blindfolded and walked into walls vans in our tell trying to sue donald rumsfeld the secretary of defense at the time for personally approving of these interrogation methods last year a federal court ruled the man had standing to do so however yesterday's eight to

three ruling on appeal said that the man had no grounds to sue rumsfeld because he was not personally responsible for so subordinates crossing the line rumsfeld have to. attorney saw this as a good thing david rivkin said quote this was not about rumsfeld at all it was about future decision makers who need to be able to deal with national security issues without having to worry that they'll be sued for decisions they made after they leave office however the dissenting opinion on this case was alarmed at the blanket immunity offered to people like rumsfeld judge david hamilton said quote the disparity attributes to our government and to our legal system a degree of hypocrisy that is breathtaking that these men are considering appealing the decision the supreme court could ultimately decide whether our leaders should be personally held responsible for those life and death decisions they make in a professional capacity. well for days four decades after it was first conceived for freedom's park is finally opened in new york city the state park serves

a memorial to franklin delano roosevelt but while f.d.r. was an influential president during his four terms does he remain relevant in modern politics artie's correspondent ana stasi a church going to has more from roosevelt island new york. freedom. human rights everywhere a nine hundred forty one state of the union address that changed american history this is the essential excerpt from the four freedoms speech. this is a speech that roosevelt gave before we were involved in world war two a president many americans see as one of the top three the us has had as he inherited a depression greater than the one that obama has f.d.r. outlined forty freedoms freedom of speech and expression freedom of worship freedom from want and freedom from fear today carved in granite and a memorial dedicated to the thirty second president of the us i think is going to

become an icon similar to the statue of liberty welcome to four freedoms memorial park an astonishing piece of architecture that was designed by. luke on back in one nine hundred seventy two seventy three. completed four decades later the memorial had a path of struggle the architects unexpected death in one nine hundred seventy four in new york city's bankruptcy issues never made the timing right until now builds on an island in the east river between manhattan and queens the park is intended to remind its visitors that with a strong leader the u.s. was once able to get through tough times an ocean more relevant for americans now than it has been since the great depression of this kind of force perspectival view architect gina polarise is the executive director here when i started this project people said you know who cares about after your he's dead and who cares he left a country better than it was when he took office gina says f.d.r.'s legacy is a playbook to be followed by those in power today jobs jobs jobs jobs he really

made sure that people in all areas of life were able to be employed and were able to be employed doing what they wanted to do the united nations an organization f.d.r. was involved in founding faces the memorial park. combustor william brandon who fills memory of f.d.r. as a leader inspired him to spearhead the completion of the project funded by the state in the city as well as private donors franklin roosevelt was the person who changed the nature of our government so that it became an instrument of social justice and help people who were in need the key challenge for modern america split on how active a role government should take in helping its citizens are we going to have medical assistance how we're going to have social security are we going to have a government computer committed to peace instead of the war questions tackled by f.d.r. to be addressed again by america's leadership today. or to new york all right everyone coming up next on capital account let's check in now with lauren lister to

see what is on the agenda well lauren we made it is friday what you got cooking for us we made it to friday christine we made it through the elections but we have not made it up to the fiscal cliff yet so that is what we're going to be hearing about for the next more than month and i already have fatigue so i ask why not just go over it we know there washington can't agree on anything just listening to the house speaker john boehner today and the president of the united states barack obama you can hear that they are divided they don't agree on how to address the deficit so at least the fiscal cliff is something that is on paper i'm gunna happen and less they avert it i say why not go off and we'll talk about it in a few minutes with my maloney here are about oh it's over that's a take a lot of people haven't heard we'll be watching thanks for in well that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or check out our website r t dot com slash usa and if you're not already

you should definitely follow me on twitter i'm at christine. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. the for.

me it is easy feat it's easy. if you. feel. me.