both client has spent over one thousand days behind bars without a trial and now for the first time the lawyer for private first class bradley manning is opening up about the case we'll bring you the rare appearance you won't want to miss and twenty two months of a brutal civil war in syria and no end in sight while u.s. officials lament over the possibility of the assad government using chemical weapons some reports suggest jihad is are taking to the rebel cause ahead compared this conflict to libya. and american military efforts might be concentrated our wars in the middle east but just across the border here at home drug cartels are armed to the teeth with weapons and they're not the ragtag band of criminal gangs

you'd imagine but a well armed force to be reckoned with and had will take a peek into their arsenal of tools. it's tuesday december fourth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r.t. . and if you've been living under a rock there's been some news coming out of the u.k. prince william and kate are expecting their first child which is set media spectacle and the story is huge and you're out the but here in the u.s. the mainstream media has ramped up its coverage take a look. ever since the royal couple got married britain has been waiting for its royal baby now that baby is on the way to me happy wait for this story with bated breath it's acute morning sickness so it's treated with a rehydration the. supplements and trying to get it back to check they were

planning to announce this at this point but she is not yet twelve weeks pregnant i haven't even told prince charles or the queen about this until today. i'm sure every woman is enjoying c.n.n.'s coverage i'm listening to a male reporter talk about morning sickness. well health care covering the story that has little impact here in the u.s. are to you will cover what's really important and we begin with what's called one of the most significant military cases in u.s. history and that is the case of army private bradley manning he is accused of the biggest security breach ever and up until now manning's attorney david coombs has refrained from making public appearances or talking to the media but last night combs and broke his silence and we were at the church here in washington d.c. work spoke about how the cases played out and described his relationship to manning . nearly three years after bradley manning was arrested for

leaking hundreds of thousands of top secret documents his attorney makes his first public appearance brad's treatment i want to go to will forever be i believe in our nation's history as a disgraceful moment time not only was it stupid counterproductive. it was criminal that was the focus of a week of pretrial hearings leading up to his debut to the press for the more than nine hundred day as manning was locked up the defense says he was subject to solitary confinement for twenty three hours a day and a small six by eight foot cell where he faced forced nudity in sleep deprivation i'm confident by the time this case comes to a conclusion the record of trial will be the longest record trial in our military's history and his first court appearance manning described being detained he says he felt like a caged animal using white tape he showed the court how small

a cell was in quantico virginia he also put on a suicide smock he was forced to wear during the nine months he was held there manning supporters and the defense is calling this torture they're saying that manning has already been punished and because of this the charges against him should be dropped. his supporters see him as a hero for shining a light on the government's garc secrets one thing you don't see in the press at all is the good truth that has come out of these documents but his critics see him as a traitor putting national security at risk has done more damage censure cowie to our national security this guy allowing all this stuff to get out there we cannot be trusted a lot of state department international causes they still have not forgiven as for that because we let this nobody there alone told is there manning's attorney paints a much different picture of his client he recalls his conversations with the army private who hopes to one day get

a college degree so i asked. with that degree what do you plan on doing. and he said i want to go into public service and i asked him what he meant but. he said i want to join some sort of campaigning group. going to public service and perhaps one day run for public office meanwhile as the military court looks into manning's pretrial treatment the military judge announced that the trial is postponed until march sixteenth at the earliest in washington liz wahl r.t. . well the deadly civil war in syria rages on and we're learning that the syrian regime could be harboring chemical weapons as the opposition struggles to battle a determined regime more and more islamic jihad s. are joining in the fight to topple syrian dictator bashar al assad is estimated that there is around three thousand of these extremists fighting in syria and ironically they're fighting alongside an opposition supported by the u.s.

so how does this all factor into the bloody conflict in syria middle east analyst ahmed fanti joined me earlier to answer that and more i first asked him how are extreme jihad is helping to join or finance the opposition in syria. did you have is that not something new do you have been in syria for quite some time they have been doing several of the. suicide bombing accidents the took place in and around damascus and various parts in syria they have been conducting execution narry slaughtering style totally inhumane so did i don't know why they are now all of a sudden they're becoming an article in the news they have been part of this struggle for quite a long time as to the second part of your question where they are getting their finances the same way as the al qaeda is being getting its finances the same way as the extremists in libya is getting their finances the same way as those in mali

have been getting their finances there are lots of people who are sympathizers to them from the arab peninsula namely from saudi arabia where not the government of saudi arabia but saudi subjects who have financial resources and they are financing them so i'm not surprised that they are on the ground in syria they have contributed to the failure of the ceasefire brokered by a lot of the early brahimi the special u.n. arab league envoy to syria six weeks ago and they continue to be there my question to the free syrian army why do you need foreign fighters when you have a case that you solemnly believe in and you have the public support this isn't an answer to question are we seeing a new iraq. once more in syria or what's happening exactly these are lots of gray areas that the syrian opposition need to address immediately and not

a day after we have seen in egypt after the fall of the mubarak regime and the rise of the islamic fascist group of the muslim brotherhood and the elected president morsi who is one of the leadership how egypt what is drifting and the demonstrations we see today in cairo are the biggest example of that the people that the nations are not going to tolerate anymore fascism in the name of their religion now adhir tucker mad about who exactly are these extremists and what their motivation is joining the opposition and toppling assad. there is two sides one which is political. which is these are elements from al qaeda in afghanistan and pakistan they have been infiltrated to syria through the its neighboring countries and to some of the this illusion young

muslims in the arab world who've been sent to syria to fight on the hope of reaching or achieving martyrdom so there are two to two parts. earlier i mentioned that the financing come from wealthy saudis who are in doctrine in supporting these extreme interpretations of islam and it's not true islamic but where money is there this illusion the young people out there we can expect catastrophes the old french proverb blood drawn fail again the money makes the war. this was. in this situation now some people can't help but compare what's happening now in syria to what has played out in libya i want to ask you what parallels you can draw between what is happening now

in syria between the two countries or do you see what similarities you see. dissimilarities in libya it was a tribal. leader headed by their fee in syria it's an alawite headed by. both. leaderships have committed atrocities against their own people none from their sect but through other sects remember in one thousand nine hundred two were half as the father of the short of the former syrian president have executed more than fifty thousand people and how much is the largest city in syria. the current regime they are now playing a very dangerous game and the reports emerging from syria that he's gonna is preparing to use chemical weapons it's only indicative indication that bashara last

night in his last days and this is his just have his his back to the wall and he's willing to commit any crime imaginable and unimaginable to remain in power but shuttle as that must go there were initiatives presented on the table to have a person like farrukh or sharjah former vice president and long foreign minister to head it transitional administration in syria till the hold elections and the transfer into a democratic phase this initiative we don't hear about it these days there is lots of. reports but not substantiated coming out of syria that we are witnessing the final days of the shuttle. now if the civil war continues at this point we don't see a clear on the inside i want to ask you what will happen to the christians that are there in syria. i pray for the christians in syria i pray for the

secularists in syria i pray for the liberals in syria for anybody who is not affiliated with the islam or fascists groups like the muslim brotherhood or the cell of the jihadists. whatever you want to name them. everybody is in danger in syria. at this at this moment if so the regime falls everybody who is not part of the islamist movement would be a great danger not only to christians. i want to thank you very much for joining us is. as a middle east analyst. well still ahead here on araa take on the seemingly endless and increasingly violent drug war mexico's police have more than a small criminal gang to deal with these cartels are well organized and armed to the gills i had a look at the tools of this of this trade and the seriousness of the problem.

in a climate of american power continues. things are so bad might actually be time revolution. and it turns out that a particular drink of starbucks reza surprising ingredient. so

. here's mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that the americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i mean the guy who cares an awful lot of money uses are. you know what kind of my other terror cells in your neighborhood all want to get usa to feature in the me on limbaugh and the chris. consecutively. for the super to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're

a profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm not me martin and we're going to break that. we turn now to war being fought right along our borders and that is the war on drugs mexico's it. new general is now saying that twenty five thousand people have

gone missing in the last six years this amid chaos and violence that has ensued in mexico as it struggles to fight drug cartels some say that it's u.s. policies that fuel the war on drugs emboldening the drug mafias that profit off the illegal drug market beyond policies mexico's cartels are armed with massive arsenals take a look at some of the tools of their trade. as you can see they have plenty of a k forty seven rifles machine guns and shotguns just to name a few also rocket propelled propelled grenade launchers you see here are some of the heaviest weapons the cartel uses and they even have their own monster trucks mexico has seized more than one hundred of them so where do the cartels get their weapons well some are from central america but most of them come from the united states in fact the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms found that sixty eight thousand of ninety nine thousand guns found in mexico actually actually

a originated in the united states for more on where and how drug gangs are arming themselves i'm joined by adrian pyne assistant professor at american university adrian great to have you here so i first want to talk about where these guns are coming from as we just mentioned many of them come from the the u.s. could you elaborate a bit more on how these cartels are getting armed well that's right lou seventy percent of the guns and weapons that have been captured by mexican police have been found to come from the united states and a lot of those are coming through originally coming through legitimate quote unquote a legitimate forms of trade that is people can walk into gun shows in arizona or new mexico and very easily buy these weapons so one thing that tells us is the drug war is an incredibly profitable enterprise for industries like the.

like the gun trade and of course it's profitable also for banks in the united states that are laundering the money from drug cartels like h.s.b.c. that was exposed as having done that it's it's also beneficial to the da to private prisons and to the military itself which need the drug war as justification for their very existence to some extent so we can see who is benefiting from it on the other side mexico is not benefiting from it nor has drug consumption going down gone down in the united states right and all this we had just showed those pictures there of some of the weapons that the drug cartel has and over the years we have seen them grow and continue to get more sophisticated and their weapons as we saw are getting more sophisticated are they only going to get more advanced. well you know i think that a lot depends on the kind of policy that the u.s. visa vi mexico and of course central america other latin american countries because

this drug war is not just in mexico and so policy or rather the actions of the cartels in large part are responsive to u.s. military policy as well as of course economic policy so the u.s. has been pouring five hundred million dollars a year into the drug war in mexico alone and many more millions throughout the rest of latin america this has helped to increase the militarization of latin american countries and in response the militarization of course of cartels and so you know we're just kind of having this war increasing on both sides but also our economic policy has promoted. liberalization of privatization the usurpation of collectively held lands in mexico and taken away economic economic opportunities which has created a situation in which drug trade is one of the only economic opportunities for many people in northern mexico and so we. are in

a sense creating the conditions for the escalation of this drug war on both sides. you're saying there the us pouring all this money into financing this this war on drugs meanwhile i mean these numbers just came out pretty grim twenty five thousand adults and children have gone missing seven thousand bodies remain unidentified and morgues. why isn't there more being done to help these families who are still looking for loved ones and i mean is this an example of of how this drug war has not been productive mr gore absolutely has not been productive on the human rights front and in addition to that number of twenty five thousand which many feel is quite low there's the official estimate of sixty thousand killed and some researchers like molly malloy the university of new mexico estimate that it's actually more than double that so one hundred twenty thousand plus people killed over recent years in this drug war over the past six years in this drug war

additionally we've seen a vast increase over the previous presidency in mexico of human rights abuses carried out by the police in the military which in many cases are trained by the united states as part of the drug war so certainly all of these things the disappearances the killings and also the human rights abuses carried out directly by the state are linked together economically and also in terms of u.s. military policy. and you had mentioned earlier the ease that these cartels are able to get these weapons and a lot of them it starts off legally. and you know there is this big debate over over gun control in the u.s. could this be an example about how lax gun laws could be leading to the ease of the of the cartels being able to easily obtain these weapons in the u.s. that's exactly what it is i mean it's the united states. lack of gun control

is greatly facilitating the slaughter of mexicans as well as of course people here in the united states i mean we have one of the gun control policies in the world and the result of this are these tens and hundreds of thousands of killings and you know. aside from the debate of whether or not people should have guns i mean it's our second amendment right to have guns but how do you make it what needs to be done to make sure that those guns do not end up in the hands of these drug cartels that are slaughtering people. well i think first of all you know we need to tie our gun policy we need to be thinking structurally so we need to be thinking about why is it that it's attractive for these cartels to buy guns in the first place then for that we need to rescind our neo liberal economic policies that are

making it impossible for people to go into other trades we need to stop selling bullets. and you know i do think that we need to very deeply interrogate our relationship with guns in this country despite the obsession with the second amendment because guns kill you know it's not just that criminals kill people people with guns and up killing people and in mexico because of the ease in the united states the united states has become the primary market for getting guns so that is a much bigger discussion that needs to happen but happen alongside questioning of why it is that people need these guns in the first place and that's because we have impoverished mexico with our trade policies. a lot of this bloodshed happened under mexican president calderon and we are seeing this transition of leadership do you see any promise under mexico's new leadership well the new president pena nieto has

. that he will bring peace to mexico but he hasn't really said how he will do that and he's you know the leadership is the new leadership of the pretty government which was in power for over seventy years prior to the. leadership and he was really the protege of silliness a good party who is the person who along with clinton signed nafta and brought the impoverishment to mexico in the usurpation of collectively held lands that i mentioned earlier that has created the conditions for the drug trade to thrive as it has what we may see with the return to pretty government is the return to pretty policy of actually collaborating with drug cartels much more closely than the pan government the. above and beyond that what we've seen already is that when the installation of the new pena nieto government we've seen repression of protesters we've seen tear gas bullets rubber bullets fired into crowds it's not

a very hopeful scenario in terms of human rights and peace really interesting appreciate you coming on the show that was pine assistant professor at american university thank you. so out here on r t drone sweet row iran claims to have captured yet another u.s. drone base as criticism mounts over how disconnected drone operators really are that story next. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it's already been made can you trust no one. with the global reach where are we heading state controlled capital school fashions when nobody dares to ask we do r t question more. r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like.

russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to u.s. . we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old. to confess and get a. grab and have coffee and. i'm very proud of the. place.

is right i mean it's like a derivative of actually it's a food product essentially. much stronger than anything you'd. ever put. iran today said it captured a u.s. drone that was flying over its airspace and the gulf this is a what iran state run media press t.v. is reporting. iran has captured a u.s. drone that has violated the country's airspace you're looking at the latest pictures that have come in in which d.c. has made this announcement and it is backing that up with what you're seeing there

on your screen. well the u.s. however is denying this u.s. officials say no drones are missing and there's no evidence to back up iran's claims this is a recent report out of the washington post says that the amount of drone crashes are on the rise is particularly high among drones that take off from civilian airports one issue at these civilian airports is the air traffic controllers u.s. drone crews complain that air traffic controllers in djibouti are poorly trained speak a little english and give preference to civilian flights even when drones are very low on fuel and that's not all investigators investigations into one predator crash in march of two thousand and eleven found that the pilot was quote confused and inattentive when landing the plane and because he was working from a remote location he wasn't fully aware of the wind and weather conditions like this in mind it makes you wonder if the prospect of a drone getting lost or sees it shouldn't come as

a shock. and we're going to leave it off there but breaking the sat with abby martin is coming up in thirty minutes here on our last check in with abby to see what's on today's agenda abbi what's going on. so you know america is full of people who are constantly obsessing over diets and the latest skinny trends you know one of the most obese countries on the planet so going to talk a little bit about artificial sweeteners what they really do a lot of people don't know that they actually increase weight gain so we're to go to that we're also going to the case of jeremy ham and he's the guy who released the stratfor e-mails you know in the face of this ever more pervasive surveillance state you know just the proportionality of this guy facing life in prison for basically tapping into something that taps into all of our material all the time and we're also be getting into syria kind of breaking through all the convoluted mess the propaganda how it fits into iran how it fits into jordan all these different things.