he's the new man president obama has tapped to be his white house chief of staff but what do we really know about denis mcdonough we'll take a look at his time in the iraq war and how he helped push the u.s. into the conflict that story ahead. in cybersecurity the u.s. says cyber attacks are happening and that they need the resources to combat this growing problem we'll tell you how the pentagon is going to play a crucial role in fighting cyber warfare here at home and around the world. and will this finally be the year that republicans and democrats democrats agree on immigration reform the senate released a plan today and president obama is expected to outline his plans tomorrow so will

it be enough to help the eleven million illegal immigrants in the u.s. . it's monday january twenty eighth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. just one week after he was inaugurated president obama's second term cabinet is finally beginning to take shape perhaps the least surprising pick was that of denis mcdonough for a white house chief of staff in his statement president obama announced that called mcdonough one of his hardest working men and washington he's also known for his extensive foreign policy experience expression when it came to the drawdown of troops from iraq. but dennis has played a key role in every major national security decision of my presidency from ending the war in iraq to winding down the war in afghanistan from our response to natural disasters around the world like haiti in the tsunami in japan to the repeal of

don't ask don't tell countless crises in between day and night what president obama failed to address in that speech was the instrumental role that mcdonough played in crafting legislation to authorize the use of force in iraq that's back when he was the top foreign policy aide to then senate majority leader tom daschle all the legislation mcdonough and others crafted essentially pave the way for war in iraq what's more mcdonough personally called white house staffers including jason view on the night of the september eleventh terror attacks in order to ask how the senate could help the white house deal with this tragedy and response a process that led to the authorization of the use of force against terrorists which essentially gave president bush the power to launch the afghanistan war now this is a stark contrast to the antiwar stance that president obama has taken on over the years so does this signal a shift in foreign policy by the white house well to discuss this and more i was

joined earlier by a retired colonel morris davis he's currently a professor at the howard university school of law we first talked about the role that dennis mcdonough mcdonough played in the initiation of aggressions in iraq and afghanistan he was at the time working with shows the senate majority leader and as you said he was one of the leaders in the effort to get the democratic support for the iraq war effort to twenty nine democrats want to long with a resolution back in october of two thousand and two and i think many of them live to regret that decision and certainly it was a time when senator daschle and senator obama had different positions on the. issue and certainly mr mcdonough played an important role in getting that resolution passed and what you said is this was a means of kind of acting before he actually had a chance and those other twenty nine congress people had

a chance to really think through what it could possibly cause i mean obviously no one was expecting a ten year war right i think for mr mcdonough he's he's been a loyal deputy at the time he was working for senator daschle and i think he carried out his boss's intent just as he has with president obama and winding down the war in iraq ramping down the war in afghanistan and bringing it to a close which is often put him at odds with the uniformed military services who had a different point of view so i think this an indication of it more of a loyal deputy than really and i have a lot going on war so it's more so following is the leader versus leading the pack is what you're saying correct i mean if you just look at it on this face i think his efforts in getting the resolution passed back in two thousand and two you can look at that and think it was on the far right. you know one of the warmongers where you know later on during the bush administration he was critical of the administration for a politicizing some of the national security issues like the warrantless

wiretapping program he was very critical of them trying to make a political issue out of that and penalize people that spoke up and said maybe you know there would be more visibility which again is an interesting contrast to the obama position which has been. at least as much if not more secrecy than the bush administration and certainly mr mcdonough has played a played a role in perpetuating those policies and here he as you mentioned he played a role in starting wars in afghanistan and also in iraq and he's also playing a key role in ending it so does this kind of make up for the role he played in starting it really well i. don't know this is really fair to keep score because again. i think he was acting on behalf of the principles that he worked for at the time whether it's the president now senator daschle or back then i don't know that i would read too much into his background into his new role as chief of staff because if you look back president obama this will be his fourth chief of staff

have all been unique personalities certainly you know rahm emanuel was you had a better temper. and it is certainly given credit for having killed the close guantanamo after you know the white house counsel greg craig who was a proponent of closing guantanamo and president obama as one of his first orders of business to sign the executive order and rahm emanuel his chief of staff. didn't want to put political capital behind that effort if they all would and you know more autonomy is still growing really you know his chief of staff he's a gatekeeper you know the president's confidant i think certainly his national security and foreign policy experience is something that the president has leaned on in the past and will in the future but i think this role is more of a confidant the gate keeper than really indicating a shift in priorities from budget to foreign policy and terms of president obama's stance what you're saying it's not necessarily a shift in his his strategy correct like you know jack lew left as chief of staff

had more of a background in budget which certainly has been critical over the last year or so as we've faced you know the fiscal cliff and those issues but i wouldn't read changing chief of staff from a budget person to a foreign policy person is indicating a shift in priorities i think is still going to be domestic issues are going to be at the top of the agenda and really the role that mr mcdonough is going to play is being the gate keeper in controlling access and being you know the top lieutenant to the president now i do want to bring up an article that he actually coauthored back in two thousand and seven and part of it and in this article he really was speaking about the checks and balances that is needed between the legislative and executive branches when it comes to war he said quote to assert. the congress has only one choice in how it reacts legislatively to the war in iraq profoundly understands congressional responsibilities in time of war such a narrow reading of the constitution and the competing powers on national security grants to to the congress and the executive branch is not supported by

a range of constitutional scholars so spare he's saying that obviously we need to have this type of balance between congress and their powers and that your presentation just be able to launch himself into any war that he deems necessary without consulting others but he's now working for the executive branch so now the the foot of the shoe is a foot on the left you decide to say that and say do you think we can expect or should we expect some kind of change in this stance that he's had for the last few years well i think it's certainly been indicated over the last couple of years during the bush administration which that article was written in zero seven during the bush administration it was critical of this unilateral executive authority of the president having virtually limitless authority in cutting out congress and the courts and participating in that process but interestingly you know the last couple of years while he's been in the white house with president obama that's exactly what this administration has done as well but again i don't know that i would be as

much of that to mr mcdonough as personal beliefs the role that he's in the game he's he's not the principal he's carrying out the you know the orders of the people that he works for in this case of the president and certainly this president has followed a lot of the bush policies as for is exercising unilateral authority as commander in chief the spy all the things that he said he was going to do less what scares the current situation in iraq this country is under mortal rice these days than it's been in for years can you talk about the volatile situation that the country is and specifically the roles that the prime minister al maliki is playing in it well again it's like colin powell said you know if you if you break it you buy it you know we went into iraq false under. pretenses you know based on an individual who's being tortured who gave us bad intelligence because he wanted to torture to stop we invaded a country whether you like saddam hussein or not most people didn't you know he did a fairly effective job of keeping order in the country and we created chaos and

whether all maleki is. you know whether we can depend on him despite our you know years of effort and billions of dollars and a lot of blood spilled is certainly doubtful there's a lot of people coming out a lot of new reports saying that the iraqi government is built on corruption and torture is not something that the us. instilled in those people or is that something that they are doing on their own now because they don't have the support of the u.s. well i think it's something that certainly we have been negligent and carrying out our responsibility you know we're a signatory to the convention against torture yet in iraq and afghanistan and other places we've either participated directly or certainly turned a blind eye when it's inconvenient to tell others that we don't condone that kind of conduct and we still see that debate going on more in afghanistan really than iraq where we really reduced our presence considerably but you know it really creates creates

a problem i think for us to try to take the moral high ground we've had these examples of the last decade where we've either participated or kind of turned a blind eye to the summit last question to you can we really expect to see a stable and possibly democratic iraq in the future with this type of corruption that is still leaking into to the news these days well i think we can be hopeful i mean iraq you know certainly is. it remains to be seen what the final outcome is going to be but we invested a lot of blood time effort and money supposedly to create you know this model of democracy in that region but i think we can be optimistic skeptical and continue to kind of keep. focus on them and try to you know hold them accountable for tara colonel morris davis a professor at howard university school of law thank you so much for your opinions there's obviously a lot of things that are still being covered in this follicle region and the

situation in iraq is certainly not over yet i think we can say well after months of delay as secretary of state hillary clinton finally testified on the terror attack in benghazi in september of last year a few new details came out of the hours and hours worth of testimony about the benghazi attack itself but buried in the quote in a question to secretary clinton by congressman bill keating of massachusetts was an important issue that has prompted a swift pentagon response a massive ramp up of u.s. cyber security and cyber command listen to secretary clinton's remarks on the topic . well you mention a word that is rarely mentioned in these hearings but i predict will be a major threat to us and that's cyber because it's not only going to be nation states where we already are seeing cyber intrusions both against our government and against our private sector but increasingly nonstate actors will have more

capacity to disrupt to hack into to put out false information to accuse the united states of things that can you know light fires before we can put them out so let's take a look at some of the changes that the cyber command is now facing the current command is composed of nine hundred personnel and that number will be expanded to forty nine hundred troops over the next several years there will be three new units the first is the national mission forces that is tasked with protecting computer systems that undergird electrical grids power plants and other infrastructure deemed critical to national and economic security the second is the combat mission force which will help commanders abroad plan and execute attacks and other offensive operations and finally a cyber protection forces will fortify the defense department's networks so is this enough to secure our cyber borders and is it about time for the u.s. to face this oncoming threat well the handsome help answer these questions i was

trying earlier by mark work or he's a senior security researcher with community inc. we've been in a position of defense for quite a while and i think now we're starting to see more attacks against america so. by ramping up like this we're actually we're starting to realize the attacks that are. used in the tactics that are used against us so it makes sense to to fight fire with fire right and so is there a particular reason for this sudden switch toward the internet was simply hellery clinton's remarks that started that. i'm not sure if that was i think she realizes that most of the attacks now that are happening it seems like you can only get so far with. you know aircraft carriers and tanks but of all the attacks or else in the cyber realm then we need to ramp up our defenses and often and there.

the tactics used against us they're they're attacking our our computer systems they're attacking our electronic systems and and everything nowadays is being controlled by computers so whoever is in control of the computers basically and. influence the outcome of the conflict now mark this comes at a time when the military is making serious decisions about a budget cuts will that sector be affected by it or should or shouldn't be i mean cyber command is relatively cheap from what i understand compared to some of the other military problems like the f. eighteen program right. well of course i think it is it is cheaper to hire a hacker than it is to build you know ships and and planes but to be honest i think that it's hiring talented hackers is probably a slightly more expensive game and i think the managerial positions the

complications just on hiring that many actors and good talented hackers i think is going to be quite quite quite pricey now mark i have to ask you this ethical hacker is have pointed out time and again that the problem that america has cyber infrastructure big point out the problems that america has with its cyber infrastructure but is the u.s. using this information to fix its flaws or is it using it to find weak spots in other countries cyber sales and why are we doing both if we're not doing both right now i would imagine that you know if if if our team is only nine hundred strong there can only be so much that's done and i think that's one of the reasons why there is a call there's a demand for more more capable people on this team because you do want to do both to be in a position where you're more secure you need to be looking at your own weaknesses and of course you're going to be looking at your opponent's weaknesses as well but

a weakness in one particular system applies globally if if if the same machines and the same computers in the same services and applications are being used in america. elsewhere then once you find one vulnerability you can use it. you can use it against you know your opponent now obviously the u.s. is falling behind in the realm of cyber security i don't think that that is a question on anybody's mind the hacktivist group anonymous was actually able this weekend to take down the department of. justice website they took it down for several hours and they certainly don't have the funding of the state of a state sponsored attack that a state sponsor i should say would have so if they're able to break into these web sites and overtake what can we expect from a more organized attack. and

they're a group of capable attackers anonymous and if if if we take into consideration the. numbers that they have we are ramping up and we are increasing our numbers and will increase our technical capabilities but. it doesn't take it doesn't take numbers really to take down systems it takes an understanding of that system and people who. are trained or are designed to find these flaws and systems that i'm not sure i might be getting off topic here actually. yeah i mean i guess the point i was trying to make is that anonymous has from what we understand obvious that we know very little about the group but they have very little funding and yet when you have other countries that might may or may not be dedicating a large amount of resources and money to figuring this out is it fair to say that it's only a matter of time before they find out ways to break into our system and seriously

jeopardize our cyber infrastructure. well there definitely are weaknesses but i would say the tactics that anonymous uses they they might not have the funding but they definitely have the resources and their resources are through compromised machines compromised machines that they've taken over and they're now in control so they have this army of. recruited compromised machines at their disposal and that's what they're using to launch denial of service attacks against you know their targets. these vulnerabilities that exist the way that they're gaining access to these machines are the same way that. you know these can be used against us anybody and everybody has the ability to. i guess it seems like everybody marquard our senior security researcher from unity and thank you so much for your hands thank you still ahead on our team immigration reform is making progress here

in washington but of will bus proposed legislation do enough to help the eleven million undocumented people living right here in the u.s. we'll take a laughlin we come back. a little worst if you're going to say the only white house or the. radio guy for a minute. what color of politics because you've never seen anything like this i'm sorry. let me let me i want i'll let me ask you a point. here and that's not important is what we're having a debate we have our night show. the other day we did this that it was a bad thing there again here it is the way where the and i don't want to talk about

theory let me. after years worth of calls for immigration reform it looks like that reality could soon be in the not too distant future

a bipartisan group of senators the so-called gang of eight held a press conference today just hours ago actually detailing the four point plan to immigration reform in the u.s. the plan includes reforming the path to legalization or creating an employment verification system coming up with a tough but fair new path toward citizenship for people that are already in the u.s. and helping illegal immigrants who are job seekers find a legal work now all of this is contingent on one thing and that's the one thing that the republican party has fought for most adamantly tighter border security of course now this talk of reform is seen as a huge victory for the minority community but how likely is the agreement really to pass and does this reform go far enough and i was joined earlier by juan jose gutierrez he's the director of policy usa i asked him his thoughts on this plan for

reform. well my initial reaction as well as that of many of the people that i work with over the years to bring about comprehensive immigration reform is of one of guarded optimism in the reason why i say that is because we've been here before. people talked about you know bringing about significant immigration reform back in that they saw the president c.e.o. former president george bush and he came to nothing. soul you know there's been promises seen in years since movement was made in different aspects of immigration reform and that also came to nothing for example the dream act they would have legalized people that were brought us children by their own document the parents to the states and grew up in the states as united states citizens but having said that i am optimistic that this time around because of the changes in the politics of the

country were latino voters have become a significant percentage of the total number of voters in presidential another important national elections i think that everybody has recognized the fact that that is a factor that will continue to grow you know the worse the number of latino voters is likely to continue growing over the years every month you know just as an example of that point fifty thousand u.s. born at dino's become of voting age they reach the age of eighteen that's six hundred thousand new voters every year kind of a large amount of people think that's obviously going to mean a lot of people that are new voters for me asking this mr gutierrez does this long go this reform bill go far enough. well. they say the

devil is going to be in the details i think that the fact that this bipartisan senate committee. you know the fact that they recognize the need to bring about comprehensive immigration reform which includes a path to citizenship although we still don't know all the details that will get us there is included in the plan or in the parameters that will be the basis on there which they will be discussing all the details of the plan you know it's a hopeful sign now from our perspective you know we've always been advocating that meaningful immigration reform in fact has to be meaningfully has to include a path to citizenship and in approach that basically provides for an opportunity for all. hard work even law abiding tax spain undocumented workers to become

incorporated into the american economy. by legalizing them and providing them with a reasonable opportunity to over time become united states citizens so i couldn't say what i couldn't say right now that goes far enough but we certainly are going to continue working to make sure that he does call us far as possible under the circumstances now as i mentioned a moment ago on one aspect that this is all contention as ramping up border security is something that we heard the republican lawmakers that are part of the gang of eight i reiterate today but is this really what the country needs right now are the majority of immigrants really coming over from all over the border while they're not in fact i think republicans have recognized this since two thousand and five to now. rests by border patrol agents along the mexican us border. total numbers has dropped dramatically close to. eighty percent.

so you know that's very very significant now whether they mean that significant border control means one you know one hundred percent effective border control i mean i think that that would be. just an achievable in and saw were hopeful that you know the fact that all these changes on the ground are there now for all to see you know will enhance the possibility of our finally getting significant meaningful immigration reform you know that there is no more argument now that nothing has happened in terms of border enforcement and the fact that the senators do they you know laid out a whole bunch of ideas about how they can still further enhance border patrol by using new technology incorporating drones into border patrol and all that sort of stuff hiring more on border patrol agents etc you know i think

they did a really leaves very little room for argument for the enemies of immigration reform in the in the in the fringes of the republican party so we're all hopeful that that we're moving in the right direction now mr was there is that i want questions over why now that's a really big question is why now and i do want to play a sound bite from senator john mccain from over the weekend and in mind shed light on why now. ok below straight to our look at the last election the last election we are losing dramatically the hispanic vote which we think should be ours for a variety of reasons and we've got to understand that second. we can't go on forever with eleven million people living in this country in the shadows in an illegal status. now mr here is only have about ten seconds left but it is this the reason why republicans are changing their tone because they realize they cannot win this

country without the minority community well that's one major reason another one would be economic i mean the united states is projected to need more workers in the future for the manufacturing and cheap sectors of the economy and lastly it wouldn't be fair to say that the you know the struggle there for years has been carried out by millions upon millions of latino person some people of goodwill in the united states to bring about comprehensive reform you know that's also a big factor in many states cannot go around criticizing people for violating human rights and so on and so forth when they're dividing families in the united states one. director of the us a thank you so much for joining us thank you and that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com flash r.t. america and don't forget to click comment and for those stories to your friends and also for a lot of the information.