one of the wealthiest pieces of land on earth but its people are some of the poorest lucie county r.t.e. baghdad iraq. well that to brings up today for the moment with a news team in about a half an hour from now the meantime stay with us for pizza lavelle's latest edition of cross talk that's coming up shortly after this break. a fairly dickinson university study has revealed a twenty nine percent of americans think that a revolution won't just happen in america but needs to be done in order to protect individual liberty if respondents consider themselves conservative than that number is bumped up to forty four percent that's nearly half also fox news found out that since nine eleven the percent of americans willing to sacrifice their personal freedom to reduce the threat of terrorism is at an all time low this number might

sound trivial but it only takes a tiny percent of the population actually start a revolution i mean how many communists were in russia at the start of nine hundred seventeen and how many were there at the end revolution may sound like a nice thing to a growing number of people but the media wrongly portrays revolution as some fun video game battle where freedom fighters toppled a statue of the dictator and then democracy just instantly comes about and life is good and happy i ask you to ignore movies like v. for vendetta and look at history revolutions cause horrible destruction that could take decades to repair i guess what when your economy collapses because a revolt infrastructure breaks down and the shelves go bare also professional revolutionaries get their supplies from somebody and a foreign powers were to say funded barrack and revolutionaries they would want something in return aloha and good by alaska if you look at history then you'll see that revolution is brutal and ugly and it's truly the last resort but still is a resort but that's just my opinion.

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter a live oh is it turning into an overblown scandal or a reflection of a foreign policy poorly thought out and executed the terrorist attack on the american diplomatic outpost in benghazi last september has become a political football to attack the obama administration and hillary clinton it appears mistakes were made but is there a proper focus on the most agree just wants. to crosstalk the benghazi affair i'm joined by raymond tanter in washington he is

the president of the iran policy committee and author of the upcoming book arab rebels and iranian dissidents also in washington we have been mcgovern he is co-founder of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity and in atlanta we cross to jay bookman he's a columnist and blogger at the atlanta journal constitution all right gentlemen cross talk rules and i think that means you can jump in anytime you want if i go to you first in washington is this is scandal or just incompetence or both. well the scandal is all out of proportion and what needs to happen is adults need to look at the situation and determine number one what happened number two why it happened and i'm not talking about additional security measures and three can it happen again and will it be able to be prevented and the answer to that last one key one is no it cannot be prevented because the reason why it happened is not a lack of security measures but it has to do with u.s. policy with that part of the world that's why they hate us that's why all our

diplomats are at more peril than ever before ok interesting they're ready if i can go to you if i go to you in washington incompetence or a real scandal. well there's a bit of both incompetence and real scandal that said the united states is not responsible for the terror attacks in benghazi in september eleventh two thousand and eleven the united states is responsible for its own actions but else. the militant terrorist group is responsible for the what happened to the ambassador stevens and his colleagues at the diplomatic post in benghazi i was fortunate enough to serve president reagan and i had libya as part of my portfolio and i always worried about the tribes in benghazi but that was forty years ago and

everyone on the team kept saying to me don't worry about the tribes and guys they will hold on to been ghazi and he will always be subservient to tripoli but it didn't happen that way ok abram and what do you think how do you feel about obama's response to all of this i mean initially there's a cover up. and i don't believe there's a cover up by believe that that's where the incompetence comes out comes in you don't get. if you don't get ahead of the story by releasing all the information early like all the e-mails should have been released a year ago then those e-mails will come back to bite you that's incompetence that's exactly what's happening that's what's happening right now isn't it. yes that's what's happening and that's the that part is the incompetence part but it's not the united states' fault that the benghazi attack occurred it's not american policy it's what else should ryall right will then come do. you want to answer this

question of scandal or incompetence or both. some of both but i think it's vastly overblown as to its importance when you have u.s. personnel and it with what is essentially a war zone and been gazi. chris stevens knew the risk he was taking when he put himself in that situation the state department. let him make his own decisions about where he went and how much security he took with them because they trusted him as the in this country expert. he made a bad choice a bad decision but to turn that into a a major political scandal i think is vastly exaggerated reporting of what happened there may mcgovern what do you think was actually happening there why did this story change with the cia doing something there. i mean they don't want to talk about they don't want to talk about you know. well i'm free to talk about things

because all i know comes out of that in the public media but we do have people like david brooks saying david brooks the conservative commentator in the new york times saying that this was a cia installation a cia operation we have a look of a source very close to david petraeus at that point he was head of the cia and she says her name was broadwell or something like that she said publicly in denver that the cia was trying to interrogate people at a see the installation there in benghazi and that the locals knew these people were their brothers and sisters and that was the reason now no one has even looked into that so we have all manner of explanations as to why it happened what was going on and got to see why the ambassador was in benghazi is a question that hasn't even been addressed among all these talking points stuff but

the thing that i would like to stress is this in mid october before the national election here in this country darrell ice the head of the government oversight committee held a hearing and they had star witnesses and they had this fellow big strapping diplomatic security officer eric nordstrom and he was their star witness and they said you asked for more security and get it yes sure well i we think that that more security would have prevented this what do you think now nobody knows but i will quote every dog strum quote having an extra foot of wall or an extra half dozen guards who are agents would not have enabled us to respond to this kind of attack the ferocity and intensity of the attack was nothing we had seen in libya or that i had seen in my time in the diplomatic security service and. quote now what does it mean that means all our diplomats in the state of the art with work

weaponry rocket propelled grenades shoulder fired missiles which twenty thousand was by our. attack on libyan regime change regime change call it what it is to do regime change raymond what do you think about that what was the ambassador doing there no one likes to talk about that what was his relationship to the cia well i would like to talk about that either there's. well the chief of mission the ambassador is head of the entire. group of agencies the cia had an installation it was a diplomat called the diplomatic outpost and it was lightly secured and there was supposed to be a back up team of libyan locals to help but as jay bookman said. christie was called his own shots because he was the expert in the area and but i think it's state's fault to allow stevens to have allowed stevens to call his

own shots because that's not the way the interagency process ought to work you should have the inputs from various sectors including the of the military on one and the agency to cia headquarters to decide where the investor should be exposed because he's the bastard of the united states he's not kristie vince ok jay what do you think about that i mean the veracity of the attack you're going to jump in go ahead. i think mcgovern makes a very good point and quoting the security expert. security experts opinion professional opinion is that nothing we could have done would have prevented that assault of that size from succeeding it was probably close to one hundred armed personnel who launched that assault it was no conceivable manpower the united states could place that that would have prevented well then why was there why it

was the boy or truth why was he there then if he couldn't be protected. it was his he had he come into benghazi by ship when the the rebellion was still underway he was used to taking these risks he thought he understood the risks he said he thought it was a legitimate risk to take now what he was that what his mission there was doing i don't know the expectation is that the cia mission there among its missions was to try to capture some of the surface to air missiles that may have been all our ships and missiles on the south re jump in to look like you want to say something go ahead. i think that there's abundant evidence that there were all manner of reasons why the cia was in benghazi on mars so to speak one was going running to the serial to the syrian rebels but it seems clear another was just to kind of find out who these who these people in benghazi are that we liberated well

. that's another of the strange as it is but we're trying to figure out you know are these good guys or the bad guys are the answer. or and so very little is known and you know the whole thing really smells when you have our top diplomat the secretary of state cackling in saying we came we saw he died after the atrocious death of moamar could offie that sort of black in the sea and eight states even more inspires people to do precisely what was done in big guys see two other diplomatic installations raymond would you like to reply to that . again i think that ray mcgovern is blaming the united states with the actions of terrorist and incompetence on the part of the obama administration does not mask the fact that ansar al sharia or some other

group that is been associated with al qaeda is responsible for the action it's almost like saying that willie sutton the bank robber he was asked why he robbed banks a set up because that's where the money is swirling sucking didn't say i robbed banks because i disagree with the policies of the philadelphia city council he didn't talk about policy he talked about getting the money the terrorist are terrorists al qaeda nine eleven why did that happen ray mcgovern has written that it's because of george w. bush that nine eleven happened that's nonsense it's not true. john. now that we're going to show breakaway reply to that after our short break stay with archy.

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welcome back to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're talking about the benghazi affair. ok we had to go to you raymond said something about what you've said in the past but i'd like to before that point out or ask a question how many terrorists like a like this kind were in libya before this happened before regime change. well i think when hillary clinton and her advisors decided to bomb and to bomb libya and depots the. khadafi that there were relatively few terrorists there now it's teeming with terrorism reminds me of iraq there were very few terrorists there before we attacked iraq now it's caning with terrorists but

getting back to raymond's point here you know i have never accused george bush of letting nine eleven happen i have accused him of incompetence you know just a month before nine eleven he was warned by my colleagues in the cia osama bin laden determined to attack within the united states and he did absolutely nothing so at best it's it's misfeasance rather than malfeasance but the point is here why why did highly cheap one hommage the mastermind behind nine eleven why did he say that he did it now they captured him before the nine eleven report and this is what the nine eleven report says on page one forty seven and i have it committed to memory quote honey check one home it's on me most toward the united states stem not from his his studies here as a person in north carolina but rather from his deep hatred of u.s. policy favoring israel period end quote that's never able to be mentioned in the

press but terrorists so-called people who don't like what the israelis are doing in palestine the west bank and elsewhere and who don't like our support for ridiculous regimes like the one in out. or saudi arabia you know they take it seriously when our policies impinge upon their neighbors their brothers and sisters and you have to look for the reason great change this you say and it's what we're hearing here i should say what we're hearing here is blowback you agree or disagree. i think to some degree there is blowback of course but i think it's also it's not as if we can withdraw from the middle east israel is part of it but. another part of it it's a critically important. area. if it goes to hell so to speak we'll be back in there with a lot of military force and it's to our benefit to try to you know what i mean.

maybe you're right and you know with oil and stuff like that i can understand it but when should the united states and nato be in the business of regime change while the future of the united states and nato did not begin the rebellion in libya the libya really being rebellion was had been underway for months before we intervened and when the bombing campaign started working when the bombing campaign started that's when the death toll really started to escalate. if i mean if i can go to you would you like to react to what ray mcgovern said. yes on march eighteenth. as i've written in my book arab rebels and iranian dissidents president obama gave the order to commit u.s. air. support to the to the libyan civilians and that was a turning point in the war because obama brought sarkozy and cameron along with him

in order to complete the triad. of actors some western actors nato actors to help on sea colonel qadhafi now with respect to the issue of regime change it's different strokes for different folks in regime change i think can work in a place like iran now from within because there's in the rayney an opposition but there is no opposition there was no opposition in libya and therefore when the libyan people try their best to overthrow the regime they got in trouble what about the trouble in iraq what about the trouble in iraq what about the trouble in libya you're saying we should do it again ray mcgovern go ahead again. with syria i guess i think what let me go ahead bring it me a personal observation ok as an army officer i took a solemn oath. to support and defend the constitution united states against all

enemies foreign and domestic this war against libya was illegal it was unconstitutional the power to declare war is finished it in the first article the constitution in our elected representatives in the congress and we heard leon panetta and hillary clinton saying that doesn't matter the president can do what every once in the name of national security when you start wars like this without the proper constitutional backpacking this is the kind of trouble you get into jay what do you think about that what is the learning curve here on the war on terror. that we're going to make mistakes and we will continue to make mistakes because there's no way we did not have perfect knowledge we did not have perfect in troll tragedies such as that at benghazi are going to happen it's part of the price of being involved in that part of the world it's a tough place we do but we don't have as we say peter what do you think that western power should determine there i mean we've had so many x.

example so far that don't work i agree i thought the invasion of iraq was that it was a terrible decision right from the get go but. the you said earlier that there was no libyan opposition there certainly was a libyan opposition the libyan opposition is is who started the rebellion that's who that's that we didn't invent that there was no libyan also there was an adult accord we came in and shorten the time frame of which that that rebellion took to overthrow gadhafi but it it came up out of the libyan people ok raman what do you account for of the chaos in libya today how do you account for that the chaos comes as a result of the sudden removal of authority and you have that anybody think about that for put anybody think about that at the time. i can't imagine that people hadn't thought about the consequences of using military force there's a whole package put together every time force is about to be use where you talk

about the secondary and tertiary consequences of using force but i want to get back to the issue of race mcgovern just statements about nine eleven i've done some research on his writing and he does in fact not just say that george w. bush was too used to nine eleven as a vehicle to go into iraq he also says he malchus the conspiracy theory that george will be rich bush created nine eleven now he can back away from that if he wants to but i want to go to make one more charge before he jumps in. the government said that. the resentment and u.s. support for the shah led to the seizure of the american embassy in tehran well it was ayatollah khomeini who wanted to consolidate his rule of the islamist after the secular mujahedeen had been the main driver in overthrowing the shah but

khomeini was having a battle with the motor dean about who was going to control polls shock iran so the notion that the american embassy seizure was due to american support of the shah is simply nonsense as i point out and in my book case it looks i guess if the united states never makes any mistakes here go ahead. well i would have to say that i'm not but even mentioned. the backing away from a church that i never made raymond i'm talking rather the talking points of the neo cons what i will say with respect to iran was that raymond should remember that there was a duly constituted government in iran in one thousand nine hundred fifty three most at dick's government freely elected and he had this posterous idea of thinking that the oil and rerun the benefits of that should read down to the iranian people oh my

goodness i became a trillion that's amazing cia by this so we overthrew him right and then we imposed the worst dictatorship since adolf hitler on iran the shah's brutal brutal regime and everyone who's been in iran knows that ok and so they really wanted to get back let's get back to living here what is the learning curve here on the war on terror if any well learning curve is to find out why they hate us ok jay you want to jump in there why they hate us i think why they hate us and there's a whole variety of reasons that they hate us and some of them are actually pretty good. but that doesn't mean we can't burn for most mistakes not try to do those same things. to the poor people in syria today who hate us because we're not intervening because there's watching hundreds of thousands hundreds and thousands of their loved ones women children being slaughtered and we're not intervening i'm

not advocating that we intervene but there are people there in syria today who hate us and will hate us for generations because we're not intervening it's a case in which there are on realistic expectations of what the united states can do and should do and if the idea that we can please everybody in that region by not doing anything is simply untrue ok mo maybe if the united states stopped droning people some people would be happy ray you want to jump in go ahead. i think jay is absolutely right the key seems to me that when hillary clinton the secretary of state says assad regime has to go yes well that gives that provides a catalyst for each and every little terrorist group to make sure they're the ones that make it go and the unexpected or the the anticipated support by the united states is what keeps this thing going in my view so if the united states gets together with russia an interested party and brings people to the table that's the

solution to this thing not arming stillmore rebels for regime change came in i'm going to the last word thirty seconds i mean washington regime change regime change from within. requires an organized opposition the mujahideen in iran is an organized opposition to bring one hundred thousand plus people to paris every monday a bad bet on everyone so topic for another program gentlemen we have run out of what i hear in these and many thanks to my guest today in washington and that land and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are deep seated next time and remember crosstalk.

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a report on our. poll coming up on our t.v. the justice department's tracking of a.p. phones that still leaves the obama administration right in the face obama has defended those subpoenas a phone records while holder tries to shield himself from the scandal more on the drama unfolding here in d.c. even after the u.s. invasion of iraq the country still faces continuous violence of the country is plagued with insurgent bombings that are taking their toll on infrastructure a look at the results of the war from inside iraq just ahead. a group of russian developers have created a new social network but what's so special about it all how about communicating with other people even if you don't speak the same language more on the network that weakens the language barrier later in the show.