most of the various interest that drive us foreign policy are motivated by reasonably you know beneficent motives combined with this self interest that they may not even recognize but the the results tend to be poor but. not always and there tends to be a short term logic in the situation which is that we can talk about in detail if you want but when you did resign you were treated as a dissenter as and i asked how did the u.s. state treat you then and have they treated you since the state department by and large treated me very well but very cautiously that is to say. a lot of people who quietly agreed with me sent very quiet messages. not through official channels to say so but the state department believe they had completely correctly there was a very minor efforts you know essentially from the the think tank establishment to

say pay no attention to this man he's just another you know malcontent but but by and large. what i said was allowed to speak for itself. other services are much more vindictive the intelligence services if if you dissent in the cia or the n.s.a. they will use these draconian secrecy laws to persecute you well before you quit you did express your dissatisfaction about what was going on what is the policy making and decision making process i mean who has the final decision and is it actually very inflexible it depends on the issue in minor issues that are not of major domestic political importance the state department policy process is is pretty good the job of the state department is to balance all of the conflicting

interests with large issues like the iraq war. the reason i did not really protest in advance was it was clear to all of us in the state department that the decision had been taken by the white house and imposed and there was no room for discussion on that issue the state department had been completely marginalized there even colin powell who you know had serious reservations and fought and was essentially stomped all over by by cheney by rumsfeld by well who by a weak president who allowed himself to be manipulated by people who were savvier than he but despite all that you would say in your opinion that it is the white house that makes the final call ultimately it is the white house yes and the the difficulty is the president the united states is not an expert on foreign policy

he's someone whose instincts. tend to be very sound but his instincts are formed by the the domestic policy process and i learned george w. bush was completely correct that war is popular at home he was a catastrophic president until september eleventh two thousand and one where even though he handled it badly the mere fact of a crisis that he was handling made him reelected boy and no one punished him for the iraq war in two thousand and four even though it was already by then a disastrous war ok well let's talk about the current president at the moment president barack obama do you feel that there is a way forward for the u.s. and russia to work together to solve the crisis in syria the u.s. and russia have a lot of interests in common and. i hope that that

. domestic politics in both countries will be put to the side to allow the serious discussions to take place my own instinct is you know to stay out of it as much as possible aware that even the most well intentioned humanitarian intervention has side effects that can be tremendously destructive but obviously the u.s. and russia need to be talking need to be figuring out ways that they can put pressure on all sides in a coordinated way to push for a negotiated solution that isolates the the radical islamists as far as possible while it is complicated but one issue that isn't complicated is the use of drones and there you seem pakistan do you think president obama would change the policy. to be frank that's my biggest disappointment with president obama that he accepted the politically convenient logic

that the problem of terrorism is one that can be personalized identify this person take him out and buy extra judicial means and the problem will be solved and that's obviously not true the the major direct cost of the drone campaign in pakistan is to deal with it allies the government of pakistan in the eyes of its own people a government that cannot you know. keep its own house in order and allows foreigners to to launch drones is a government that people see as weak and incapable of protecting the national interest america needs a strong legitimate government of pakistan because that country is a very dangerous mess with problems all around it. and so i'm completely against drone strikes partly because they. do not solve the problem

of terrorism even terrorism directed against us secondly they they make pakistan more unstable and we want a stable pakistan so i mean not to be too simplistic but do you think if pakistan could put a stronger government in power then the u.s. would not use drones is that a fair assessment a strong legitimate pakistani government would not tolerate drones but also we would not need to use drones it's a chicken and egg situation but. i would say the united states should have a much less visible presence not only in pakistan but throughout the middle east we should go back to traditional diplomacy. you know close private in gauge went through embassies but. the idea that the u.s. military can be effective cost effective diplomats in the region has proved to be

wrong. one time i bet a is another contentious issue do you think that president obama will close that well he promised to close it he tried to close it congress would not let him close it. there is this psychosis about terrorism that terrorists are intrinsically evil people who sort of contagious like lepers who if you let them out into the world they will infect everything around them and this is nonsense you know some of the people in guantanamo were a few of them were innocent most of them were simply you know people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with an ideology that had pushed them into doing something that was you know fatally dangerous that there. the united states government has lost so much from this violation of its own constitutional

standards. you know it would be better to let them all go even give them a kalashnikov as when you let them go but you cannot persuade the u.s. congress of that for three superstition reason you know this superstitious reasons fundamentally now and in the region is the whole we've got problems in the north of the mediterranean economically and politically we've got a lot of turmoil in the south. do you feel there is any solution to this when g. feel that things might improve we're currently living in a world where the in balance between resources and population has put massive stress on democratic institutions a lot of those institutions seem to be failing at the moment. we need to recognize the direct link between having the resources to distribute and

making consensus based government possible. my hope is that it technological change and political progress will go together to inject new resources into into the region enough to buy the kind of consensus required for democratic government i know that's kind of abstract but if that doesn't happen we will see. this breakdown on all sides getting worse and so we need to address it directly at a global level. fascinating to see thank you very much for your thoughts thank you .

good leverage sure curbeam was able to build a new most sophisticated robot which fortunately doesn't give a darn about anything tim's mission to teach the creation why it should care about humans and. this is why you should care only on the dog. get his toy and settle this question about. david cameron's under increasing pressure to guarantee a vote on the case future if you have a cell britain's european. but such a divorce could cause a stroke that. some of these traditional chili lines they've been bred and developed and passed down from generation to. this is a total struction of the culture of mexico by telling them i mean this this is not going to impact asylum in mexico whatever happens here. we're eating at about six

in the in the open in a. genetically engineered crops why do you think this country is full of obese and sick people because we have a crappy food system. look . live

live. live . hold it. hold of. her mother lynn. goodspeed. her.

mum will. ultimately be limitlessly good little. luck. just see the mother and a. little fun of a little. despairing

gone tunnel for it is there now admit one hundred three inmates are involved in the hunger strike that's past the one hundred day mark promises to shut the notorious jail still on cat. a.p. news agency discovers its journalists have been under surveillance for months the u.s. government secretly monitoring their calls. deadly car blast rocks damascus across the border in turkey people vent anger at government support for the syrian rebels meanwhile the u.n. and russia agree on an international peace conference to tackle the deadly conflict . also this week a spy scandal rusher exposes the cia's chief in moscow to u.s. intelligence is caught red handed trying to recruit or.