caramel coloring to match the scotch well the attorney general of new jersey had this to say i don't drink rubbing alcohol in my house to manage designed for very specific purpose to rob and i drink. well the bars and restaurants face suspensions of their liquor license and could lose their licenses if there was enough aisle ations so if you're heading to the bar in jersey this weekend better be careful what you drink that's going to do it for now i'll see you back and aids. are you. following welcome the cross talk for all things are considered i'm peter lavelle suicide bombings sectarian strife central authorities losing control and

a great sense of despair in the lack of enfranchise from not only describing syria but also iraq the recent spike two bombings and terror attacks in iraq have many concerned the country could collapse into civil war it would appear this part of the world has no shortage of shock and awe as result of western backed military interventions. cross-talk iraq i'm joined by my guests in washington michael o'hanlon he's a senior fellow at the brookings institution. journalist at antiwar dot com and we also have grant smith he is director of institute for research middle eastern policy right cross talk rules in effect i mean you can jump in anytime you want kelli i'm going to cut to the chase is iraq going into civil war sectarian civil war well as we've seen in the last week or so we've seen an alliance with the sunni . factions in iraq with the al qaeda backed factions in syria

so we are starting to see what worse peaceful sunni protests in iraq turned violent and i think if that's a bellwether for things to come where we are we're seeing peaceful protest turned violent because of al qaeda stepping up its attacks the violence i think there was almost four hundred my know there was seven hundred killings of civilians in iraq last month up to four hundred this week i think so if that's any indication. now looking at michael not any good indications coming out of iraq is the country in a state of collapse well i don't know if it's in collapse or civil war i agree with the way kelly put it that things are very worrisome so i'm not going to try to predict the inevitability of collapse or civil war i think that would be a big mistake and not yet warranted by the evidence and i think the rockies have a great reluctance to return to the horrible days of where they were just

a short time ago so if anything we do have that factor working in our favor that iraq ease are going to resist returning to all out sectarian conflict because they've lived it they've seen it and they know that if they return to that there is no particular reason to think it will stop there's no intervening party no outside force that's going to stop at this time however there mistrust for each other especially among political leaders is a lot more intense than it was just two or three years ago and that makes it harder to prevent the descent into worse things so michael you might go to the u.s. the u.s. supports the political arrangement in iraq a lot of people would call it a dictatorship how do you react to that. it's moving way too closely towards autocracy for my taste i think that prime minister maliki has made some big mistakes in the last few months that have essentially exceeded his power i think he's put out arrest warrants for example for people who were patriotic iraqi

leaders because he had political disagreements with them mr assad is a good example a very good man a man i've met a man i've respected i think a sunni but also a nationalist a person who wants to serve his country and unbelievably maliki wanted to have him arrested that sort of thing is extraordinarily destructive and so i share the concern i get i i'm not going to use words quite as strong as the ones you're using but i share the concern that we're headed in directions we don't want to go and that maliki is acting in an autocratic fashion ok grant jump in i mean the u.s. started this mess in the first place go ahead yeah i think michael o'hanlon predictive not too long ago that we'd see devolution in the shia stand sunni stan and kurdistan entirely predictable when you go into a contrary with strong central authority remove it remove the army let all hell

break loose basically over a period of years of various ethnic cleansing in the population of areas of refugees of course i mean entirely predictable and what neither of them have mentioned is there's absolutely no sign that this is going to stop anytime soon so i think we're really reaping the whirlwind of what was essentially a huge scam perpetrated on the american people to get them to go into this country and we haven't learned anything from it at all kelly would you like to pick up on that scam and we haven't learned anything. well i think i think ryan crocker recently former ambassador to iraq said it best when he described our our ethos and the american ethos we we go in there we knock things about we break things and we pledge to rebuild and when we find that it's

a little more difficult than anticipated we we leave and i think that says it all i mean when you have somebody in a stablished of figure saying that who is ascribing to us our inability to follow through on our promises that that says a lot and i think that's exactly what happened we went in there the invasion didn't really go as planned we will be done soon under. a government that's an understatement well there's an understatement but what i'm getting to is is not only did the military just take the military side out of it we have not been able to help reconstruct that country and they are so many metrics that i can go on for days but you know i think if i could make my point i think if you want to look at the best measure of failure success is look at the children in iraq and i think if a country success is based on whether it can provide educate and keep its children

safe if we apply that to a rack we're looking at that failure and i do not think is that has that is what we set out to do every magic trick whether it be education mental health safety. that there are failing miserably in iraq that is our legacy there and that in that is what we are going to have to face in years to come you know michael and colin powell's that if you break it you own it so let's apply the to iraq. well there's a lot to talk about on iraq and i know where we're mixing in a lot of different periods of time in our discussion and a lot of different issues you know i was a critic of some parts of the iraq mission i was a supporter of some parts of the iraq mission i'm a little less critical than grants of the idea that we. quickly left or you know somehow or the as kelly just said that we didn't have staying power i mean i think

we left a little too soon but we were also there for a very long time and part of what this underscores is just the inherent difficulty so on that point i do agree with ground inherent difficulty of going it was a mistake grant go ahead if that's what the debate is about if that's what the debate is about how you go there but let me just finish one point with ok go ahead michael finish your point go ahead. yeah i mean i think the frankly the moderator you may need to tell us which issue also want to debate because i think there are a lot of different things we're doing talking about iraqi state that's what we're talking about that was in the introduction that ok it was clear that was that was your word which i disagree with my point is if the iraqi stay were already collapsed and we were just going to revisit the ten years of history then we that's one debate i would actually rather think about how we can try to avoid the collapse which i do not believe so do you think the united states should go back into iraq it was should the u.s.

go back into iraq then you break it you won't it not militarily no not militarily but you're conflating the very unfortunate events of the last few months and last couple of years in iraq with the dog days of two thousand the i'm not i'm saying it was perfectly predictable this ok grant you want to jump in. yeah here's here's the key metric the bottom line is if you take brown university's cost of the iraq war metric this is what americans care about by the way the united states net present value investment through twenty fifty in iraq is now six trillion dollars a lot of that money flowed into crony contractors that said they were going to build schools and institutions and government in a box and all of that crap it never happened americans have been left on the hook for the equivalent of an entire half year of g.d.p. this was basically taking what could have been productive investments in education

housing infrastructure building in the united states and throwing it into an iraqi burn pit and now to add insult to injury we have this country that again our invasion was a scam the american people were given a series of different hoaxes and frauds for why they needed to go in now we're left. hearing the same talking points from the same people who got us into there about what we should do next i think the scary thing is is that a lot of the institutions that were so gung ho to get into iraq have turned of course our attention to iran that could cost of the entire year's worth of g.d.p. do invade and fail and so i think this conversation that we're having needs to be a little bit broader and connects the key concerns here in america which is which are basically why is our policy making so. so terribly

broken ok michael you would like to reply to that any parts of that. well there are a lot of thoughtful parts of what grant said and we share some of the same concerns some different concerns but i actually i'm going to put the question back to you mr moderator to tell me what question you most want to focus on today because if we're talking about the decision to invade iraq i mean that we have whatever saying is related to what happened the entire event the war years and now we have this that was perfectly predictable isn't it ok the surge the fall surge and now we're seeing it again good it's not that simple go ahead then reply ok if the issue now is what do we do about iraq today no we're not going to return militarily that's absolutely the united states are all going to believe what has happened in iraq partially ok but i think the more and this is what i'm going to do about it

now well what should we do about it you know excuse me what should we do about it i miss the what should we do about it yeah that's what i was trying to say a minute ago. do we have a time lag on this communication trying to answer that question well it looks like you don't really want to do it but you don't want to answer the question all right well wasting time here we're going to get i can get it how it would show a short break here and when we return we'll continue our discussion on iraq stay with hockey. please.

here's mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dog. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot like you sorry. you know what kind of self you. want us to defeat terrorism the only poll that crist. has really about it's. going to look at you distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm abby martin and we're going to break that.

more news today violence is once again flared up from these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada from china operations are all day .

welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter about to mind you we're discussing events unfolding in iraq. we still have kelly and grant michael decided to leave the program i guess he didn't like the questions grant you want to jump in right now all right you know

yeah peter this is the problem in the united states we don't have rough and tumble conversations like this between informed analysts so you know i'm not surprised that michael hamlin decided to leave but you know let's just think about his think tank is a microcosm of the iraq invasion problem in two thousand and two the brookings institution was a centrist progressive think tank that didn't have a strong line about iraq what happened early spring of two thousand and two israeli american media mogul haim sobhani moved in carved out the suburban center at brookings by paying thirty million dollars and suddenly martin in the and all of the people that unit war on the war path for going into iraq and so a person like o'hanlon who's been flip flopping about was that good was it bad he no longer has much of

a track record to even talk about the current problems because he was part of creating this current problem so i'm really not surprised that he bailed out it took a lot of manipulation to get the united states into what i call iraq scam and the brookings institution o'hanlon or part of that so no longer he doesn't want to defend it kelly you know. one of the i wish michael had stayed because i want to talk a little bit about syria right now and we're repeating the same mistakes i think it's pretty obvious yes. do you mean like in terms of what the u.s. policy is moving forward yeah i really like interrogating possible intervention or are mean looking for governments after the fact you know all of these things. well you know i'm going to you know i might differ from what that what you're thinking i think that the obama administration seems to be a little bit more skittish about intervention i don't know how i don't know if

that's having a good or a bad effect in terms of what the long term fall out from that is so i'm not sure i don't think we're you know ok so what i'm saying what i'm saying is here is that syria is a sick carian society is well ok are they are they looking at it in the right way grant jump in here because these are different types of societies and let's go ahead. let's look at let's look at what's behind us policy in the region because this cut to the chase when the bush administration came in it had a lot of acolytes of the israeli clean break plan which is a thirty four point plan for the stabilize iraq the stabilize syria stop the peace process between israel and palestine and a whole bunch of other things this was a laundry list that they brought into the bush administration from their standpoint

from the standpoint of all of the organizations including a pac the american israel public affairs committee that lobby on this stuff that are the dominant driving force in iraq is a success it's a success that it's been neutralized that it's no longer a threat and syria is becoming a success quite quickly it is weaker by the day israel can fire off missile attacks from the periphery and it can sound the alarm that israel is in danger so if people like michael o'hanlon and his backers like bond were honest about this they would be overjoyed with what's happening in each of these countries ok but this is what i think maybe the short term you may be right i understand your thinking but kelly it doesn't work out that well does it the unintended consequences is what i'm. getting at no i'm yeah i mean if you don't mind just going back to iraq you know and i kind of wanted to answer this before but you know

the fact that we we have left that country so unstable and if there is the if if if things really blow up in syria and it looks like it's going that way we there's already masses of refugees coming back into iraq from syria because remember there's three million refugees iraqi refugees from our war that have gone into syria and jordan lebanon and other places now they're being forced to come back the ones from syria so we have an unstable situation where there's lack of food education and health care and iraq we have add more refugees to that plus the instability of the sectarian violence where you have the sunni al-qaeda in iraq joint making alliances in syria creating all sorts of of violent opportunities there we have not left a country that is able to take care of itself in libya is a good answer and it's libya little libya is

a good example about. right so you know before mike left i when michael left you know i wanted to point out that we're not talking about just the past here i mean some of that's going to bring him to that i'm so thank you kelly thank you very much because that's what i was trying to explain to him go ahead yeah. yeah we're talking about the present what kind of country did we leave behind is it able to take care of itself when you have all of this instability happening just over the border did we leave a government in control there the maliki government that is looking you know the best interests of its own people or is its best interest in iran so i don't all accounts we failed there because if the goal was of the search for example was to create a space for political reconciliation and stability in that country it failed because we have neither there and on an end another note he said well what are we supposed

to do well how about no we don't want to put troops back there i don't think anybody wants to do but they've reduced the foreign aid from like twenty billion in two thousand and five to about a billion now ok u.s. taxpayers are probably saying listen we need to take care of our own right now but this just goes with the with the the ongoing theme that we've reduced our aid we've reduced the state department presence there we've we've reduced the actual on the ground attempts to help them rebuild their government has nothing to do with military has all to do with helping them build rebuild their institutions so they can take care of themselves when crisis is at the door you know grand reconciliation was supposed to be very important but the americans dropped the ball there because the surge is you know there really wasn't a surge ok go ahead was ethnic cleansing go ahead. yeah i don't i don't buy that whole surges victory and that's been adequately debunked by

many many analysts but you know the united states attention shifted quickly from sort of the fraudulent cantera. hospital building road building things that never got completed to immediately promoting the sale of new wings of sixteen fighters and also also it's a very high tech equipment billions and billions of dollars in the military sales authorization pipeline and so the strategy of pivoting out of the country leaving all of these fraudulent projects to collapse but then drumming up support for major military sales as being complete you know kelly it's very easy i mean this is a very rich country with oil but you can't even benefit from its own oil to this day really absolutely and if you if you look on the news today a rock is poised to double its oil production by two twenty twenty so the oil

is being produced but it's only going to a few lucky alit whether it be the corporations which are international corporations or the government elites it's not finding its way to the people you know you have a situation and where one in four children are malnourished malnourished that's unacceptable for a country that is enjoying these these oil these the fruits from the oil industry so there's twenty five percent of iraqis are living below the poverty line. and less than half of children aged twelve to seventeen are even going to school you have your friends some say it's up to upwards of three million orphans in iraq right now and the state is not. even investing and proper orphanages that are free of scandal so you have these state run orphanages that just want to make you cry

because the children are being so mistreated unicef came out with a report just recently that said one in three iraqi children do not have fundamental rights meaning they don't have access to health care and education are free of abuse whether it be a home. you know so we would never tolerate that here in the united states we would never tolerate that you know nearly seven hundred children killed in violent attacks since december but yet we turn away from it because it was our responsibility and we did drop the ball and i'm just afraid that it can't you know me going to grace is granted if there is a rack fixable in any way you can consider that fixable you know there are there are two things. there are two things that did right number one when we

were trying to put in permanent military bases all over the country treat it like a call in the they said no they did that right and then the second thing they did right was what we were trying to hammer them into selling off their oil fields instead of doing production sharing agreements where companies would come in and exploit already discovered oil they said no they said you know that's not the way we're going to do it so they've shown a sense of autonomy and intelligence in terms of not being a colony and not giving a little grand how about being just a clip about being a clone talk or see if they've done pretty well in that area well you know that. well that can certainly happen just about anywhere peter and i don't knock them for that to the extent to the extent they're not going to be able to hide a sudden developments of absolute clipped ocracy i think there is hope you know iraq is an incredibly educated society yes and there is hope that civil society can can take control once

a legitimate indigenous government is allowed to to allow them to come forth twenty seconds kelly get me give me a prognosis twenty seconds well well i'd just like to say that when you have such a massive brain drain of the academics and health professionals during the war who have not returned the educated society doesn't look very educated anymore and it's not their fault all right i want to thank you nice to get your remaining bottom line and i want to thank my two guest it remained in washington and i want to thank our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember. these.

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