for your media. cd party dot com. coming up on r t the debate over u.s. military intervention in syria rages on while congress appears ready to vote down any airstrike the international community looks for alternatives the latest developments up ahead. another new leak about the surveillance state here in the u.s. turns out the smartphone that's permanently attached to your hands is also a smart way for the n.s.a. to follow your every communication more on that coming up. and there's an old saying that money can't buy everything but if you have the cash you can get an upgrade at the seal beach jail in california or on paying for a five star cell treatments later in today's show.

it's monday september ninth find him in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching or t let's go straight to syria where violence continues to plague the streets forcing the international community to consider action in the u.s. lawmakers once again are convening on capitol hill to sort through the evidence of the use of sarin gas by the all software jeanne but new today russian foreign minister sergei lavrov has announced that he will push for syrian president all saud to surrender control of his chemical stockpiles to the international community by the end of this week after wrapping up talks with his syrian counterpart walid all wallah lavrov said quote we are calling on the syrian leadership to not only agree on placing chemical weapons storage sites under international control but also on its subsequent destruction and fully joining the treaty on. prohibition of

chemical weapons so possibly a ray of hope to prevent more violence it's a move un secretary general ban ki-moon has come out in support of and one that syria up here is to be open to however this announcement comes on the same day that c.b.s. released part of an exclusive interview with all all sides where the syrian president threatened to retaliate if the u.s. strikes listen american people want to know you know if there is an attack you know what might be the representations and who might be engaged in those repercussions before the september in my discussions with many of them in the united states some of them are congressman i used to say don't do that. is different story you're going to pay the price if you're not wise and you know the total so nobody explained we are going to be repercussions. stricken way of dealing with terrorism but nobody expected events of september you cannot expect it

is difficult for anyone to tell you what is going to happen if. everything is on the brink of explosion you have to expect as a. national security advisor susan rice former secretary of state hillary clinton former president bill clinton the deputy national security adviser tony blinken held conferences today making their case for action in the country lincoln says the u.s. is ready to negotiate but will not be afraid of all all sod's threats. and it is our. judgment that. president assad in syria would have very little interest in taking a fight with united states of america. so i don't think that is likely at all. second with regard to. reports today about this russian initiative we have we seen the reports we want to take a hard look at the proposal will obviously discuss the idea with the russians and of course we would welcome

a decision and action by syria to give up its chemical weapons the whole point of what we're doing is to stop syria from using these weapons again so a lot of talk a little action as of yet it's a high stakes game of poker to see who will show their cards first or only this time this time they're gambling in lives. while congress debates the need for intervention public opinion is still split about military action in syria the latest polls indicate that the public still overwhelmingly disapproves of the notion the are. right now right now there are a number of protests were held over the weekend in opposition of military action including war demonstrations right here in d.c. artie's arena stand quist was there and she tells us why so many are so against the u.s. action in syria. it was revenue of syria as congress prepares to consider military

action in syria protesters turned out saturday in new york city and in front of the white house they demonstrated what public opinion polls are showing repeatedly that the american public doesn't want to get involved. but disregard for public opinion in such matters is hardly new two thirds of americans say it's not worth fighting. so near that you don't care what they were going to think no i think you cannot be . blown off course by the. fluctuations in the public opinion polls fast forward to a different time country and administration but the disconnect between a president and a people remains a c.n.n. poll released monday found that seven in ten americans think airstrikes wouldn't achieve significant goals or be in america's national interest why would you put down the regime and hand. or a terrorist group a rule of the country president obama acknowledged however that the government

could move forward without the american public on board ultimately to listen your constituents but you've also got to make some decisions about what you believe. is right for america and that's the same. for me is present united states there are a whole bunch of decisions that i make that are unpopular as you well know and congressmen don't listen to their people so i feel it's me then there is no democracy anywhere president obama claims that an intervention is necessary to quote maintain the international norm on banning chemical weapons but only thirty three percent of americans recently polled agree that such an intervention would be an effective deterrent that's ridiculous when you want to send a message by killing more people another talking point has been that american credibility would suffer if we do not intervene but once again the american public just doesn't see it that way seventy four percent of americans recently polled claim that to the contrary they believe it likely that we will suffer significant

blowback with an intervention in syria and all it will do is further drive a hatred towards the united states for acting so arbitrarily around the world which can only create blowback that's dangerous to the american people. and americans also came out to plead with congress and the president i have my entire family and my mom and my sisters my brothers my cousins everybody that i love and i and i'm so passionate to see once again this war of store that it's. it's a cold this out of my heart and protesters question the evidence of chemical attacks being presented there's a lot of reports that it's the rebels that are doing the chemical warfare there was an accident did they drop some weapons you knows will really happen these baltimore residents were hoping their representative elijah cummings would listen to voters like them we send a message just say i will never forgive him if he does if he votes for the war in a radio interview cummings recently admitted but i tell you something when you've got ninety seven percent of your constituents saying no it's kind of hard to say

yes meanwhile senator dianne feinstein of california head of the senate intelligence committee doesn't share coming struggle about the phone calls her office gets it what's coming in is overwhelmingly negative there's no question about that but you see then they don't know what i know they haven't heard what i heard it can't be very democratic votes if you're keeping secrets from the american people and if you vote against what you know your constituents don't want the large chunk of congress reportedly remains undecided on the resolution outside of congress constituents have been clear everybody say chemical weapons is bad everybody knows that but it's not america's business what's going on we're not the world's police that we have brains we can use our brains and do something peaceful . in washington d.c. greenest and quist party. meanwhile the historic christian city of milan left syria has become the latest scene of clashes between government and rebel forces as of

this afternoon islamist al nusra forces have taken control of the city christians there fear that they could become we could be murdered simply for their religious beliefs our team is more enough a notion is in the law and brings us this report. we entered my lair through its ancient gauge burnt and demi in recent attacks shortly after the syrian army announces that most of the militants were pushed back signs of the recent battle and destruction a reverie where we were told to move fast and to follow the military's vehicles without stopping or even slowing down there are some parts of the road where we have to speed up officers still fear they could be snipers around we hear them shouting go go fast on one turn we suddenly stop. it's hard to understand exactly what happened we only hear a loud boom and feel the earth shake. we get out of the car to take

a look around when our inside my. question given to you all over the world now is the battlefield look at this. and then we realized we have landed in the heart of this battle as some new bullets start flying around us we've ended model of village with the army but just just a few minutes later they told us to get back the militants launch an attack fire in and throw in explosives from the safety of high ground so this is what we're doing right now we're coming back to you to the entrance this is where. a car bomb exploded on wednesday morning and this is how it all started after a suicide attack method turns mostly from the last group stormed in and since then the question is have been continued for three days and as you can see they are

considered now soldiers firing shots back but they can't even see enemy fighters who are cooped up in the hiding places. the row militants and that my little now an hour and a few hotel this is the mountain top or tell which one. was. also from behind the mountains surrounding the. village and that's is where the danger lies because the raw many snipers and the raw rocket grenades and the raw warms mortar bombs what is it is it the situation on the ground it's very hard you can see that the army is rick rubin right now but this. that jim our own. situation

changed dramatically because. when american congress was. very aware that tried country and all you know the decision made thousands of kilometers away from the special will affect the set up at this military theater but exactly how it is not easy to predict. from my look in syria. as world leaders try to figure out how to deal with the syrian conflict iraqi security forces are doing all they can to try to prevent the violence from spilling over into their country a country that is still on shaky grounds after u.s. troops finally left in two thousand and eleven yesterday the iraqi branch of al qaeda claimed responsibility for a series of car bombings that killed fifty people over the weekend while iraqi security forces continue to try to root out extremists in the country the special

inspector general for iraq reconstruction just released its final report this week sigur is the group that turn we turn to in order to expose fraud or abuse and misuse of taxpayer funds in iraq but with this final report the group is disbanded despite the fact that there are still serious concerns over monetary waste in the country so is this the end of accountability in iraq for more i was joined earlier by michael o'brien he's a former contractor and the author of america's failure in iraq and i asked him if anything new came out of this final report. well actually it's not what's coming out it's what's not coming out if you look at the report that's on the that's been disseminated. it kind of gives glossing over of use. you know narrative description of you know the purpose of it their mission and all that cites a few stories and things like that but what i really wanted to do in the in this

report was i saw in the table of contents there was a section called suspensions and departments. in the report well you know that's what the i.g. is all about any i.g. i.g. is to investigate investigate waste fraud abuse and if somebody really crosses the line they are de barge meaning there barred from being able to do for there are government contracts either permanently or for a period of time and all that were suspended so there's a very very soon a little bit in the entire our report that's about eighty some odd pages long there's there's this little section here. and there is. this. and that's it that and but then it refers you to appendix e. i believe it's c. b. or c. and it says a list of those suspended or and or d.

barred so you go to us you know so i went in the report to appendix e. there is no appendix e. it's blank. and it says in the fine print of appendix e. i don't know if it's right here but it anyway it says appendix b. appendices b. and c. are not included in this for of the report meaning the public provision but if you want to see it go to w w w. s i g r r dot mil so i did so i want to i want to that website that's. the sears website i can find it i mean i looked and i went to different tabs i couldn't find it i typed in suspension you know search nothing so if you know good look i'm not saying it's not there because we're trying to find it it's not easy to find it doesn't pop out suspension list of suspended and disport and it also says industry one little bit

right here. that since two thousand and three two hundred eighty five individuals and companies were either suspended or be barred well what does that mean let's bring up some of the other things that the cigar the cigar excuse me actually i found out this report so they did two hundred twenty reports that made four hundred eighty seven recommendations that would potentially save nine hundred seventy three million dollars it launched six hundred thirty nine investigations into claims of abuse and fraud resulting in foreach your arrests one hundred twelve indictments ninety convictions and seventy six sentencing so given all of this and there are still more and you're saying to be determined to be found out well not necessarily so what i'm zeroing in on here is who were they. i want to know who they were it's like you know if they're keeping it a big secret. you know i've got experience in contracting with the federal government and if you keep it a big secret and i mean you know you can do

a four year request and find out who are these companies and individuals that were suspended or de bar i mean they did a lot of work i'm not saying they didn't do a lot of work they really really really did and if you look at one of the appendices i think it's appendix a lists all of the you know for employees through the years since two thousand and three who work for say or. it's hundreds i mean they are personally no one you know young younger fellow that that worked there for quite some time they really really did do a lot of work but you know to be deep barred the word bar means you cannot do contracts with the federal government or the department of defense for some period time and for contracting officers who work for the federal government they want to know if you're on that list they should you know they shouldn't have to really go digging like i was taking today in their website you know not a huge issue ok those are a lot of major statistics but let's face it it was

a treasure trove they had so much to go digging up when i was over there before i left i went to their offices in the embassy in the republican palace and in baghdad and i met with a couple of their people and all they did and i relayed to them things that that i thought they were to look into directly related to waste fraud and abuse and the guy said to me go to our website very interesting go to our website on the right there at their offices in baghdad. and all he said to me was go to our website and most likely because i was a civilian i was in a senior ranking military officer rank of colonel so he wasn't going to listen to give me the time of day now we have a short amount of time left but moving forward is there anything that cigar and

afghanistan can learn that think care discovered in iraq in order to get their reconstruction efforts going well you know they can always learn from you know from the their predecessors put. a are for afghanistan they've been they've been in business for quite some time but one of the things that i found very very interesting very shocking actually was a couple of weeks ago there was a report in the news in the media where. the in inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction. has evidence cold evidence of companies that are doing contracting to the department of defense in afghanistan that there's absolutely filiation with al qaida they're backed by a car either they're affiliated with one way or another with al qaida they've presented this to the department of defense to the contracting wafa sers over there

they won't do anything about it and a car came out and was quoted as saying this is ridiculous we've presented them with the evidence but they won't do anything because they want to give these firms due process i wrote a blog about it on my web site america's failure in iraq dot com going back about two weeks ago when this news first came out that's ridiculous that's just plain ridiculous that's crazy and that is why institutions like these inspector generals are necessary not to point these problems out michael o'brien author of america's failure in iraq thank you so much for coming and thanks for having me. former contractor edward snowden promised said he had treasure troves of information to release about the n.s.a. surveillance state once again he is making good on his word the german newspaper der spiegel reports that internal n.s.a. documents from previous snowden leaks detail how the agency has been focusing on tapping into all types of smartphones the newspaper explains quote according to the

documents it's set up task forces for the leading smartphone manufacturers and operating systems specialized teams began intensively studying apple's i phone and its i o. west operating system as well as google's android mobile operating system another chain worked on ways to attack black berry which had been seen as an impregnable fortress until then so is anything a safe anymore christopher walther is a director of hogan lovells privacy and information management practice group and is here to help me break down these latest developments chris thank you so much for stopping and happy to be here so can you go ahead and break down some of those latest developments so i think the important thing to note about the der spiegel article is that it said that there was no indication of widespread spying using the abilities that were described in the article with respect to the smartphones and i think one would expect that the n.s.a. would develop the skills and the ability to access probably the leading

tools for communications these day these days presumably to use those tools consistent with the law and how do we know that they are being consistent with the law so as we've discovered there were some lapses with respect to the. has done. we know the pfizer court reprimanded the n.s.a. for at least some of those we also know that we have in the united states a framework that requires file. a court approval of any surveillance under the act as well as legislative oversight now obviously the snowden revelations put a lot of focus on that structure. there is serious question right now whether or not it is enough so president obama has appointed a white house senior group to analyze the issue we also have the privacy and civil

liberties oversight board that is looking at this and in the wake of the snowden revelations we've see the pfizer coord declassify some of its opinions as well as the n.s.a. produce more public material at the same time we have some of the online services litigating their right to disclose more information so we are going to see more information there is going to be more oversight and one would hope they would be more controls and more protection of privacy but i think this story from der spiegel is not terribly astonishing it's not terribly astonishing and as you say there are and they are trying to build that oversight however i do need to point out that that group that president obama assembled there a lot of questions as to whether they would be a rubber stamp court just like the fight allegedly is a rubber stamp court but but knowing some of the people in that group knowing them personally i doubt very seriously they're going to be a rubber stamp group you doubt it even though they have a serious ties with the obama administration peter swire is one of the members of

that group and in fact prior to his appointment he was quite critical about the n.s.a. and quite concerned about privacy issues and i don't think he's going to change his stripes now that he's been appointed to that group very interesting so we have asked on last hour to talk about these latest revelations has the most he got he got he got to be gone he is the founder of s.s. people oh yes and he said that these leaks aren't surprising to the n.s.a. they're not new let's take a listen to him. i can speak as a former prosecutor i think there's a lot of things that i think there was a senator on in your news hour just a few minutes ago saying there's a lot the public doesn't know that if they knew they would support things and having been in the courtrooms of america seeing the crazy amount of stuff that criminals can do there are tactics that you take but at the end of the day the best part about all this and i do support this side as well very well is there is a legislative judicial and executive branch of government and when the constitution

was created it was built on that thing and the whole notion that different branches will balance the powers of each other out so he went on to say that if the n.s.a. has this capability is there are certain ways that certain companies that can protect users encryption data do you hold someone famous to this who i do and i agree with a move i think is pretty knowledgeable in this area and we do have a system of checks and balances my law firm hogan lovells and i was one of the authors along with my partner nor paris to maxwell produced a white paper this year that shows that in other countries there is not the level of oversight or or protection for the national security agencies access to those countries citizens data and i think that's a really important distinction that's kind of gotten lost in the wake of the snowden revelations that needs to be pointed out say what you will about how well our framework works we have a framework that's a very good point a very astute point now as we were talking about a little bit earlier back in two thousand and eleven the obama administration

secretly won an appeal in the face of court to reverse restrictions on the n.s.a. back in two thousand and eight and those restrictions dealt with the use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails so can you talk about this a little bit more what does this say about the n.s.a. so i suspect there will be an examination of that opinion a reexamination of that opinion to see whether or not that that ruling was justified in terms of the needs i think. pointed out as others have pointed out there are legitimate needs for surveillance to protect the country against threats the question is whether in that effort to protect the country oversteps the protection of privacy that all of us also are entitled to so there's a balance that needs to be struck but i think. as the commerce department general counsel cameron kerry pointed out in the speech a couple weeks ago at the german marshall fund there's been no indication that the information. sorry sure to cut you off but we're just out of time christopher wolf

a partner at hogan lovells thank you so much thanks for having me and if you do the crime you do the time how hard the time is could depend on how deep your pockets are at one california prison where inmates actually pay for a five star treatment the seal beach detention center in orange county california is offering inmates flat screen t.v.'s brand new beds access to media centers and more if the price is right that is it's all part of the so-called state to pay to stay program in our to correspondent ramona lindo shows us how. well it would portray jail as a violent place in reality county lock ups have come under major scrutiny because of reports of abuse import medical care but not in seal beach california where inmates are getting a much more comfortable place to serve their sentence it would just be one hundred dollars a day taking a business approach the city of seal beach has advertised their pay to stay jail in

newspapers they're trying to attract pain inmates with flat screen t.v.'s a media room and clean facilities are current inmate population ranges from everything between a dui offense all the way up to sometimes even sexual offenders. this storm gets old. inmates who pay also help clean up the jail they have access to a kitchen facilities and exercise next if they can pay robert is doing time for behavior manslaughter his family has spent thousands of dollars for slate he calls your sentence there in there can be some arguments about what's on t.v. but that's about it people typically think of a jail as a very buy in place that's not the case here where you get squeaky clean floors and relative safety for one hundred bucks a day at the end of the day you're still locked up in a cage definitely not a fancy jail and it's nicer seal beach has received calls from all over the country

from people wanting to stay here paid to be here have been to fight and then they can go to a worse place over something trivial several other california cities including fullerton and and fremont also offered pay to stay jail cells. the idea is help the city of seal beach make money and become more efficient our priority was to be a nice a facility that would offset the cost or subsidize the cost the city taxpayers have to pay six years ago the jail is run by a private contractor and had to close down after the city to go over. operation cause worker employed pay went up and inmates got a friendlier stay i can tell you dozens of times that we receive thank you cards in fact i just received a really long letter one of the inmates who befriended me on facebook and they're going to be going to sleep this one's breakfast for wednesday's race krispies a little. many people in america's overcrowded jails can't afford to stay like this

but as jailers and local governments look for new money streams pay to stay appears to be here to stay in seal beach california remote r.t. all right on mega lopez thanks for watching us. escalation agenda u.s. president barack obama has ordered the pentagon to double the attack force and expand the target list as part of his assumed assault on syria. international opinion polls at home the us on its own is poised to carry out sourced regime change in damascus well at least that's the plan. that you know the premise is the only industry specifically mention of the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct.