coming up on r t the collateral damage of u.s. drone strikes in pakistan and yemen a new report shine some light on the human costs of these u.s. killing machines details on the reports ahead in two thousand and eleven u.s. combat troops left iraq after an eight year war but now the country is dealing with a wave of deadly violence well look at what's fueling these attacks coming up and smoke them if you've got only cigarettes are gaining in popularity but who is behind the new smokes and are they better for you the regular cigs find out later in today show. it's tuesday october twenty second five pm in washington d.c.

i'm megan lopez and you are watching r.t. well tomorrow president barack obama will meet with pakistan's prime minister nawaz sharif in an attempt to smooth over tone reel in relations between the countries and turned violent is an understatement topping the list of issues to be addressed drone strikes according to the bureau of investigative journalism some three hundred seventy six drone strikes have been carried out in pakistan since two thousand and four resulting in somewhere between twenty five hundred and thirty six hundred deaths as if this statistic wasn't a big enough hurdle to overcome in these talks to human rights groups today released reports accusing us of war crimes as well as a gross violation of international law political commentator sam sachs looks into the numbers we have presented evidence today. of potentially unlawful killings and in light of this evidence we are calling on president obama to

immediately commit to ensuring investigations all of these cases and of all other potentially unlawful killings today two human rights organizations presented reports documenting multiple unlawful u.s. drone killings in pakistan and yemen and misty international conducted on the ground research into non drone strikes occurring in the north waziristan region of pakistan between january two thousand and twelve and august twenty third team what they found was very little legal justification for these killings lead researcher mustafa qadri describes one of them on the sixth of july two thousand and twelve eighteen miles including at least one young boy fourteen year old khan were killed by a u.s. drone in the first strike eight men were instantly killed while they were having they did offer a long difficult day in the field as people came to assist them those who to see if

there were any injured any survive as they too were also attacked. witnesses describe to us i'm a cob scene of body parts and blood and blood panic and terror as u.s. drones continued to to hold the overhead now this report comes just as the prime minister of pakistan arrives in washington d.c. to meet with president obama and the timing of the release of these reports was not a coincidence and while we sit here in washington d.c. with the prime minister of pakistan meeting the president of the united states staying in a hotel very close to this building let's not forget the people on the ground who are affected by drones in the situation more broadly the second report done by human rights watch focuses on drone strikes in yemen investigating six specific strikes at the u.s. government refuses to admit even took place and according to their research some of these strikes were clear violations of international law two of the six cases that we examined in in my report. show that the u.s.

indiscriminately killed civilians this is a clear violation of international law even if it was not the u.s. intent if it indiscriminately killed it should be held responsible yemen saw a flurry of drone strikes in august which seemed to run counter to new drone policy guidelines announced by president obama in may it's unknown whether drone guidelines should publicly correspond with actual guidelines that are still shrouded in secrecy the complete policy is classified we don't actually know what the policy is we have to keep in mind that during the heightened security threat in august when u.s. embassies were closed around the world one anonymous u.s. official did say that the policy was essentially being disregarded at that time it's only recently that the white house has even begun to publicly acknowledge the existence of its drone program and both human rights watch and amnesty international were clear to state their reports are not aimed at condemning the drone program itself but instead condemning on lawful killings and the lack of

transparency coming from the white house they called for full disclosure of the facts behind each drone. filling in the legal justification for their call for congress to reassert an oversight role they called for the families of those that indiscriminately killed by drones to be compensated and they called for an independent investigations in fair trials against those responsible for unlawful drone killings which could include the president himself. in washington same sex party and pakistani prime minister nawaz sharif spoke in washington d.c. today before he meets with president obama this is what he had to say about drone strikes in his country the use of green just not only going to you going to. what do you do to. get men to do what it is you want and if which even if you could reason from a country joining me now to discuss the findings of the report and the implications of these drone strikes in pakistan is norene shah she's an advocacy adviser at

amnesty international usa thank you so much for coming in obviously we just saw a little bit of you in that piece before but i want to start off by talking about the white house response just a little bit earlier today broad press secretary jay carney came out and said that the obama administration strongly disagrees with assertions that the u.s. violated international law with these drone strikes what do you have to say to that well the main problem with the obama administration's responses to all the criticism of the drone campaign is that it's provided assurances of legality without providing any proof we're asking that the obama administration investigate these cases and explain why they occurred why a sixty eight year old grandmother was killed why a fourteen year old boy was killed and in particular your amnesty international report focuses on two cases that you say was a violation of international law can you quickly walk us through them and what specifically makes them that violation sixty eight year old grandmother mommy may be went out together vegetables in her family fields that were largely vacant she

was killed by a drone strike right before the eyes of some of her grandchildren and. state or national looked into this case we were very careful about our documentation and we couldn't find any evidence that there were militants nearby of course we didn't find evidence that grandmother mommy to be posed an imminent threat herself alternately the u.s. government has a responsibility here it should if it has any answers provide those to the american public and the international community and in some of the cases that you guys have gone through and really looked at and you have brought up war crimes now can you go into a little bit more detail about the war crimes and what makes something a war crime in this case a war crime would be a deliberate killing of a civilian or other categories of individuals so in some of the cases that we're looking at the u.s. conducts a strike and then rescuers russian trying to recover the wounded the dead bodies they're bringing stretchers there trying to render medical aid when the u.s. government targets in a second time in what we call follow up or rescue or strike ten minutes after the

initial strike it can result in the killing of civilians if the u.s. government did that deliberately knowing that those who were rushing in were civilians with protection under international law and who were not participating in hostilities that they would be conducting war crimes or if we were outside of a war zone it would be an extra judicial execution so let's talk about the timing of this report obviously it happened and couple that with the human rights watch a report that came out about yemen and also one day before pakistani prime minister nawaz sharif came into town why did you guys decide to release this report on this specific day. well this is the time when it's necessary to press the obama administration you know we've seen a lot of other important stories come out over the summer including about the n.s.a. surveillance scandal there's so much secrecy going on with the obama administration's counterterrorism policies with the u.n. pressing this we thought it was high time for us also to bring forth the new evidence that we have of potentially unlawful deaths do you think that there's any

kind of potential repercussions that we're seeing and this potential warm up between pakistan and the u.s. in light of these two reports you know one thing to note is that the pakistani government itself has obligations for some of the human rights violations that are occurring we not only documented u.s. drone strikes we documented a cruel nature of the abuses that are occurring by militant groups that are operating in the region and also are pakistani military forces that are conducting attacks sometimes indiscriminately so we're talking about a population in north waziristan that is not only facing u.s. drone strikes but also facing the threats of violence elsewhere and the u.s. government and the pakistani government both have obligations to recognize that harm dignify what's happening to these people so you go in for a little into a little bit more detail for us about how you went about how your organization went about collecting these stories collecting these reports and some of the possible troubles that you have along the way this is

a highly politicized issue and there's a lot of speculation and a lot of propaganda out there about it we tried to document specific cases in the part of north waziristan where our researchers could actually get access and although there was a lot of danger there we were able to send in separate teams to conduct multiple interviews we corroborated the eyewitness accounts that we received with satellite imagery with video we got as much documentation as we could and this is one of the most deeply documented reports on drone strikes there is out there all the same we don't have all the answers and one of the reasons is because of the u.s. government's policy of secrecy it has to come forward and say what happened in these cases and answer the claims that we have made and our report. now we've heard a number of accusations of war crimes by u.s. presidents before but the u.s. is very unlikely to actually go for hours and prosecute people for such war crimes in recent history anyway what is your group hoping will come from these reports we're hoping that president obama will go further half

a year ago he made pledges of transparency on drone strikes we didn't see any follow through we're asking him to do now is to immediately commit to investigating the cases that we amnesty international and human rights watch have documented in our report i thank you so much for joining me and for bringing some shedding some more light on these reports obviously it's a lot to go through and we're going to keep following up with your group and your organization in the days to come in case anything else comes out in our insurance advocacy adviser and to see international usa. meanwhile we are fast approaching the two year anniversary of the withdrawal of u.s. troops from iraq the u.s. was said to have left a more stable and secure iraq with a government that represents the people and a military force capable of handling security threats who are the country is still plagued by violence on a near daily basis with suicide and car bombings now the video that you are looking at right now is the aftermath of one such attack that happened in baghdad on thursday at least sixty one people were killed in all celebrating the religious

holiday of all aha or the feast of sacrifice and it is hardly an isolated incident take a look at this these are just a few of the headlines from the past two weeks of attacks that have happened in the country policemen and government officials have been targeted children and women have been killed in these attacks have made many public spaces potentially deadly there were body count monitoring group says that over seven thousand people have been killed by militant attacks in iraq this year alone however these are stories that you are not likely to read about in the day to day news coverage right here in the u.s. why is that is it perhaps because now that american troops are out of harm's way we are ready to wash our hands of the iraq quagmire to discuss the latest on the onslaught of violence plaguing that country i was joined earlier by steve arcot correspondent and political analyst of all crudes i asked him if the reports of

violence were representative of what's happening in iraq. indeed i mean i get calls from my former colleagues all the time i was a united nations spokesman in iraq for five years between two thousand and five and two thousand and ten and i tell you the situation in iraq today is as bad as it was at the height of the civil war new two thousand and six and two thousand and seven so it is very bad and there are a number of reasons left to why it is bad you know it in terms of the inability of the americans to really train and effective iraqi force the fact that it was hastily founded on sectarian bases and so on was loyalties to the tribe or to the sector to the ethnic background and so on nonprofessional and lately of course in the last couple of years is really the up surge of violence in syria because there is a tremendous deal of connection between syria and iraq especially with a slamming. state of iraq and blood shop which is iraq and syria so is there other

than syria or is syria the main cause for this uptick in violence that we are saying in the country right now well i think it's both you know syria definitely played a catalyst you know you have to remember that during the surge of two thousand and seven two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine when the u.s. went on you know work through a lot of force and so on and stamp out this violence so that terror as they called it they were able to bring some sort of calm into the into the country but in the aftermath of the departure of u.s. forces and basically the absence of any air assets in iraq iraq had no. combat helicopters it had no ability to strike from from the sky above against formations of terrorists or guide the pipes and so on so they were able to reconstitute themselves they're able to be funded now there's a great deal of financing going on and the same basically the same tribes. go across the silastic borders with syria and iraq and saudi arabia many more for instance pro forma a great deal of the base for these terrorists and they are quite frankly aided by

the gulf cooperation. council countries so we have seen the uptick in violence in syria we have seen the. flow of money and arms and so on and all the aid that this situation now let me ask you what about the iraqi army how are they doing are they equipped to handle this type of situation well the iraqi army is basically was destroyed or was you know dissolved back in two thousand and three that was a decision taken by the bush administration at the time and ever since then they have been reconstituted they have been trying to reconstitute the army but so far you know the sectarian aspect of the loyalties and the structure of the army has really taken its toll on having a professional army so it is not that effective now while we are seeing these civilian casualties that are happening as i said on a near daily basis most media outlets are not reporting about this instead they're reporting about the sparks middle school shooting people were killed there

reporting about the las vegas casino shooting which three people were killed and just to be clear i am not at all been a little in those tragedies there tragic they are horrible but why are we seeing even thirty seconds of coverage of these daily blasts these daily occurrences because basically the american public is really for war fatigue has been tired of wars they do not want to be involved in this war they want to put the iraq war behind it was a miserable experiment as far as they're concerned they feel that they are out of that quagmire and they don't want to get back into it again that is really the responsibility of organizations including media organizations to refocus the spot market on what's going on in iraq after all it was the country. by buying a large suffers from a situation as a result of the u.s. invasion and i cannot let you go say it was now asking you is there a way to move the country forward again obviously barring another war barring more

troops going back and well i think the real genuine. conciliation effort that the us going to say takes on such an initiative and can find resonance among. the different political parties i think there is there is their intent to reconcile but you need to push for it absolutely state our correspondent and political analyst for all kinds thank you so much for your opinions and showing it to. well have you ever seen a ranting and raving comment on the internet i'm sure i have in my days working here on my youtube page well and i'm sure you have as well but did you ever think that the ranter might be getting paid of a new book called murdoch's world alleges that fox news had its public relations staffers write comments on the internet that defended the news channel against any blogs that had something negative to say according to david folkenflik the book's author and former fox staffers would use anywhere from twenty to one hundred fake accounts to defend the channel's honor and the internet savvy among you might note

that having different account names isn't enough to keep the comments from getting traced back to fox news but the fox p.r. department department already knew that and so workers used anything from dial up connection to old laptops to avoid detection so should we expect news organizations to hire digital armies or is this one step too far to talk about this and other cable news stories of the day i'm joined now by georgetown journalism professor christopher chambers thank you so much for coming in do so first of all let's start off by talking about fox news is this idea of paying bloggers to write popular comments and really praise you on the ethical or is it just good p.r. it's unethical and it's good. it's as simple as that but if it's their business model this is something that they did a while back so it's kind of old school because you know we're not really talking about comments on blogs as much as is so two thousand and eleven but i mean the

concept of doing this is something that is extended now into popular practice maybe not through the news organizations but through related organizations so you might have fox doing it three four five six or eight years ago now you have think tanks or other blogs in conjunction with people that might be sympathetic to fox's message. relaying these kinds of things of tea party patriots for example with the obamacare toolkits the heritage foundation actually creating these things as well and you have liberal. counterparts to that some of the big unions have created similar toolkits and through their p.r. agonise ations have basically populated you know the comment sections mostly through social media we're talking of social media now rather than blogs as i said that's not so two thousand and eleven the blogs but now it's through social media and so this is this was the seed for this kind of behavior however the genesis was

rupert murdoch or more accurately roger ailes. crew doing this at one time so i mean it's really groundbreaking and sneaky back then now it's sneaky but you know garden variety you know at the same time though you know people don't go on specifically to read the comments so is it really all that bad i mean just to play devil's advocate here well even even back then it is important because a lot of the action goes on in the comments and you can gauge you know popularity and comments also pull in more hits more eyeballs on the site you know so you'd leap forward five years five six years to social media where you're not talking about comments you're talking about. you know tweets you're talking about read tweets are talking about favorite favorites to talk about likes on facebook and advertising content on facebook and you know just trying to get likes and eyeballs

on these certain items so you know it's very important and it is very important tracking how many people are looking at what you're trying to message you're trying to put out and for countering the pushback so it's a double double good when me for them so perhaps fox has another mistake sions might be better start focusing on reporting new commentating on the yes exactly how about that but it's not but that's not the business model and that's. brings the eyeballs to the convergence of the site and the t.v. network at the same time that the site the social media and the t.v. network all working in conjunction converging you need you need an extra edge that as a business after all so any education get now speaking of fox news i want to play a clip of m.s.n. to say as chris matthews who was speaking to larry king about some of the fox news hosts and watching fox we'll watch it make it kelly be able to stay in the middle or was she was pushy move over will she have to move over them and look at the

credit where it was more than a center left she's moved there's a lot of group pressure in those places and any place she was there is no i feel i think it's there i mean i think you know your audience you know you're talking to i always know i'm talking to. so why do you think it is that networks as chris matthews alleges are pushing their hosts to be more partisan instead of unbiased well i mean this is actually pretty old school it's demographics one who one basically if you look at this in d.c. where he is their average viewer they're going to be more partisan on the left especially with regard to the controversies like you know elections where the government shutdown to pull in the core audience and then the bring in the people on the fringes and on and on on the ideological for it has been on the fringe already and says who might be just using social media or other platforms to get their news to pull them in likewise with fox you have to look at the company made about megan kelly the average fox viewer is

a white male who is in his early sixty's so and so you could do all the stereotyped daves you want with that but i mean but there is a reality there that she will have to move over in a certain time of the evening lineup to meet the ideological kind of raw meet demands of that audience and it is a different. playground if you will than the daytime which says which is the real news that sets up for the evening entertainment basically and that's what this we're talking about is evening entertainment with a pool of political soap opera and so what we're saying is not only a shift in some of those commentators that rachel maddow thousand things like that we also in some of the people that we expect in that we want to be unbiased in their reporting but i want to switch topics but say one more time all three major mainstream networks experience a major boost is there in the star in the government shutdown i want to take a look at the numbers and this obviously is primetime viewership went up thirty five percent fox news experience a prime time if they were ship increased by nine percent and c.n.n.

went up by about eleven percent and it's primetime viewership so does this signal that the u.s. population loves john or is it perhaps a good thing that americans are. stated what's going on with real politics versus real housewives well it's a double edged sword yes it's good that people are coming to the you know and t.v. news you know forget the hype above a certain age group we talk about young people who people are still getting their news from other sources other platforms social media but these core audience is people say over thirty five that they want to bring in they are doing it the problem is what are they getting when people come and it's partisan flavored content it's infotainment it's political soap opera so it's real housewives except with you know house republicans or or jay carney and this is this is not real analysis and especially if you're talking about the evening content and in

a sense b. c. and on fox perhaps the real housewives of michele bachmann although if you know how to what i feel worse for drink start another basic question or as you say our sound journalism barbara starr thanks so much for joining us. and you may have heard of electronic cigarettes while they're less are designed to look like cigarettes they use of a part a little over a nicotine and sometimes use flavor to entice think users manufacturers of a cigarette say that they're a healthy alternative to smoking and can even help a person kick the habit but there are no long term studies to back up those claims are to correspondent amir a david looks beyond the smoke and mirrors to bring us this report. it's the latest trend to take the tobacco world by storm the electronic cigarette when it came on the scene in two thousand and seven it was virtually unheard of but in just six years the device has turned into a billion dollar industry even though it's still called a cigarette and can even look like one many of its users say it's the furthest

thing from smoking with all of a thing just like water vapor. no tobacco at all and you have no tar anything along that's jonathan elias owner of my vapor one of the only full service bathing shops in northern virginia and he says it's the non-tobacco aspect that's really appealing to customers unlike traditional figure. eesa carets use a battery to heat a liquid containing nicotine which is stored in flavored cartridges and that substance is then converted into vapor it's a technological tool that allows for users to adjust their nicotine level which elias says is helping adults slowly wean themselves off of conventional smoking despite the anecdotal evidence the f.d.a. has yet to conduct a study proving that isa carets help to quit smoking and one of the products key demographics never smoked regular cigarettes to begin with that puts into question the kind of health effects this has on adults and now children who are picking this up as a popular pastime the percentage of middle and high school students who use electronic

cigarettes more than doubled between two thousand and eleven and two thousand and twelve unlike other tobacco products the cigarettes can be sold the minors in many places throughout the country but perhaps what's most concerning for anti-tobacco advocates is that these devices can easily be purchased by anyone at any time right on the internet all you have to do is click a button that says you're eighteen and over and immediately you've got access to an array of east cigarette flavors like cherry cola caramel and bubble gum danny mcgoldrick of the campaign for tobacco free kids says he's concerned that minors will get hooked on the flavors and then on the nicotine cigarettes deliver ticketing better than anything better than the cigarettes and so we're very concerned that this could be just an entry into conventional cigarette smoking among kids but anti-tobacco advocates aren't just worried about flavors with virtually no regulation cigarette companies have been able to do something they've been restricted from doing in over forty years advertise on t.v.

introducing during. the first electronic cigarette of the world. the real that's why i'm in love with blu e cigs now that i switched to blue i feel better about myself and i feel free to have one almost anywhere but i'm driving home watching t.v. when i'm in the clear the point is. you can smoke virtually any. or all adult. time we take our freedom according to an august new york times report this industry advertising is booming with a spending increase of two point seven million in two thousand and ten to twenty point eight million in two thousand and twelve erica sward of the american lung association warns that this kind of marketing is dangerous they're trying the some of the same old tactics that big tobacco did that have resulted in millions of americans dying from from tobacco use and they are working very hard at exploiting the loopholes associated cigarettes have to be able to glamorize their existing

products however representatives of b.z. cigarette companies reject the accusation that there are a littering kids enjoy which is one of the leading cigarette manufacturers even released a statement about the issue saying we do not market our products to children and indeed take affirmative steps to ensure that our products are not sold to minors by requiring retailers to agree to where the product is placed and request verification of appropriate age as it pertains to each state law but those words may not be enough to call the criticism of those who argue that cigarettes need to be subject to proper oversight the f.d.a. says it plans to review the product by the end of october but how it will be regulated is still very much in question in college park maryland near david our team all right that does it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t dot com slash usa and

follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez so you're right back here at eight . germany's finance ministry has tonight reports it is preparing a third bailout for greece. of course not you know there will be no third bailout for great balancer so last decade this is the age of the bailiff by the time this is over the bed its banks as a broker will take it all that you've got no dollar euro yen a drop will be left behind and inflation deflation a couple station will take every last one does. that i think. kind of. bank all that. money and the family fixed.