a. complex web of which fashion. fundamentally the united states and russia are have been for decades two scorpions in a bottle each capable of destroying the other but all the at the price of being destroyed itself. he said well these weapons will overcome u.s. missile defenses u.s. missile defenses were totally ineffective against russian forces already so they'll be more effective against russian forces.

welcome back while media and british cabinet ministers all but declared war on russia and facebook this week the leader of western europe's largest socialist movement jeremy coleman was more interested in what the u.k. labor party sees as collective economic punishment for the crash of twenty year wait this conservative government has slashed public services they cut funding and expect councils to pick up the pieces the result of this is children centers are closing schools are struggling fewer preys on the streets older people being left without care or dignity and refuges turning will be the way the tories are only head of local government says it's unsustainable and doesn't tell you everything you need to know doesn't it tell you everything you need to know about this government that it demands households and businesses or to get business the

minority government needed to raise a male during a prime minister's questions appeared to ignore inflation in her arms this government is spending more on our schools and our n.h.s. than. we're able to see that because of the balance approach we take to our economy because of the strong economy we see under the conservatives and i notice that the right honorable gentleman in the six questions does not mention today's unemployment figures. employment is ensuring to record high unemployment hasn't been lower since nineteen seventy five interesting she brought up nine hundred seventy five when britain was led by a labor government run by harold wilson and i'd like to raise a mayor when it came to government expenditure will soon wasn't as interested in expenditure on us wars that arguably end in failure. like on ours. we have no plans for expenditure in the end. please harold wilson was inversely

not convinced by the u.s. war in vietnam which killed around four million civilians strays or may though is convinced their british expenditure in blood and treasure should still be deployed in afghanistan let alone syria and let alone income from the war on yemen in a week with at least one hundred killed or wounded in the afghan capital of kabul all the publics of nato nations still being lied to about how winnable the war there is in the fiftieth anniversary week of the british labor governments bombing of iraq i'm joined by matthew hoh a u.s. state department and pentagon official who was part of the iraqi occupation and who resigned over afghanistan matthew welcome to going underground you resigned your position with the pentagon over alleged lying by the hillary clinton state department your allies of the trunk no i think it's just about the same the deal with you got trump now. different than obama but the thing that has remained the same or the same career minded people at the state department at cia at the

pentagon who are dedicated to their own careers and dedicated to the empire basically but is drawn buggy really listening less to there's a line we don't know whether we can take michael wolff seriously in his book on drugs and there's a scene in it where he where trump tells off. all the generals in the situation room about this suggestions as to what to do with afghanistan this year. would that ring true is a little drum saying we need to make money like the chinese out of afghanistan we should be in regime building or training or whatever it is if you're someone like donald trump who you know always say about him he is an intelligent person he has accomplished a lot look he beat seventeen people in the republican primaries he built be hillary clinton he does have a brain in his head as if i mean we shouldn't underestimate him and if you're explained for the first time what's happening in afghanistan any reasonable sensible person is going to say this is insane get out so i do think that wolf comment rings true however what we've seen in afghanistan is an escalation of the

air war is the escalation of commando strikes look american special operations conducted in six months two thousand raids on afghan homes and villages just in six months american commandos did that so there has been an uptick a big uptick in the american war in afghanistan now trump sensibly may have said i'm not sending more ground soldiers there but that fits in with the rest of the american war plan throughout the greater middle east through the muslim world we're going to use proxy armies we're going to use american air power train transition to like allied air power like the saudis saying am in firepower like artillery and mortars like we saw you say in mosul or rocca and we're going to use commandos like the iraqis did or the afghans are now dead then backed up by american commandos or british commandos and that's the way of war that's the way of maintaining these borderlands in the empire this perpetual war that so many of the generals including

mattis who is sector defense are kelly who is the white house chief of staff believe is necessary to again maintain the empire i think the british ministry of defense calls him because of this rather than soldiers but britain is in. deed on the ground some type of british shooting will boot is on the ground you talked about all of that what is the actual a move all of this look if you look at what's a general mattis or general kelly. talked about if you go back and look at their speeches they view america the u.k. of the west as the apex of civilization they view themselves as modern day legionnaires who are protecting the republic who are defending the empire and what they need to do is necessary in terms of warfare being a constant state of humanity and that these forces are just there to maintain the base level of order they've called in the special operations community or the cia for years now they've called it mo in the grass the the idea that you

have to do maintenance that you have to continually do these strikes on these wallace areas on the areas that you can't subjugate or bring on or control and this is what the greatest differences between the trump war plan and say obama or bush's war plan is there is no outcome to it i mean say what you will about the bush and obama war plans they were criminal they were immoral they were hurried not going to work. but they had political objectives they tried to have elections they tried to do economic development they tried to have negotiations or bring in parts of the populations to be inclusive in the government under the trump war plan which again is really a madison kelly mcmaster war plan there is none of that if you actually thought that they the brad pitt film i think it's available now which has we have another. i mean that's realistic that's the kind of madness you're describing it's hard to

come up with a better word than madness. is just absolutely look at the military you're trained to take the hill and then you take the next hill and you just keep going on there's no end state for it and that's what you see you have these career. minded generals who believe that there are more capable or better than the preceding general that's why we've had how many seventeen different eighteen different commanding generals all of which in afghanistan say the same kind of thing just give me some more troops and some more time and we'll win it was one undeniable of success or failure of afghanistan has been the massive increase in heroin deaths in britain in glasgow we have a death rate of one thousand three hundred fifteen percent higher than the european union norm what does it feel like for you if we could only imagine the death rates of due to heroin in the us it is here is you know in the united states we've had a three or four fold increase over all throughout the whole country in use and in

deaths we've it's epidemic it's it is a national health crisis united states opioid epidemics it is horrific what is occurring it has occurred and yeah i don't think you can see it in d.c. i live in new jersey you see if you see it throughout the country it's it's getting a lot of attention because it affects the white communities when the when the crack cocaine epidemic occurred in affected the black or the african-american community didn't have this kind of attention you see the to solve the problems that drive so many issues but regarding the opioid issue yes no coincidence that we're having this opioid crisis and the opioid production the poppy production that produces these opioids heroines are going to whatever has increased exponentially i mean each year there are record crops in afghanistan since the west invaded since we put this afghan government in power which is composed of the drug lords and what

we have done for years in afghanistan is being in bed with the drug lords help the those who are in the afghan government those who are in the afghan military stomp out their competition root out their competition in that's why when you were there when i was there absolutely. it happened it was happening certainly we saw it we we rewarded afghan governors who were whose families had poppy fields of their own and then used the afghan police and the afghan military why do you do you work there at the yeah i mean like you saw you saw us occurring it was it was it was one of the reasons i resigned i mean because you're taking part you are taking part in the formal established drug trade the united states government denies it's complicit in the drugs trade it wasn't as if the americans were loading up poppies or roping or heroin into our aircraft or was it like our soldiers are out there in the crops and harvesting merry thing else but we were complicit with the people who were

benefiting the most from the afghan drug trade sale akaka wali karzai who was present karmakar as half brother who was the biggest drug lord in southern afghanistan until he was murdered i mean these are the men that were benefiting from our occupation but i was particularly well before i'm sure his brother would deny it is brothers being on this show former president karzai made it even more worrying even more worrying accusations about u.s. policy on this program he said he saw in jalalabad that there were helicopters u.s. military helicopters being used by islamists in afghanistan would that ring true i don't believe that america that we americans would be so stupid as to actively use our helicopter say to ferry islamic state fighters however the fact that we did things to try and manage to try and pick winners and losers to try and be smart and certainly know in syria that whereas american money may not have been gone directly

to hide as nusra front or to the islamic state in syria certainly saudi turkey is qatari money was going we were aware of this we had states with the united states with we did not but we have we have reports from. the defense intelligence agency the american defense intelligence agency that warn of this that warned of the backing of these islamist groups these backing of these extremist groups in syria we were managing and funneling money to in logistics and supporting the islamic state and al-qaeda in syria and we believe that the imaginary line that existed that boundary between syria and iraq would keep them out of iraq so in syria we're trying to use the islamic state to overthrow bashar assad but across the border across the sand boundary we are believing we can keep them under control and in check and not have them threaten the government and baghdad i mean it just boggles the mind that we have people in power who would be so stupid as to think and i keep

going back to this word and i apologize i can't be i'm trying to be a little more articulate but stupid is the only thing that keeps coming back to me because this is what happened and then of course in two thousand and fourteen islamic state takes mosul and now we've seen the complete destruction of sunni cities throughout the tigris and euphrates river valleys in iraq and this is a consequence of course of the american invasion and occupation which the u.k. of course was completely complicit in and took part in but not just that but but also to it's all because we have people in power people in there are telling us operative says in the u.s. and also here in the u.k. who believe that they are smarter than their predecessors and certainly smarter than the people in the middle east and that they can manage in co-opting coerce these people. thank you back to the show but we'll be back on monday when we speak to unicef about how british shopping training and targeting is affected the poorest country in the middle east three years to the day of the saudi ball that if you

haven't began to let you know just by social media will see on monday the birthday of a streetcar named desire a tennessee williams who protested the u.s. state department and he called me this witch hunt against fellow playwright and husband of our of the drove off a bit though. they're bred for a single purpose. they have a super. star training very young. eight months of intensive school. rats. and they save lives. kristen trumps money in finding practices are still surprising the recent

appointments of my companion john bolton have definite impression on friends and foes alike watch him play to a late night of all american politics. well you know the cars they were kind of adopted because we were called pirates of the so long. i mean they're in the smaller vaults next to the hard pool of ships and it's. not. the little self to be told fish already ninety percent of it daryn got any qualms with conor. khan's fifteenth.