yours and the media mockingbirds know for sure which brings us to our good friends of n.b.c. and m s n b c who were put on blast this week in a very public resignation letter written by veteran national security journalist william markham arkan said bon voyage to n.b.c. in a scathing the e-mail sent to various news outlets on monday detailing how n b c m s n b c in the vast majority of american news media today has become nothing more than pro-war cheerleaders for the national security state in his letter of the long time military analyst and news reporter observes the president tried observes president trumps ignorance and incompetence on many important domestic and foreign policy issues but poignantly points out how quick and b.c. is to mechanically argue the contrary to be in favor of policies that just spell more conflict and more war and that though they produce nothing that resembles actual safety and security the national security leaders and generals we have a we have we have are allowed to do their thing unmolested we've had more than

a generation of national security leaders who sadly and fraudulently have done little of consequence and yet we and others embrace them even the highly partisan formers who masquerade as analysts. this is despite the fact that any honest observer would admit and this arc of the soberly points out that since the beginning of the united states war on terror eighteen years ago the world has become even more dangerous and polarized than it was before another words the suppose that mission ladies and gentleman has failed this my friend this is what happens when the television news becomes nothing more than washington d.c.'s version of e.s.p.n. with former pentagon security state officials playing the role of retired coaches and athletes and that is why i'm like and this n.b.c. fox news and c.n.n. we will always be watching the hawks. to. treat this like. this one. as it were to do.

what they like you know that i got. with. this. because. well the level of watching the horse i am so i robot and i'm top of the law list so here we are you know i think no surprise i mean you know we both have worked in other news outlets and i understand how that works but m s n b c the sort of n.b.c. universal family definitely not been doing a great job since since the attacks of nine eleven i don't think they've been covering things and a way of actually as they said means that they want to have more security no no and they and they don't cover i mean it's all just kind of cheerleading the national security state and that's not even just a muslim b. c. of n.b.c.

like they're easy to pick on because you know this week they had a reporter basically say look you guys don't do enough to hold these guys accountable but again i would just want to say about the guy i think that. what you have to know is this is the guy who was one of the first people to really speak out and break down what the issues were that had happened you know that he if you know william arkin is best known for a three part washington post piece that he didn't two thousand and ten and what it was called top secret america and pretty much every day they see just showed all of these sort of secret they can on an. unaccountable way that the u.s. national security state became and the years following nine eleven not really broke down how you know the safety the safety was taken off yes and you know here's the trouble is like. i'm not criticizing that you can't have former generals or you know former pentagon officials or former agency people were f.b.i.

people with you know i mean going to those people and but you also have to hold them accountable you can't just kind of let them come on. you know rattle off a bunch of things and never hold their feet to the fire and never ask them a hard question just kind of let them just because whether they agree with your politics or not and this is it but this is one of the biggest things is that what you have is a. i don't think a lot of the people we have out on our are being paid by their military contractor screwed but there are so many and we've heard this term a lot of people going greenwald has brought it up matty's brought it up is that they have former generals who are our lock stock and barrel owned by places like north then or you know whatever i mean i don't disclose they don't disclose that so it's it's false just to just to give you an idea i mean i can just throw out some names that we've seen kind of come up this year i mean n.b.c. has former cia chief john brennan on the payroll a senior national security intelligence analyst you got you know david frum bill kristol you know apparently is no because the hearings are with joe. you know

remember this is the guy who was responsible for the project for new american century was one of the main architects of the first iraq war of the under bush w. o. now they call him crystal. you know as crystal i mean this guy is not going to show it's like it was you know this guy helped push agenda and policy this is was what i was millions of does and destruction around the world but we're going to take him just because you agree with the political leanings of the channel oh well he's now ok you know that's ridiculous you know and there's a danger to others in there of having like security state problems on when you allow them to just kind of spew forth and don't hold them accountable for the either the things they say or the relationships they have or the policies they enact right there was actually a piece in politico and there's a jack shafer of politico pointed this out and what he said was that the downside of outsourcing the national security coverage to t.v. spies is obvious their first loyalty is to the agency from which they hail imagine a t.v. network covering the auto industry through the eyes of dozens of paid former auto

executives and you begin to appreciate the current peculiarities and that's the thing when you're looking at say financial reporters you don't have people who are getting paid or on the boards of certain you know exactly of boards or things that could mean that they're what they're telling you to invest and it's personal you have to disclose those or it's all against the law it should also be a counselor for them not to disclose that they're making money off of their analysts their analysis of the media is supposed to be the fourth estate you're going to have void you know guys out there who are like you know pushing the pentagon line or pushing the cia lied of the f.b.i. what they're not going to be out there arguing that if the f.b.i. does something bad they're going to defend the home turf search and that's not balanced journalism at the end of the day. the one hundred sixteen congress of the united states of america is now in session. and those with a food via an abnormal fear of women seem to be suffering greatly this afternoon

nancy pelosi the first and only woman in u.s. history to hold that position with one surprisingly elected speaker of the house in what might be her last as the next generation of women is climbing up that hill after and fact this congress has more with. and than ever before even more than a year of the women back in the ninety's represented davids and howland the first native american woman to serve in congress representatives illinois o'mara minnesota democrat is the first somali american member of congress and her election moved congress to change rules that would have banned her from wearing her he job at her new job omar joins a representative. of michigan as the first muslim women to serve in congress representative ayana presley will be the first black woman to represent massachusetts in congress even texas elected its first women of latin american descent for a cask of r. and sylvia grace and if you think it's just the women making strides keep in mind that we now have the largest congressional black and hispanic offices ever the

question on everyone's mind though is that how this new congress could be better representing the american population it isn't about the new voices bringing something new to the table former congresswoman claire mccaskill who claims to be not one of those crazy democrats kind of sounded like one when she called newcomer alexandria cortez a bright and shiny new object in a recent interview after losing her seat in congress. not only is this more of the tired notion that women are no more than props and objects but as soraya nadi a macdonald culture critic for the undefeated put it on twitter not every person of color is going to bend over backward be bend over backwards obama nice that doesn't mean they aren't dignified which is what words like sassy and tirade imply these are just women who stand up for themselves what exactly is so feather ruffling here so how. are you afraid of the lady power or do you think these new women in congress are just what capitol hill me. one profile of women as you know i can't

forget. the ability to think only you know it's terrible to do anything whatsoever if there has been this thing where it's there be a tirade there freaking out there's those and then you have people like our mccaskill shining it come on all male politicians get away with way more than female politicians will politicians of color things like the white male that they get away with a lot and are and are the same adjectives are used to you know but we've got to be honest the coffee is strong is i mean everything but there has been doing anything close if trump is supposed to be this like truth teller and all of those things women are terrified though and we need look congress is supposed to be made up of the people i know that gets lost and kind of forgotten you're in washington very often usually it's like no need to be made up of you know part of the party operatic you know operatic but at the end of the day congress is supposed to be a representation of the american people really the american people are just like

you know one color group one religious group or one that the city you know it or one gender you know it has to be the whole garden that is the united states of america because then that way everyone is voices are represented and that's the thing there were some really interesting that's the thing about new voices and there was somebody we were talking about who really talked about the border and he . actually was the it was the person of the woman who won battle. formosa see veronica escobar she's a representative you mention from texas the sixteenth district and she has a very different approach to the border which i think we should take a listen to let's hear. a native i'll pass when i'm a third generation i my family's been in el paso for over one hundred years so it's a community that i love very deeply and it's a border that is part of my identity and in my d.n.a. how so it is. you know i think growing up on the us mexico border i thought every community was kind of an international place where people would

speak multiple languages at least two languages where people were interconnected and it wasn't until i became a little bit older that i realized how different we are from the rest of the country and then as i grew up and heard kind of the rhetoric and rhetoric that's been ramped up over the last fifteen years twenty years about border communities especially the last two years trying to paint us in a very negative way trying to mythologize this place that i've known as a safe place where i grew up as a safe place where my children grew up i realized that it really was a part of my identity in that i felt very personally about attacks against my community and very personally about the need to make it prosperous place that people looked at as a wonderful part of america. if it's really interesting to me to hear someone. really describe that community as i want to make this community not what we usually

hear as well there is huge problems there's this that you're saying look i've been here for a hundred years shouldn't we be more like other places where you do speak two languages because you live in your neighbors well and also it's important again representatives in congress and being able to have someone who's part of a major debate in congress in congress talking about representing about people not people in the group of americans who are citizens who live along the borders that's very important it doesn't mean that with all the new faces that we kind of just celebrate them and we don't hold them accountable of course we do because that's also part of the process for them and part of the process i guess just to get it and as a lot of this will be handled the next couple of days major priorities for the demolition crew i mean the democrats are is restarting the government getting there's no real changes in. passing a major infrastructure bill you know we about what i use the. there has been a bill that will bring down prescription drug prices anticorruption what's more or less that you know finance reform going after trump lotty body latte will keep

their feet to the players as we go to break our watches don't forget to let us know what you think about topics we've covered on facebook and twitter see our poll shows that r.t. dot com coming up former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary defense michael maloof helps us discover the warhawks upwards to stop the removal of u.s. troops in syria on this estate today watching us. we're continuing our special episode here the new year celebrating not only twenty

nineteen but ten years of kaiser reports at some point in twenty nineteen i'm not sure exactly when that is but we'll keep you posted. you will both be in the. last years does do you know there was. this one up what i mean. i mean it was none other. you know the local superman some of you can see this from the from the right.

that's your in the form of you give. you more of the baby boomers and i'm one of those most in human body parts of the film i want to move forward to your. just before christmas the political world here in washington d.c. was shaken to its very core when president donald trump announced that the united states would be pulling its troops out of syria and drawing down in afghanistan most were surprised by trump's sudden shift towards withdrawal because just days

earlier the washington post was reporting that the administration as late as last fall was positioning itself to stay in syria illegally for the long haul in an effort to trump iran's presence within the war torn country combined with the resignation of secretary of defense james mattis coming shortly after trump's announcement the hysteria here in the heart of the u.s. military industrial complex was out bubble with out another front in our endless war on terror what will we do or how would we live but now as we reimburse for meniere's hangovers are we we're hearing reports that withdrawal from syria might not come as quickly as many war hawks were fearing with president trump telling reporters that quote i never said we're getting out tomorrow we're getting out of syria over getting out very powerfully joining us today to help better understand how powerfully we will be moving out if there is their future of u.s. forces in syria to get us. damaeus former senior security policy analyst in the office of secretary of defense the one and only michael elliott thank you for

joining us pleasure mike and michael you're one of the few people that come out of the pentagon and come out of that world that i you know i know that i can argue with i know that i can trust i know i get older cobol and i also know that you're not getting paid by like lockheed martin and other things that that's why it's nice to have you on the cell thank you that's very kind of them but you don't like to hear you know the president holds the rank of everyone as pleasant olds around the commander in chief and i think most american citizens with the basic understanding of u.s. civics that's the highest that's the most important position in the ranking scale in the u.s. military so is that is that correct so whatever president trump orders the military to do they are to do is that correct yes that's correct and i think that's where some people were conflicted that i had some folks from overseas white why didn't why i was mad is fired because trump decided he had to go and it was a shock to them they don't understand the chain of command the commander in chief had to let him know about the you know the u.s. constitution and his rule duly elected role as commander in chief lot of foreigners

did not understand that yeah and it was a civics lesson it was exhibit i think what everyone heard him kind of tweak in the ministration say we're moving out of syria you know people would kind of like well what happens next i think big well that's a legitimate question you got mad mad is did not want to one want them to go and again this is all part of the whole notion it's the old world order of maintaining your coalitions your alliances and we've got a new world order developing here and it's totally different than what we've seen before interesting interesting it is that you're saying especially the setbacks idea because it is and it isn't common around the world know the president or the prime minister runs the military and i'm a very i mean you you have some some presidents that are figureheads but the real power might reside in their prime minister for example interesting that's one of those things i've never thought about it's very strange and almost seems a. dangerous or shocking already i have to do a tutorial on what's happened because i think i make a claim i have

a point but i'm going to the u.k. banks they have propagated politics right there that's a nothing on the sunday new york times is now reporting that trump has in fact amended his plans to withdraw all whereas risley was the estimated two thousand american troops that are in syria over the next few months instead of weeks which isn't a huge difference but it's well what they're i think trump had in envision initially moving them out move into into iraq where they're probably going to wind up anyway their special forces might be states and if you'll recall his message on new year's eve sorry on christmas eve to the troops in iraq he not only mentioned that the troops were in iraq to stay to go into syria if necessary but also iran yeah so that that that was a clue to me that we've got some staging going on there's some other other things going on behind the scenes and we really need we need to really be watching this

because something else is developing and what trump is basically conceding there will be to have the turks the russians that the iranians are not the iranians so much but the syrians basically handle isis as best they can and try to come to some accommodation between the kurds and the and the turks and that was one of the reasons for the delay because everyone was of turkey was ready to move troops in in fact they were on the border to go into mon be and we had still had u.s. troops there we still haven't pulled them out yet but so that's why you're seeing a closer coordination and cooperation between turkey and the united states now it seems like a story where when we start a war it seems like we get there and today as we got five thousand troops on the ground it's now been six months in desert shield desert storm right now when it's never sort of put out. that way it's just one day we show up and magically all showed up there but if you know anything about military history we usually move

things then year isn't months before they think start so it's more than just that he was on a little bit what the hurdles are of just pulling people out it's not just as easy as putting a bunch of men and women on planes home right now first of all you've got have a plan that's done weeks maybe even months ahead of time that's why the military basically had a plan because trump did say i'm going to be moving out they had already done a contingency to move troops back into iraq and that's probably where they're going to be staged not coming home not necessarily some may rotate around but you're still going to have the strength there because they're all special forces they're all advise and and train and and and if you pull the troops out of afghanistan half of them rather some seven thousand where they go and they're not all going to be going home there i'm my my. supposition is that they could be moved into iraq a potential that's a big kind of a staging ground a future potentially future actual rajjo and also

a northern northern but yeah but also northern iraq because isis is still has a as a stronghold up in that area and but because they're now in insurgency mode it's going to be much more difficult to deal with them you know it's interesting when you kind of look at all of these components together and i think that you know most people just kind of when you look at how the u.s. operates around the world it's kind of like you're at the point where it goes like ok i don't think we have a very good impression here at home from people around the world looking at all especially our military. you know was it june when you saw the media reaction and the reaction on the hill here in d.c. to what tribe just saying how you would walk out of syria did that reaction seem over the top to you know it was a no he had already telegraphed that his actions were like the reaction to what all the i. i think the reaction to his statement was. that they were totally caught off guard i think they legitimately were caught. trying to basically

does what he says he's going to do they just go to listen to him every once in a while. but when he spoke with her to one on the phone and that action then came the decision came right after that discussion on the phone. it was clear that some arrangement had been made some agreement so been made but you also had to consider too that. trump wants to keep her to one in the nato and everyone is playing it he's playing trump and we can see that happening because he'll look east will look west and he's playing both ends. eventually he could get burned and but right now he's in that he's in the driver's seat interest interest. what i want to get before we run out of time i want to do one thing trump also spoke about the concept of expected specter general reports on u.s. military operations a man to have credibility in pretty much every every other aspect of u.s.

government and what we do it's pretty easy to at least by law request information even if it's redacted so you get a lot of information but trump told reporters that they shouldn't give those reports out that they should be classified stating we're fighting wars and they're doing reports and releasing them to the public which is basically the enemy. those are private reports it's insane let me ask you in knowing that sort of how that works and should inspect original reports be classified and how important are they for accountability well in war zones and whatever sky they should be scrubbed i mean when you're talking about money for the contingency fund for special ops yeah they've got to be absolutely scrubbed now some previous reports of come out about afghanistan and billions of dollars have gone. out of window nobody knows where they went and they came to the defense through usa id and all that wasn't the

defense thing but when you're talking about the operational contingency which is overseas it's something like sixty nine billion dollars. a year for special ops yeah those kinds of things really need to be carefully scrutinized by the one at let me ask you shouldn't do that shouldn't the american people have a say in where seventy billion dollars a year is going to have to carry out for guidance to their representative voted for it so that not sort of people need to remember is that ultimately it's congress was congress all that's right that's right you can get them out of the pentagon for you know wasteful spending but ultimately it's congress has. to be a trump is also made it clear don't question every dollar that the military spends because we've got all these. unexpected things that come up and what we're talking trillions has been lost over years of experience or that's where we need those inspector general reports that can be scrubbed and i don't understand you know you

need to you know i thank you so much pleasure so much more there's always a pleasure and thank you for a. smooth and precise those are the words used to describe the landing of china's national space administration's chum now for a lunar rover on the dark side of the moon now the dark side of the moon isn't actually dark it's actually just get the same amount of sun as the rest of the moon it just happens that the. as of the moon's rotation one side never faces or thing is that dark side is blocked from radio transmissions to earth so chung has a friend a dedicated satellite to relay its scientific findings to the ground in china launched on december eighth the lander is named after the chinese moon goddess chung who according to the story drank her lover's elixir of life to keep the us from stealing it but the elixir was not for one person but two and it ended up sending trauma to the moon to live alone except for a rabbit which is why china's last lunar rover was named u two or jade rabbit so as

china's goddess of broker finds out if we can live on the moon let's celebrate another step into the future for humanity and the guy and not lose it was our show for today remember going in this world you're not old enough so i tell you all i love you i am to roll them through and then to have a policy for watching those hawks out there ever great very night everybody.

hello my name's peter and i've been living in bush now for about seven years and this is a film about just some of the crazy things i've gotten through that time. yes . i mean. i stood in the.

sky it's hard to imagine decades after the war a nazi doctor was still active and rich in the nineteen seventies current intel had as the chair of its board a man convicted of mass murder and slavery at auschwitz a german company developed. a drug that was promoted as completely safe even during pregnancy it turned out to have terrible side effects what has happened to my baby anything. you know she said is just. minutes a little mind victims i have to this day received no compensation they never

apologized for the suffering that i did not only want the money i want the revenge . the top stories this hour the u.k. requests access to a former u.s. marine who's been charged in moscow with espionage. germany sees the private data of hundreds of politicians and media think is leaked online some already flown from russia than donald trump says he'd tell you any legislation passed by the democrats is after they refused to fund his will need this side shows any sign of giving in despite almost two weeks of government shutdown. all isn't a morality it's not who we are is a nation i have never had so much support for border control and frankly the wall or the barrier.