breaking news this hour a powerful blast and gunfire are reported outside a major u.s. outpost in afghanistan on the very same base donald trump paid a surprise visit to less than 2 weeks ago. news comes hard on the heels of a damning report which sheds light on how top american officials have been routinely distorting facts and figures on the war on the in afghanistan in an attempt to convince the public the drawn out war is winnable. the us president says he looks forward to more dialogue with russia after meeting its foreign minister at the white house visit however triggered more speculation about suppose that secret trump moscow leaks something so gay lover of brushed off

as observer. might as well your positions against russian diplomats calling the case with the athletes and called for our criminal liability. by. the french government pushes forward with its new pension reform which has already led to days of mass demonstrations civil unrest on strike which. is. a very good morning to you you're watching r.t. international with me. now we begin with breaking news this hour a suicide bomber has detonated his car outside one of america's main military outposts in afghanistan. airfield the attack comes hard on the heels of trump's surprise thanksgiving day visit. at the very same base local media report

a powerful blast hit a medical facility located in the immediate vicinity of the air bases main gate the number of those injured in the attack is estimated to be between 30 and 50 initial reports suggested the suicide bomber had targeted a u.s. military convoy though american officials have denied that. the american president flew to afghanistan and visited the airbase in late november for thanksgiving speaking to the military personnel that trump struck an upbeat tone. with the help in the devotion everyone. has given here tonight america is winning again we are winning like we have not won in a long time. well let's now bring in had a zombie research analyst at the center for conflict and peace studies welcome to the program it's great to have you with us now 1st off as someone who's on the

ground in afghanistan can you tell us about what the afghan media is saying about the number of casualties at this point. thank you for having me you know the local officials. or i have talked to the media and they they told the media that the casualties mostly injury says around $40.00 to $50.00 mostly civilian. but the surprising fact about this attack is that nobody no group so far claimed responsibility. for this attack and this is happening at a time where the americans and the taliban are negotiating. you know there are several important facts to the airbase when the americans and the taliban were close to. to finalize a peace deal. you know about

a gram in kabul were the 2 provinces where taliban an american sport or create the cease fire under clay cease fire would be implemented because you know both in kabul and by graham you have the american troops and when and when there were driving their troops from from. these 2 provinces so there should be an undeclared ceasefire which they termed duction a while and so it's quite surprising to many of us in the research community. why these attacks are happening and nobody is claiming responsibility because been checking. twitter handles and there's no claim of responsibility from them so far you know what's interesting is that you know just less than 2 weeks ago trump was out that they said what do you make of the timing of the attack.

well there's there are few points that one can argue that by such attacks happen while the negotiations are on and then there's no claim of responsibility one it could be the taliban and they want to gain more from the negotiations were negotiation table in cutter so that so they're using it as a pressure tool against the americans to gain more from the negotiations but why they're not claiming get i think it could also be because of the internal divisions within the taliban that one group believes in the peace talks but there may not agree. some believe that you know taliban and qatar and taliban in pakistan in taliban in afghanistan are not in sync when it comes to the peace talks negotiations in a cease fire particularly so some of the elements within taliban could be responsible because you know groups like they do not have the capabilities to carry

an attack at this scale a big group. is pressured cornered in afghanistan so the only group that could have the capability to carry a suicide attack. so far in the fact that they're silent tells us that there could be divisions that the mainstream taliban or elements within taliban don't. do not agree with the. ok well at this point no group has claimed responsibility for that attack but we will be bringing our viewers the latest on that but for now heck martyr as army research analyst at the center for conflict and peace studies thank you for bringing us that update. well against this backdrop a scathing report is being released which details years of deliberate dissent from ation on the part of top u.s. officials who are transpires have been putting on a brave face despite knowing the unpalatable truth about the afghan war. hundreds of thousands dead trillions of dollars lost generations traumatized but

you know what nothing good comes easy nothing in afghanistan we helped liberate an oppressed people. and we will continue helping them secure their country rebuild their society and educate all their children boys and girls. all that i set to defeat al qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild is within reach and we're doing a tremendous job. and as you know a big part of the job is isis certainly the biggest and al qaeda and we. we've got them down very low numbers you didn't need to be nostradamus or clairvoyant to know that someone was telling bull it's just logical fallacy you can't keep fighting the same guys for 20 years and claim the joule winning but then appearances must be kept up it's important that everyone thinks you're winning right up to the

moment you admit you lost why well it's obvious no one has the remotest clue we were trying to do here we didn't have the focus notion of what we were undertaking there is a fundamental gap of understanding of the front end of the stated objectives grew lines in the military and the lack of understanding of the resources necessary and we'd never have known if it hadn't been thousands of secret and classified documents on afghanistan and stuff from the white house from the pentagon the un and the various n.g.o.s well we would have known it's pretty damn obvious that the war is going terribly but who says mouth and all that it is worth considering what the president the deficient said and what they actually believed when i called our troops in action i did so with complete confidence. their courage and skill and tonight. thanks to them. we are winning the war on terror. and.

today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror are we capturing killing or deterring a dissuading more terrorists every day done them addresses on the radical clerics are recruiting training and deploying against us does the us need to fashion a broad integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists the us is putting relatively little effort into a long range plan but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists the cost benefit ratio is against us see when you're in your 2nd term and you started a really messy war that you just realized you can't hope to win there only so many ways to save your own but here's a list of words you should use courage democracy kids schools and hospitals and for the people that don't buy your baloney get a hope in there as well thanks to the courage of these military and civilian

personnel a nation that was once a safe haven for al qaeda is now a young democracy where boys and girls are going to school new roads and hospitals are being built and people are looking to the future with new hope also poor in money into huge infrastructure projects to obligate money that was appropriated to so we could spend it through building infrastructure in ways that have again instant could never sustain or even the use in some cases if you're a nato country taxpayer i honestly don't believe you can comprehend how much of your money was poured into this adventure you 1st need to understand the sheer degree of incompetence that these leaked documents show imagine for example someone's putting together a crew for a bank heist they invite a bunch of people give them a time and place and tell no. on what their rule is no plan so everyone shows up thinking that everyone outs knows what to do and things go as you would expect now

is the time to save your own heidi let's add a few more words difficult days human rights confidence success we will reward good governance work to reduce corruption and support the rights of all afghans men and women alike. there will be difficult days ahead but i am absolutely confident we will succeed you just cannot put those amounts of money into a very fragile state in society and not have if you corruption you just can't a legacy of mass corruption that's putting it lightly what else the jew expects the guys on the ground they saw disaster they were reported back to washington washington with its countless departments that now have the courage to stand up and say they screwed up so they put up appearances everyone was doing what made them

look best rather than what worked best interesting enough many of the documents were published with the name lessons learned perhaps an effort to extract something anything of value from this unmitigated disaster but you know as it have got a star not long ago and after seeing what i saw there i can tell you all asleep i can guarantee you that while they may have learned their lessons they sure as heck are putting them to use. and right retired u.s. army colonel told us the american leadership was ill informed but went ahead with the warranty 1001 regardless. well like so many government officials great to admit failure and the idea that the united states military and us foreign policy could possibly fail was something that they personally could not accept and

so they kept pouring billions of dollars into afghanistan in the hopes that maybe it would be a success the senior leadership of the united states government did not have a real clue on the history of foreign involvement in afghanistan they all should have known but they felt that for domestic political concerns they had to do something after $911.00 so the easy thing was to go to afghanistan a country that had essentially no real military and which they thought the u.s. forces would be able to overwhelm very quickly. the russian delegation headed by the country's top diplomats visited washington on tuesday much to the irritation of democrats that u.s. president donald trump though seemed toppy about the visit. just had a very good meeting with foreign minister sergey lavrov and representatives of russia discussed many items including trade iran north korea and if treaty nuclear

arms control and election meddling look forward to continuing the dialogue in the near future the russian foreign minister also held talks with the u.s. secretary of state mike pompei on the issue of alleged selection meddling was raised but the meeting wasn't all about u.s. russia disagreements as he goes on off explains. from the outset it became clear how much room for improvement there is in the relations between russia and the united states for instance one of the cases election meddling the secretary of state mike pompei was being very adamant that any interference in america's relations is unacceptable by a foreign power to which russia's foreign minister. this circular lab are of stress that all such accusations still exist in the realm of speculation initially when you finish it now as for meddling or not you suggested simply to read the mulla report we did and in it there is no proof of any collusion sergey lavrov also has

repeatedly said that russia is ready to release full transcripts as to what was said by the russians and by the members of the trump team via a special communication channel that had been established back in 2618 but according to the russian foreign minister those attempts to make those transcripts see the light of day have so far been stilled by the trumpet ministration. after the integration of donald trump we suggested to our colleagues that in order to dispel all the bases suspicions let us publish this close channel of correspondence starting from oktober 2016 until november 27th so that everything would become very clear to people unfortunately the current administration refused to do so now the bone of contention between russia and the united states is the i.m.f. or rather the absence of the deal now and both parties of both ministers have kind of clashed as to how they see the moving forward for instance the russian foreign

minister sergey lavrov has again said that the countries could use the start treaty that had been signed back in 2010 but my pump a.o.l. has made it clear what the united states don't like about that deal. that was entered into many years ago when powers were very different on a relative basis around the globe. it was at a time that the weapon systems the threats were very different than they are today today so we believe not only do the conversations need to be broadened to include the chinese communist party it was you that the russian president spoke again about russia's preparedness right now to agree on its extension to alleviate tensions in the global community given that the last instrument of arms control between the. united states and russia will stop operating we're prepared to do that even today on the other hand circular has reiterated that russia has been making unilateral steps of good faith for instance the russian president had previously said that russia wasn't going to deploy any weapons that had been banned under the i.n.f.

treaty in europe unless washington or its allies decide to do that 1st but it wasn't all negative there are some points where russia and the united states do see eye to eye on where they do see each other as valuable partners syria afghanistan north korea all those aspects all those political crises see russia and the united states working together and both countries that seem did their best both ministers at least did their best to try and move that train forward as much as they could. and for us democrats the meeting between russia and america's top diplomats was one more reason to suspect secret links between trump and moscow. trump is meeting with russia's foreign minister in the oval office again our diversity is invited in our eyes locked out last time they laughed about trump's firing of komi today they can celebrate the success of russian propaganda reagan wouldn't recognize this g.o.p.

tramp lavrov and compare our meeting in broad this afternoon what conspiracy are they cooking up today congress congress seems to have been captured by a desire to destroy us russian relations used to splurge and shoot adam schiff describes normal bilateral contacts between countries in particular the reception of the foreign minister of one country by the president of another country as a triumph of russian diplomacy well he might as well throw doping accusations against russian diplomats following the case with the athletes and call for our criminal liability to me position is just absurd but panic over transgression ling's was the only thing that got democrats excited earlier democrat house leaders officially called for the u.s. president's removal from office they claim he's ignored and even injured the interests of the country artie's callup more picks up the story. now the meeting focused on nuclear nonproliferation as well as other international issues but it appears that negotiations and moving forward on these vital international matters

is being held back by some internal turmoil within the united states of america and it just so happens that this meeting is taking place on the very day that articles of impeachment have been drawn up against donald trump over a phone call he had with the ukrainian leader and allegations that he obstructed the congressional investigation into that phone call the 1st article is for abuse of power it is an impeachable offense president should be engaged in an unprecedented categorical and indiscriminate defiance of the impeachment inquiry. this gives rise to the 2nd article of impeachment for obstruction of congress i think it's a disgrace if people could make it be true that if the thing that was a perfect conversation they were perfect cover say here is the thing. and i think it's a disgrace how this is somewhat of a pattern whenever a high level meeting takes place but it seems that it's followed by

a harsh attacks on the president and accusations of some kind of inappropriate relationship between trump and russia or cia director john brennan was among the 1st to float the t word treason officials and pundits even begin speculating whether russia had something on trump that would cause him to so publicly side with you have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an american president donald trump's actions just today were quote appalling and shameful shocking and sad damaging and a threat to american democracy those harsh words related mainly to the investigation conducted by bob mohler regarding allegations of collusion now interestingly a new report has just been released regarding how that investigation was carried out the new report seems to indicate that the f.b.i. made great errors and how they what about investigating donald trump during this this probe into alleged collusion donald trump spoke critically of the f.b.i.

and pointed toward the report the report actually and especially when you look into it and the details of the report are far worse than anything i would have even imagine this was an overthrow of a government this was an attempt to overthrow the report shows is that the democrats are not even the democrats but any government official that did not want donald trump that wanted to support hillary clinton but that does not want donald trump in office or donald trump as president the united states will do anything including lie lie to congress lightest senate questions feed stories to the media break protocol violations of confidential investigations in order to feed those. stories of the media to create certain narratives to harm trump the report effects the impeachment process in general and hopefully you know most americans probably are going to read every single word but i hope that they do it's far more damning and then some of the outlets have made it sound there are lots of facts in there remember the report the i.g. report was never supposed to 5 indict anybody or bring criminal charges that was

supposed to show that there was wrongdoing and how these investigations started in the 1st place how the russia trump lie started in the 1st place. the french government is pushing ahead with its controversial pension reforms in the face of mass protests and strike action over the issue prime minister and want to isolate we'll present the plans to the economic social and environmental council on wednesday the day before more than 300000 people took part in demonstrations across france according to the interior minister but labor unions say the number was almost 3 times higher with more from the french capital has it if you try to. well as you can see we are in the thick of it the country is trying to deliver their message to the government before now says their final plans for pension reform in france although we did hear from the country's prime minister that for them for now there is no intention to change their plans if we don't make serious

profound and progressive reforms to date someone else will make much more brutal reform tomorrow i hope that we can convince the majority of french people that our reform is fair it is universal it makes the special pension plans gradually disappear and is financially balanced not just for a moment let me give you a clearer picture of who these people are for instance we've already been used to the yellow vests but as you can see these are orange and what it says on them is s.n.c.f. this is the french railway company which is by the way one of the main driving forces of the protests you can imagine what happens if the entire system. where world workers what if they go on strike the like that has already happened they say that at one point almost 85 percent of the railway staff members white rice said this is really causing chaos in the country's transport system. to

start showing about real world workers i can tell you that the professor. sions range from air traffic controllers to actually police officers and lawyers so this is just how vast it is. like i said before even police union support the strike and actually in fact different opinion polls say that from 50 to 70 percent of the french population are supporting what's going on in the street in the streets of france right now but i do have to mention though that a last week protests in various cities of these countries did turn ugly and violent .

i can tell you that most of the slogans that we are hearing in these protests are aimed directly against the president emanuel macron one you can see right here it says macro don't touch my retirement i can tell you that the pension reform is pretty much his brainchild and that's why so many people are angry at him specifically over but this comes soon may be. everybody those do not come here to prove money 1st but the reforms we impart to everybody see idea

for the pension reform is to introduce a universal point system where 12. made the pension sums universal for different layers of the society but some of them here in france do fear that they will lose their privileges there on the earth to give us a tone to a food system you have every year who are your corn dogs but all much. you know wouldn't bring you a point never knows where now this is just a warning for the government but it's not hard to predict what's going to happen if emanuel makr out in his state decides to stick to the plan. but to most or is to be found on website dot com but i'll be back in 30 minutes with the latest headlines so join us then if you can't.

impeachment mania has drawn on both sides of the political divide the i.g. report clearly demonstrates the f.b.i. abused its powers when targeting. the judiciary committee is hell bent on impeachment articles ideological obsession again. seems wrong. to me. yet to stamp out this day become active. and engaged with. the trail.

when something find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. facts geysers financial survival. housing bubble. oh you mean there's a downside to artificially low mortgage rates don't get carried away that's cause report. greetings and sell you take a shit with just 15 shopping days left before christmas democrats in the us house representatives of personally announced this week that they would be moving ahead with the impeachment of us president donald trump jerrold nadler democratic representative out of new york made the big announcement with house speaker nancy pelosi at his side they were told the media this. day seriously

duty to the constitution and your country the house committee of the. easy for me to judge you this is the case. in the us this is the naturally president trying to accuse usual twitter bullhorn responding to the impeachment talk saying to impeach a president who has proven through results including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country's history to have one of the most successful presidencies ever and most importantly who has done nothing wrong is sheer political madness well clearly my friends the impeachment circus is not affected our president's sense of self accomplishment entitlement but while democrats republicans and their pundit lackeys have been busy lobbing soundbite hand grenades at each other these 2 warring factions and u.s. policies politics did find something to agree on this week the military industrial

congressional complex as military dot com reports that to the tune of a $738000000000.00 bill house and senate negotiators have reached a deal on a defense policy bill aimed at avoiding a government shutdown creating a space force and getting rid of the so-called widow's tax yes my friends right on the heels of discovering lie after lie after lie about the longest war in u.s. history through the afghanistan papers your republican and democratic representatives in congress just handed billions more of your tax dollars to the pentagon and they wonder why we are always watching honks.