introduce our guests this hour we're joined by historian and investigative journalist gareth porter and congressional reporter matt lauer's always been keeping tabs on the how this has been playing out on the hill for us and before we get started matt i have a feeling a regardless of what the president says in just a few moments folks on both sides of the aisle are going to find plenty to to criticize care regardless of whether there's a d or an r at the end of their name is that the consensus on the hill so for example he got a hard line to toe the one hand we have senator john mccain who came out and said if you only would takes away three or five thousand troops precious. something that would be palatable to him on the other hand you have some nerve lebanon democrat of michigan head of the armed services committee who says fifteen thousand minimum needs to go right there and he's never going to appease those two wings either party and i think you know it's not going into this i think his main message is going to be every day americans especially those democrats who needs to come out

afghan strategy i'm joined by gareth porter in washington he's an investigative historian and journalist also in washington we have sam side by he is senior director of iran programs at nonviolence international and in london we crossed the alexis crow she's a research fellow in the international security program at chapman house all right folks this is cross talk and that means cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want gareth i'd like to go to you first in washington details of obama's pullback from afghanistan are becoming more and more clear are you satisfied that it's legitimate or is it just all about domestic politics the united states obama is trying to satisfy public opinion without alienating the military all that much because it's still open ended even what we've heard about these plans american and nato troops will be in afghanistan for a very long time. well i wouldn't quite put it. is trying to satisfy public opinion in a sense opinion in the united states on afghanistan is way ahead of president obama in terms of the desire to withdraw our troop

but i think it's heavily steeped in domestic political considerations i mean as as gareth has pointed out you know americans are way ahead of this but i think it's a very convenient time after day after the killing of a large and i think it's very convenient time for him to associate reduction in troops with success in the counterterrorism strategy. and afghanistan what's confusing and what's very indicative of this short term sort of policy is that western democracies and satisfying to this is that the aims have been shifting constantly since success in winning in afghanistan is meant very different things as we've gone along and to begin with. and the americans were very much focused on counterterrorism and i self was focused on sort of counter when obama came into office we started talking much more about counterinsurgency petraeus and his boys brought their lessons from into afghanistan and so we switched more into a steep counterinsurgency role and now because we've had success and bin laden we switch back into counterterrorism success it's just i think it's more indicative yeah

franklyn of law enforcement against prohibition we've also got robert naiman of just la policy and gareth porter with us on why we need to get out of nato in libya not so crazy this for mamma did a job the new police s.o.b on cover of the worst u.s. cities for speechcraft john dennis explains our ron paul will win iowa and i'll explain why i have reason to wear a shoe on my head and mud wrestle the co-producer of out of versus the man. here's a little cite the cia's web site was down yesterday and they took credit with a tweet that said tango down cia. for the loans a group also sort of a telephone hotline for public requests on who or what they should attack in the future but when called an answer machine so the phone could not be answered by an actual person because the group was busy raping your internet so why am i wearing a shoe on my head because when a little bit cops of the alona show right here on our t.v. try to get an interview with them they said only if you were a shoe on your head the whole time and then they tweeted at be alone or show and you and the producer have to moder

afghan strategy i'm joined by gareth porter in washington he's an investigative historian and journalist also in washington we have sam side there he is senior director of iran programs at nonviolence international and in london we crossed the alexis crow she's a research fellow in the international security program at chapman house all right folks this is cross talk and that means cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want gareth i'd like to go to you first in washington details of obama's pullback from afghanistan are becoming more and more clear are you satisfied that it's legitimate to or is it just all about domestic politics the united states obama is trying to satisfy public opinion without alienating the military all that much because they still open ended.

cross talk and that means cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want gareth i'd like to go to you first in washington details of obama's pullback from afghanistan are becoming more and more clear are you satisfied that it's legitimate or is it just all about domestic politics the united states obama is trying to satisfy public opinion without alienating the military.

cross talk us afghan strategy i'm joined by gareth porter in washington he's an investigative historianand journalist also in washington we have sam side by he is senior director of iran programs at nonviolence international and in london we crossed the alexis crow she's a research fellow in the international security program at chapman house all right folks this is cross talk and that means cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want gareth and i to go to you first in washington.

and any time you want gareth i'd like to go to you first in washington details of obama's pullback from afghanistan are becoming more and more clear are you satisfied that it's legitimate or is it just all about domestic politics the united states obama is trying to satisfy public opinion without alienating the military all that much because it's still open ended even what we've heard about these plans american and nato troops will be in afghanistan for a very long time. well i wouldn't quite put it that obama is trying to satisfy public opinion in a sense opinion in the united states on afghanistan is way ahead of president obama in terms of the desire to withdraw our troops i mean the latest pew poll shows fifty six percent. to thirty eight percent want to withdraw our troops as soon as possible only thirty eight percent are interested in keeping troops there until the situation is stabilized quote unquote so i mean that's really you know it's not that obama is satisfied in public opinion what he's doing is primarily satisfying the interests of the pentagon in the military they have g

president obama's new military strategy in afghanistan was working but as investigative journalist gareth porter uncovered so in general petraeus is most outed accomplishments against the taliban turned out to be a crock and of the thousands of rank and file fighters he claimed require killed almost ninety percent of them are actually innocent civilians were released just days after capture so is that our new strategy in afghanistan capture innocent people just to boost the numbers here to dig deeper into this issue is gareth porter investigative journalist and policy analyst on u.s. foreign and military policy as well as the author of four books including peril perils of dominance. imbalance of power and the road to war in vietnam carriage welcome thanks very much to the title of your book about vietnam i remember i'm old enough troops for when general westmoreland was there when it was all about body counts and he was gone you know it turned out later we learned that many of the viet cong that we had killed in the enemy were actually innocent civilians people who were in villages that h

afghan strategy i'm joined by gareth porter in washington he's an investigative historian and journalist also in washington we have sam said he is senior director of iran programs at nonviolence international.

also in london we have robert oulds he is director of the bruges group and in washington we go to gareth jones he's an economics professor with the market to center at george mason university all right this is crosstalk and that means crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want but before let's look at a report about a country that may bring the eurozone to the brink of collapse. the euro zone is facing a crisis in which few can predict its outcome as financial markets and leading banks grapple with the greek debt debacle there are serious questions about the viability of the euro as a currency and whether greek default will strike a critical blow to the small metairie experiment. overburdened with crushing debts greece is fighting for its financial and political life as lawmakers defend the unpopular us tara to measures meanwhile the european union the european central bank and the i.m.f. say these measures are the only way to revive a second the commie the country is undergoing a crucial moment we are obligated to ensure the future the future of our country wi

surprised surprise had not been publicized by the general so here the scots this group with me is gareth porter investigative journalist and author of this report kara thanks so much for being here tonight what more can you tell us in terms of the numbers in terms of what we were told or what congress was told in a meeting i was told by general petraeus virus is what you actually found in these official military documents where this story really begins when petrou was just having the new commander for u.s. troops and nato troops in afghanistan starts his round of media interviews oldest of two thousand term the first thing he goes almost is to the class of foreigners the sort of data showing that special operations forces are having almost superhuman success in killing and capturing telegram and so he puts out figures initially for the ninety day rule may through july but says. the s.o.f. night raids have captured one thousand three hundred fifty five taliban well i mean that's turns out to be a lie because when you find that the task force in charge of detainee affairs and if they're ho

author of four books including perils of dominance in balance of power and the road to war in vietnam gareth welcome thanks tom great to have you with us based on this new senate report if we leave afghanistan's economy will crash and if we stay we're screwed but we do what i think we have to start phasing it out that's the only way that you can prepare the afghan people in their economy for the crash that you're talking about as it is what this aid is doing is essentially corrupting the entire society and there's no question about that this is been well reported i should say it's been reported well by certain reporters not widely but by the u.s. news media what's been happening is that the u.s. inevitably picks out warlords and powerful people locally to do business with in other words to help them with their economic development plans as well as their military security efforts and those warlords essentially make out like bandits which they are on the basis not only of the military aspect of this but the economic assistance as well and that obviously turns the local people even more against

only does he know how to spin the war we also know that he's like we had investigative journalist gareth porter on this program just a few weeks ago where he highlighted that petraeus had given numbers of captured taliban without actually following up and acknowledging that ninety percent of those people had been released because it turns out that they were no more than harmless civilians but guess what congress didn't ask about that today we know the media isn't going through either the law the war in afghanistan rages on while we now see a military general take over our intelligence agency which you can only assume means that the cia operations abroad are going to expand and which you yourself have to ask is he going to allow those voices those people within the intelligence agencies the ones that have conducted reports on their own they concluded that afghanistan wasn't going well contrary to the general's words if we're going to let those people still have a voice are we going to see any variety and thought those are all important questions to ask this came to trey's takes the reins

to the us capturing members of the taliban on june thirteenth i interviewed investigative reporter gareth porter on this show about those mismatching numbers on taliban detainees the notion that somebody is free because of something you know in consequential just doesn't make any sense in fact the criteria for holding them are so broad that it's very easy to keep these people in detention for a long time so the fact that twenty percent of those detainees who were cycled through the main detention center were actually released after a review of their files means that they just didn't have any. so just like the u.s. military and general petraeus failed to detain any militants justly we find f.b.i. and european intelligence groups and able to just we detain those they've just captured especially brian cleary those are the police's way of easing the worries of governments all over the world making a big show the rest of people in trumping up their importance and then just quietly releasing them when the media spotlight has faded if so i take pleasure in calling them out for it if there's a fo