and editor of who what why ross thanks so much for joining us now first starters i bet that most americans probably have never heard of and have no idea that there's an american university of iraq why do you think that is. well i myself had not heard of it until. about a year ago in the meeting began researching the seems to do to figure out what it was because of course we're all wondering why is the united states in iraq in what are the long term needs and so we learned that a university has been set up and intends to be there i suppose forever and ever you want to know more about it what we found in our research in which you can read on our site what why is that this was set up by people closely connected to the american department of defense the secretary of defense donald rumsfeld into key figures who have been in republican administrations over the years involved hold true affairs in the shaping of values the perception now where the funding for this university is specifically come from those are taxpayer money go into it or is it entirely privately funded. it seems to have been at least a little bit of taxpayer money going into it we don't know exactly we are told that h

perdue he is a post-doctoral fellow at aberystwyth university and author of american foreign policy and postwar reconstruction comparing japan in iraq and in durham we cross to bruce generals and he is a professor of public policy and political science at duke university and another member of our cross talk team yell on the hunger or a gentleman crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want take i'd like to go to you first in paris over the last two weeks. were saying events that we've never seen before in the arab world i liken it to the end of the soviet union it is a world history or storage moment as we're doing this program events are unfolding extremely almost out of control in egypt so i ask you to take what is america's track record in promoting democracy and expression is hot area right now in north africa and i'd like to name a few places to nisha egypt lebanon jordan where there is democracy that is not recognize hamas hizbullah so it's a mixed game. democracy isn't a marsh it's not recognized at least by the united states and its allies and then the united states has been a huge impediment to demo

win out then did you know that one of our wars side projects includes having colleges brought up there's currently american universities and beirut afghanistan and iraq just to name a few but one of these schools really teach well ask author or speaker and we joked about it but could it really be happening could machines be taking over our world after seeing watson school humans on jeopardy for the past three nights we're learning that i.b.m. is now creating assistance for doctors and other fields so chris wilson from slate is going to join me this gus this potential robotic apocalypse that's at the end of the show though now let's move on to our top story. this week marks the one year anniversary of the u.s. military offensive in marjah in the helmand province in southern afghanistan it was called alteration muster up and it was the largest military operation in afghanistan since the fall of two thousand and one it was announced through a massive p.r. campaign reported the world over marjah was meant to signify a new escalation of our war effort to target the taliban secure key population centers but despite what the obama administration and militar