and phyllis bennis is a fellow at the institute for policy studies.he's written several books, including "understanding the palestinian-israeli conflict: a primer" and "calling the shots: how washington dominates today's united nations." when we come back, we will be joined by attorney scott horton. stay with us. ♪ [music break] >> this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. at least nine pakistanis were killed sunday in u.s. drone strike in north waziristan the first reported u.s. drone strike of 2015. news accounts of the strike are based on unnamed pakistani government and security officials. the obama administration said nothing so far. her years, the united states did not even publicly acknowledge the existence of the drone strikes. the drone program is just one example of the national security state's reliance on secret operations. the recent senate intelligence committee report revealed another example. the shadowy network of oversee cia black sites where the u.s. held and tortured prisoners. report also

phyllis bennis is a fellow at the institute for policy studies.'s written several books, including, "understanding the palestinian-israeli conflict: a primer" and "calling the shots: how washington dominates today's united nations." what about this authorization? >> for the last several years, president obama has been relying on earlier authorizations. authorization for the war in iraq in 2002. he is been relying on this decades old authorizations to say, i can go to war without anything else. but i would like it if congress would pass a new authorization. congress seems eager to pass it. the issue being debated is will there be any restrictions? will there be a sunset clause or will these be the kind we saw her we had everyone in congress, except for the perot at barbara lee, stood up and voted for an authorization that had no restrictions against who we were going to war, no restrictions on geography, no restrictions on time am a no restrictions on weapons, no restrictions on anything. it was a rather shocking level of authorization to go to war

. >> joining me now is mike tomasky and phyllis bennis the director of the new internationalism projectke, i have never seen an invitation issued like this to a head of state to address a joint session of congress. and it turns out the original invitation from boehner was for february and netanyahu pushed it up to march, even closer much closer to the election night in israel. >> two weeks from the election he pushed it to. coinciding with the big apec conference here in washington that will happen in march. lawrence, i think you're quite right. i don't think i've never seen anything quite like this. it's hard to read this as anything other than an attempt to subvert or at least thwart obama's foreign policy goal and obama being the president, this is to say the united states' foreign policy goal of striking some kind of a nuclear deal with iran, because this is the os os stepsible subject of netanyahu's talk. mostly republicans are going to give him rapturous applause, and it's an in your face gesture at the president of the united states siding with the head of another state against t