obviously were vital to the health of the society but they were vital to maintaining pure water for example sewage system wanted purification system so when you talk about the they only used precision guided munitions the and even talk of the target at times a study called iraq water treatment vulnerabilities was produced for the u s military and the u k military is dated january sometime january nineteenth ninety is in big trouble because of the sanctions iraq the document says very clearly it will not be able to repair these systems as long as the sanctions ten years or so so a reasonable estimate is that five hundred thousand kids in iraq that would otherwise get life died during that period not all from diarrheal diseases but the substantial and it was known in the study and been done to live things in place now so what do we do with that was there a group of military officers sitting around washington let's say and say let's kill five hundred thousand around here don't know probably not created i think he calls it a public health crisis in iraq through these sorts of so not only did we do it not only did we know we were doing  celebrated we regard it as a legitimate way of fighting despite the fact that of course it's against the fourth geneva convention this is what's being done this is the kind of thing that's being done pretty regularly go through high tech modern warfare by so called democracy and the actual agent of destruction may be the pursuit precision it doesn't matter if the point of it is to ruin the health of the population this is going popula we have heard that a half a million children have died i mean that's more children than died one and hiroshima and you know is the price worth it i think this is a very hard choice but the price we think the price is worth it means of torture and execution but it demonstration to other would be every virtually every male inhabitant of the at the fortress on it was it was an awful display of brutality but it was also very effective in showing to any other potential enemies what could of the subject came to the conclusion the study was conducted at the university of chicago's project on security in terrorism and other relations it revealed that more than ninety five percent of young suicide attack are in response to foreign occupation not religion bachmann or for her republican colleagues are demanding an investigation into potential infiltration by muslim brotherhood operatives intent on destroying western civilization dangerous muslims out is the subject of this evening's talking points memo it's a frightening thought islamic terrorist training camps right here in america in our back yards so we've made it through the holidays without a terrorist attack but that doesn't mean we can ever let our guard down because  the kind of muslims that take their religion that seriously that they would strap on a suicide belt they're always going to be out for us and always going to be trying to kill us and the thing that worries me the most in the world is radical islam obviously and increasingly might i add it's a very brief and rather crude the articulated manual in the art of maintaining a wartime status in the minds of americans and others that huntington's work has to be now understood i go so far saying that it argues from the standpoint of pentagon planners and defense industry executives who have temporary lost their occupations after the end of the cold war but have now discovered a new vocation for themselves that few people today with any sense would want to volunteer such sweeping characterizations of the ones advanced by lewis about a billion a billion muslims scattered through five continents dozens of differing languages and traditions and histories all of them all lewis says that they are all enraged at western modernity as if a billion people were really only one person and western civilization was no more complicated a matter than a simple declarative sentence there's a similar debate inside the islamic world today which is the often hysterical outcry about the threat of a sign islam and fundamentalism and terrorism that one encounters so often in the media is often lost sight of completely like any other discourse of orientalism a construction fabricated to whip up feelings of hostility and anticipate antipathy against a part of the world that happens to be a strategic importance for its oil it's threatening to jason's to christianity its formal history of competition with the west yet this is a very different thing than what to muslims who live within its domain islam really is there's a world of difference between islam and indonesia and islam and egypt but the truly weakest part and i include here we weakest part of the class of cultures and civilisations thesis is the rigid separation assumed between them despite the overwhelming evidence that today's world is in fact a world of mixtures of migrations and of crossing over of the boundaries traversed there are no insulated cultures or civilizations any attempt made to separate them into the watertight compartments alleged by huntington and his ilk does damage to the alrighty their diversity their sheer complexity of elements their radical hybridity the more insistent we are on the separation of cultures the more inaccurate we are about  ves and about others our most precious asset in the face of such a dire transformation of history is the emergence not of the sense of class but a sense of community understanding sympathy and hope which is  direct opposite of what huntington provokes the language of group identity makes a particularly strident appearance from the middle to the end of the nineteenth century as a culmination of decades of international competition between the great european and american power for territories in africa and asia in the battle for the empty spaces of africa the so called dark continent france and britain germany belgium portugal resort not only to force but to a whole slew of theories and rhetoric for justifying their plunder perhaps the most famous of such devices is the french notion of the civilizing mission and let me see on c d s that cease a notion underlying which is the idea that some races and cultures have a higher aim in life than others this gives the more powerful the more developed the more civilized the higher the right to cook colonize others not in the name of brute force or plunder both of which are standard components of the exercise from those who have a different complex or slightly flatter noses than ourselves is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much what redeemed it is the idea and idea at the back of it not a sentimental pretense but an idea and an unselfish belief  the idea of something you can bow down before and sacrifice to in response to this sort of logic two things occur one is that competing imperial powers invent their own theory of cultural destiny in order to justify their absence abroad britain had such a theory germany had won belgium had won and of course on the concept of manifest destiny the united states had won to these redeeming ideas dignify the practice of competition and class whose real purpose is comrade quite accurately saw was self aggrandizement power conquest treasure and unrestrained self pride the second thing that happens is that the lesser people the objects of the imperial gaze so to speak respond by resisting their forcible manipulation and settlement pride of place in this practice is given to compassion that right across the board in every single one of the major world faiths compassion the ability to feel with the other in the way we've been thinking about this evening is the not only the test of any true religiosity it is also what will bring us into the presence of what jews christians and muslims call god or the divine it is compassion says the buddha which  brings you to nirvana why because in compassion when we feel with the other we d thrown ourselves from the center of our world and we put another person th once we get rid of ego then we're ready to see the divine and in particular every single one of the major world traditions has highlighted and has said at the put at the core of their tradition what's become known as the golden rule first propounded by confucius five centuries before christ do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you that he said was the central thread which ran through all his teaching and that his disciples should put into practice all day and every day and it was the golden rule would bring them to the transcendent value that he called her in human heartedness which was a transcendent experience in itself and this is absolutely crucial to the monotheisms too there's a famous story about the great rabbi hillel the older contemporary of jesus a pagan came to him and offered to convert to judaism if the rabbi could recite the whole jewish teaching while he stood on one leg hillel stood on one leg and said that which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor that is the torah the rest is commentary and this is an important point i think that you could not and must not confine your compassion to your own group your own nation your own coreligionists your own fellow countrymen you must have what one of the chinese sages called riyad concern for everybody love your enemies on of the stranger we formed you says the koran into tribes and nations so that you may know one another and this again this universal outreach full flying and when conflict gets ingrained in a region religion can get sucked in and become part of the problem when you do not allow for a different point of view and when you hold your view as  islamic fundamentalists have consistently been empowered by the west but there's a divide in conquer strategy and as a means of countering secular nationalist regimes which threaten control of oil suppl es has been seen most recently in the proxy wars against syria and libya where nato backed it's none have caused as it is again it's about ten days after nine eleven i went through the pentagon and i saw surgery rumsfeld and and dev researcher wolfowitz i went downstairs just sail over some of the people in the joint staff who used used to work for me and one of the generals call me and he said sir you've got to come in you've got to come in and talk to me a second i said we're too busy said no no but if he says we've made the decision we're going to war with iraq and this was on or about the twentieth of september i said we're going to war with iraq why he said i don't know so i came back to see him a few weeks later and by that time we were bombing in afghanistan i said are we still going to war with iraq and he said oh it's worse the matter he said reached over and just be picked up a piece of paper he said i just he said i just got this down from separate events office today and he said this is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years starting with iraq and syria levanon libya somalia sudan and finishing off iran let's go through the countries again well starting with iraq and syria on eleven on them libya then somalia and sudan and back to iran the united states would indeed attack iraq but the  show host rachel maddow and lawrence o'donnell it seems to me there's a practical war making tactical success that they believe they could have in this particular country exactly he kept describing himself as sort of acutely aware of the headline from reuters yesterday president barack obama has signed a secret order authorizing u s support for rebels seeking to dispose of syrian president bashar al assad and his government the u s government source of knowledge that under provisions of the presidential finding the united states is collaborating with a secret command center operated by turkey and its allies last week reuters reported that along with saudi arabia and qatar turkey had established a secret base near the syrian border to help direct vital military and communication support to assad's opponents so what you need to know late last year when senator john mccain co wrote the national defense authorization act and president obama signed it into law they crafted a law that gave the president the authority to use all necessary and appropriate force during the current armed conflict with al qaeda and the taliban and associated forces including the power to indefinitely detain anyone caught supporting al qaeda which in this case is the president and members of congress to be clear were spent in over a trillion dollars and more importantly spilling the blood of thousands of american lives in iraq and afghanistan then spending more american money and military power to in some cases help the same fighters overthrow another government for the most part this began in a generic form from a rather nice sixty's we took off where we had for example and so i could to who i don't think there's any reason to think that these particular individuals were in any way kind of sick plants for example but the idea is that they developed would given infrastructure support in a way that probably would have been possible without the input of the united states and britain and other western european powers in the middle east he finds that these brilliant islamic movements were supported as a way of countering both independent nationalist movements as well as movements that were kind of left leaning this whole process basically accelerated when the united world not by governments but by the people of the national security council explained the same time the reasons for it the highest planning body they said there's a perception and they ar world that the united states supports a dictatorships and blocks democracy and development and that we do that so as to ensure control over the resources of the region and furthermore they went on to say that the perception is basically accurate and that that's exactly what we should be doing relying on a mortar doctrine as long as people are quiet everything under control  state john foster dulles the dominant feel amongst american strategic planners we must regard arab nationalism as a flag which is running strongly we cannot successfully oppose it but we can put up sandbags ambitions faced in that sense it's a terrible predicament if you're going to be zionist which is that you have to conquer the land that you say god gave it to you and gave you the conquest would be which was to develop a nationalism for themselves it was the only choice of a lot of other jews aside the very pious and just the religious traditions or they decided to go westward and became very very important in history or immigration or they became very much involved with the marxist socialist movement but there was this also for the poles which was to become of the beare everything possible to kick out the jews but i'm a jew and we have this destiny and we're going to take this country over the early zionist who are interested in this and they sent a couple of scouts to study the situation and the cable back in crypto language put it on the stink about the following message that the bride is beautiful but she is married to another man and the bride being the land that they saw for themselves and marriage being the brute fact that there were other people living there who had in fact inhabited that land in fact these people whom we call palestinians had some degree inhabited ever since destruction of the jewish temple back in seventy eighty and they're probably the descendants of the original jews where's the jews who came to the end of the nineteenth century and through the twentieth century were mainly jews who developed in eastern europe so russian territory such as my own family called the ashkenazi injuries and we certainly had the the imbalance is incredible one hundred to one basically and yet somehow it's possible given this kind of nature except the history of a being persecuted for you know for being jewish an anti semitic can turn truth on its head and believe that they are in fact the victim of force namely the palestinians i think palestinians a very remarkable qualities they said chiefly being able to endure the punishment that's been meted out to them it's incredible the players they are as forgiving as as benign a people as in fact they are i know many many palestinians and they are a remarkable lack of vengeance and of course they have their their anger and their little sex within them and some of them will do terrible that's human beings but in any sense that this is a real threat to the state of israel is just in the realm of medicine delusion all governments have to justify with a doing that to become legitimate and the like of them were the worst they behave the more strenuously they have to lie and distort reality to be legitimate and this is you know what they're doing and the only some have succeeded to sustain propaganda campaign to persuade the majority of israeli citizens that the palestinians who the aggressors and a genuine threat to the state of israel which is absolute nonsense state structured racism i mean the racism is profound and it is necessary given the basic logic the social compact the basic structure of the state so it's impossible to avoid so not only is it in a void unavoidable but it's inevitably going to get worse and it is getting worse all the time on international terrorism and he coined the phrase international terrorism in one nine hundred seventy nine and bush senior who was then the head of the cia and george shultz who later became secretary of states where at this the infiltration into the americas by terrorists by outside interference and those who are just aiming at our salvador but i think our aiming at the whole central and  america and i'm sure eventually north america it worked so well the one thousand nine hundred eighty four the second conference on international terrorism was held not in jerusalem but in washington d c so that was one of the first seats of planting the idea of  characterizing muslims and arabs and palestinians as terrorists it's interesting right after nine eleven margaret thatcher wrote an article that crowd saying  after the soviet union collapse the us had a problem they couldn't justify the massive military spending in the imperial controls and the bases and things in the american people were clamoring for a peace dividend in one thousand nine hundred two shortly after the dick cheney was leading it and rumsfeld and powell came up with two conflicting two alternate scenarios rumsfeld was selected it was basically proposed taking gas tank and the middle east needed both needed to be conquered in order for the us to happen to control and again also said so this would be a difficult sell to the american public and that you would need a pretext incident was the first wrote the grand chessboard and this is an amazingly machiavellian book it's really worth reading and basically he said if you control the middle east in the caspian sea area you control the world because it's basically are in the middle of europe and china and africa and asia  solution to our country somebody who has over decades trained some of the most prominent foreign policy specialists not just in the democratic party but the last thing chris was the rack to rebuild america's defenses put out by the project for the new century which literally sat we reaffirm the values of the defense policy guidance report and basically expanding it and it laid out everything all the major policy changes that became part of bush's war on terror also in that they said we would need a new pearl harbor type incident in order to sell and the taliban took over a couple and establish a government with an only a with the support of the united states and the saudi government and the us was actively working with them and then the taliban did two mistakes one was that they destroyed the poppy fields and banned heroin and the second thing that they did was that they started demanding a fair share of the proceeds from the in calls business and the u s in july two thousand and one surely before the nine eleven attacks told them either carpet you with gold if you agree or will cut it with us shortly after that the u s started a map saying aircraft carriers and having military exercises all around afghanistan the biggest buildup