Transcripts For ALJAZAM Consider This 20140115

It raises new questions on the obama administrations steps in the siege. Attorney general, mark him et, the secretary of defense for middle east policy, and the secretary of state for political affairs, and contributor in english. Good to have you back on the show, general. And this newly depleased tem, he said when we see the rocketpropelled grenade attack, what appeared to be small arms fire, and it appeared to be that this was a terrorist attack, and not just something sporadic. He said that he had no doubt that it was a terrorist attack. Anything but the truth on what was happening, a lot of us have been surprised over the months for the obama administration, and they continued to stick to the narrative that there was a spontaneous uprising generated by the video, and it doesnt hold water. Looking at the timeline, think briefed the president and said that it was clear that the u. S. Mission was under attack, and he didnt know that there was a mob uprising or video out there. And leon panetta said that he thought it was a terrorist attack immediately. So again, where is the u. S. Pointing to where the antiu. S. Video came from, since apparently it didnt start with the military. Well, my sense is that it came out of the talking points, the information was incomplete and the intelligence is incomplete. But its clear that neither the state Department Officials on the ground or the intelligence personnel thought it was a video that caused this. And none wantless, over the space of a couple of days, the talking points would indicate that the belief inside of the white house, whether its factual or video, was some response to the video. Emails have shown that the state departmentent want didnt want it linked to al qaeda. Susan rice said it was not a premeditated attack, and what does this new information meaning for her and also Hillary Clinton, who was very aggressive when she testified before the senate . Well, again, im not here to comment on the political ramifications on this. I think that the American People will make the decision. This is going to be clearly amplified by the republicans in the Upcoming Elections and they will use this on the assault on the character of Hillary Clinton. And nevertheless, the argument of whether this was al qaeda or affiliates for al qaeda is senseless. The article in the New York Times indicated that one of the leading organizers of the violence was someone who believed in mission of the al qaeda, he may not have been a card carrier or had a bumper sticker, but he was sympathetic for the view. And he had been for some time. And i think politically, this will add damage to the narrative of the clinton campaign, and i think the American People are going to be as interested in hearing what Hillary Clinton has to say about this, as they are in hearing what Chris Christie says about what happened in new jersey. You found that al qaeda was not responsible for the attack, and they brought up the radio and spontaneous demonstration, and they said things that certainly supported the white house mayortive, and then senator diane fine stein said that she disagreed with the New York Times, and said that i believe that groups loosely associated with al qaeda were involved in the attack, and she went on to show the video and said that doesnt jive with me. So the question that most people are asking, more than a year later, why are are there so many explanations of what happened here . Well, in many ways, this situation of whether this was core al qaeda, or al qaeda affiliates, led by bin laden and now by alzarqawi, may not have been involved. But thats not the threat to the region or the united states. These affiliates or these franchises developed over the years were certainly part of that. So while it may not have been the headquarters of al qaeda involved, the article in the New York Times suggests and emphases that it was not core al qaeda, but these were al qaeda affiliates involved in this. And the military was very ill prepared to deal with Something Like what happened in benghazi and im sure that that will be a big part of the discussion in the future. Thank you for joining us. And we turn now to governor Chris Christie, who it addressed the George Washington bridge scandal head on at his new jersey state of the state speech. Mistakes remember made, and as a result, we let down the people we were entrusted to serve. And were out a doubt, well make sure that this doesnt happen again. But i also want to assure the people of new jersey today that what has occurred does not define us or our state. Joining me now to discuss whats next for governor christie and what he means by appropriate inquiries, he was in charge of the lane close on the bridge, and he chairs a motor motive for the closure, and job jordan, the state department, he covers the christie administration, and he has just written on the christie administrations involvement on the super storm. And bob, great to have you with us. Im going to start with you, and christie hit it head on, and he got a surprising amount of applause. How did he do . Well, he did start with it right away. And he did use a passionate voice. We heard professional athletes speaking in the third per. So he did say that he would cooperate with any appropriate inquiries, and im not sure what that means. I dont know how to decide which are appropriate or not, but he mentioned it. And he might have lost some of his national audience. I think that cnn and others pulled away after he addressed bridgegate right away, and some of the other policies were not heard outside of the state. The National Coverage was limited to mostly his apology and to the bridge. And ever . , you have to deal with whether it was an appropriate inquiry or not, and how did you feel when he said that . Im not sure what he means by it. He said that he would cooperate, and today he said that he would cooperate with all appropriate inquiries. Well take him at his word now that hell cooperate. And his actions will speak to whether he actually meant t when we do our investigation, well see if he cooperates. We just started the process. The legislative session that inspired this, it took office today. And were going to start the new committee this thursday, and well test the cooperation from that point forward. Bob, one thing that christie didnt mention today was the audit into the Hurricane Sandy ad that involved him. Your latest piece has new documents that indicate the administration is trying to hide its role. And they got paid 2. 2 million more in an ad that would not feature him or his family. Where do you see that going . Is this something thats not going to be a big deal . Theres nothing illegal going on there . Well, the federal government is doing an audit of the contract thats basically expanding the spending, and not looking at precisely how the contract was awarded and the details. We have been tracking this for many many months. It has been hard to get records from the administration. And one of the latest set of records, for instance, that we reported on on monday, there were six members of christies staff, and also part of the independent state agency, where he has appointees. And they scored two final bids. And we did receive a score sheet from six individuals, but the names were redacted. So its impossible to determine which person. But there had been this money that was allocated to a Marketing Campaign to bring back new jersey. The jersey shore is back, so is there anything illegal with using taxpayer money for things like this, and other governors had certainly used in new jersey, money to promote their state. Illegal . Theres nothing illegal in new jersey. Theres no law against it. They have appropriations. New york had money for a campaign, and i think that new york might have a law prohibiting it, and thats the procedure in other jurisdiction. Thats the law, and in new jersey, it was an election year, and it was taxpayer money, so it became quite a topic in new jersey last year. The wall street journal has released a picture of governor christie with david wild steen who is at the port authority, and hes the one who received the email from Bridget Kelly, and he said that he got it, and last week, he pleaded the 5th. And the governor said that he hadnt been talking with him for a while, but this picture shows that they had been together a couple of months before the election. It fits the pattern that we have been detecting. The governor made a strenuous denial that he didnt know anything about that fair until january 8th, because thats when the story was broken, but we see a lot of the senior staff deeply involved with Bridget Kelly and other phones, and we have to take this into context. Its an election year, and his staff gets an email that says two of your appointees may have broken the law. And its hard to believe that during an Election Campaign that somebody on his team that got this email didnt pull him aside, and say, you may get a question of this. Somebody may be breaking the law, and then you see david wildstein, and this is when the lanes are shut down. One question that has to come up, bob, is about christies approval rating. Because you look at the most recent numbers, and it says that 59 of the new jersey residents prove. And only 32 disapprove. And how much is this hurting governor christie . That poll at the university, it only shows a 6 point drop in christies rating since bridgegate broke. It tells you two ways to look at it. People love christie for his personality and style, and those people are going to overlook maybe a lack of governor ethics by his staff. But as this story plays out and possibly christie gets tied closer and closer to what went wrong with the bridgegate closures, that number could go soft very quickly. Were going to start seeing subpoenas and testifying in. The committee is going to org thursday, and well have the initial meeting, and subpoenas will come out. And we to the look at documents. We to understand how Bridget Kelly got that authority before she sent that email, and ultimately people will be questioned. Well look forward to having you back. We turn to developments we have stayed on top of in the last few months. Concussions in the nfl and their terrible consequences. A federal judge denied on tuesday, the landmark settlement between the nfl and many of its former players and claims of brain injuries, saying that the money and not covering the problem. If only 150 of retired nfl players receive a qualifying diagnoses, its guilt to see how the Monetary Award Fund would have the Funds Available over its lifespan to pay all of the claimants. Joining me, a former pro bowler from the giants and the jets. And he won the super bowl twice. He was diagnosed with chronic cte. And its great to have you here. Its kind of a crazy time. Yes, it is a crazy time. This doesnt mean that the settlement is off. The judge said that she wants more financial details from both sides. Do you think a better deal is going to be worked out . What was your reaction today . Well, my first, ill do it chronologic leaf. I think that a better deal needs to be struck between the players and the National Football league. I think its one thing to have an award, and a significant award, but its Something Else to have a significant award that will take care of a major class in the population. Its a number of guys and families that have been doing it enough over the lifespan of some of these careers, and i think theres families like the webster family. And the long family from the steelers, the durison family, and the seau family. I can just keep naming numbers, and they are suffering in the process, and what you just read, it speaks volumes. Ten percent of the players, 450 guys, how many of them have cte and als and simentia . You wouldnt have enough money to pay them out, based on what the attorneys have structured now, and the attorneys have come out and said they want 112 million of the settle. And it was announced that they didnt want it. 112 million is going to go to the lawyers, and if you brought up how much money goes to each player, and it will vary tremendously depending on what happened to the players, and people with als could get 5 million. The people who died, 4 million. And on the other hand, some of the older players who have Serious Problems could only get 25,000. What do you think about the way that the money is being distributed is it. Its too unfair, its unclassified. I look at me and three of my friends, tony dorset, and myself, and here were guys, living specimens that have this issue. This job related illness from playing contact, tackle football in the National Football league. We didnt have it before we joined the nfl. You couldnt stake that claim because if you knew that, why did you make that before we went out of college . We all went through physicals and got diagnosed, whether we had problems or not, delano, being one, and me being one, and duper being one. So it makes sense that now, with all of the evidence out, that a player that has cte and is qualified for the money now, has to take a portion of the money, versus the entire piece of the pie as he deserves. I say you take the money, you put it into a fund and you let the player live off of the interest, and as his case weakens or he gets better, you now make a decision to take back some of the money or out right award it. But dont say that you have to cut your brain open and see that you have als or dementia, or the study that you did at ucla or wherever else you did it, and until we do that, we dont want to award the money. And i might as well kill myself. If im going to get the 4 million for myself and my family, i dont want to be here. The stories are awful, the suicides, and jim mcmahon and so many big stars in the nfl. How are you doing. Im doing better. Im not great, but im better. The good thing, i have support. I have good doctors and advisers around me and i have a great lady in my life. Im doing well adjusting and coping with cte. Some people have been critical of this deal from the beginning because they felt there was not enough money, and youre talking about putting it in a fund with the interest, and is it enough money given that it only deals with current mayors, and not former or future players . Lets break it down. Lets say for example, you had 10 with cte, 10 with als and 10 with dementia. Youre talking 30 of 600 million. So if you made the award of 4 million a player, all of it is gone. And of that general population, how many of them were totally diagnosed . How many of them fully went to the doctors and maintained their health to figure out whats going on with them . So i think that the number is more like 4 billion for argument sake, but who am i . And this is just the beginning of it, and we are glad youre doing well. And keep doing well, and we certainly hope that they fig out something to take care of all of the guys, and figure out how to make sure that this doesnt keep happening in the future. Leonard marshall marshal, three time pro bowler and super bowler. Coming up, the American Education system gets another bad grade, what can be done to fix the system . And janet is tracking top stories on the web. A new report on the web today, some lawmakers are getting legislation passed under the radar and how they could be deceiving you. A recent new School Report on school systems, to boost scores down the road. And not one state, out of the 50 or the District Of Columbia earned an a. Joining me, michelle reid. And according to the state policy report card, by her group, students first, the nations report card was pretty bismal. U. S. Scored an overall grade of d plus with a 1. 4 gpa. On the three policy areas, elevated teaching profession, a c , and governing well, a d plus. Im joined in tennessee by michelle reed, and its great to have you with us. A d plus is barely a passing grade in most schools, and a failing grade in others, and is there any good news in your report . There is good news. This is our Second Annual propert reportand we saw progress from t year. Year only the gpa as a whole go up, but less failing grades, and thats good news. We saw a lot of states make Good Movement on the first pillar of elevating the teaching professions, making sure that they put solid standards in place. Was that the biggest thing in elevating the teaching profession in. Thats what a lot of the states did. You take a state like tennessee, which did extraordinarily well. It broke into the top ten this year, and they have done a tremendous amount of work on elevating the teaching profession by making sure that they did layoffs by quality instead of seniority. And implementing a new teacher evaluation system, and letting the schools hire the teachers they wanted rather than having the districts force the teachers onto the school. So making the changes at the legislative level, it earned the state a higher grade. And you can see the corresponding increases in the student achievement levels as well. Tennessee was the nations top many. Whats interesting about the top ten, how varied they are, financially, politically, geographically. So if you look at the mentoneers american teenagers and their academic performance, americans were 17th out of 34, and 21st in science, 26th in math. What do we do to catch these guys . Because obviously, theyre going to try to stay ahead of us as they can. I think this years test results were very sobering. Not only did we drop ranks in every one of those categories, but in of the countries that leapfrogged ahead of us, were countries like estonia and the slovak republic. If the u. S. Had fallen between the slovak republic, on olympic gold medal, but we come in 26th in math, and people arent batting an eye. It ought to be a wakeup call and saying that the laws and policies we have now are not serving well, and not allowing the educators to put into place the kind of practice thats they need to. Its up to the government and the legislators to take the mantle and have currently and put the policies in place. And it really makes you wonder what our priorities are. But what do you see as the Biggest Barriers against reforms Going Forward . I think that change is difficult, and any time you want to shakeup a system and implement a new teacher evaluation system, and introducing choice and competition into the marketplace, youre going to get a lot of push back by the status quo and the bureaucracy. Thats a big impediments. Bud at the sam at the same iments but atthe same time, when we have 84 of our 12th graders you support the core curriculum, its already in place in 48 states and dc. And they have been criticized from both sides of the spectrum. To measure not verbal learning, and consequence and waste boatloads of money. Your response . I would say that both of those quotes are wildly inaccurate. On the first one, to say that they have shown no progress is incorrect. Most states are just getting started, and the jurisdiction of washington d. C. And tennessee have actually shown the greatest gains in student achievement levels over the last two years, and i think were showing progress in this area. I think that generally people have lat of complaints about the common core, but the bottom line is that we do have to have a set of rig Russian National standards that are internationally benchmarked. Because the bottom line, the children growing up in America Today are not going to be competing for jobs against sacramento, but india and japan. So we have to make sure that the kids are learning the skills that they need in the global marketplace. We have a social media question to you. I think that education is a public right. And its an opportunity for government to provide education for all children. And theres a divisive argue. Going on right now. And when you want to provide choice, education, you are providing education to the public. And in that vein, we have to make sure that every family has high quality action. This is america, w be in a situation where the family feels like the kids are trapped without choices. Do as a country is make sure the next generation is educated. We have excellent schools, and excellent charter schools, excellent charter and private schools. Why not give children and family from. You address a lot of this in your book radical, Michelle Rhea great to have you on the show. Next week we investigate the winners and losers, starting with a special report thats next week on america tonight before consider this. Time to see what is trending on al jazeeras website. A report out today by the National Abortion Rights Action league found that state lawmakers were hiding antiabortion policies in unrelated legislation. Provisions in 2013 relating to medication clinics stuck their way into a Motorcycle Safety bill signed into law in 2013. In ohio, a 2010 state budget included a requirement for women seeking abortion with evidence of a foetal heartbeat. A lot of reaction to this story. Mitchell fink tweeted saying on the flipside the president of the national right to Life Committee reacted to the ohio and North Carolina cases telling al jazeera over the phone you can read more at the website aljazeera. Com. Its interesting to note that 807 pieces of legislation went through, 4,000 increase since 1995. Back to you. Thank you. Straight ahead. How did narzies and aliens figure in Edward Snowdens releases. Youll have to hear it to believe it. The cons of social networking. And the baby boomer effect. Why this generation was a success and had a massive impact the world is our fault according to author pj orourke writing about baby boomers saying, we are the generation with an excuse for everything, but the world is still our fault, most generations think they are social and have distaste. Orourke, no, he secures his own generation in his book it is great to have pj orourke with us. Good to see you. Good to see you. As a fellow baby boomer are we that bad. We are characterised as selfabsorbed. You say we go beyond that. We do. We are terribly selfabsorbed. Are we bad . No, we are easy going, tolerant generation, not rigid at all. Its hard to imagine us as nazis or communists. Except to play communists. We dont have that discipline. Its a good thing. This is a generation that never grew up. All the bad things in the world, they have been done by grownups. You say the world you joke about the world being our fault and say that the reality is that the world is a better place thanks to baby boomers. I think so. You put the take over of the baby boom. We dont run the world. About the time that john belushi came out in animal house. If you look down, theyre everywhere you look. Obviously we had an effect. Im not sure thats a good thing. It keeps the public amused. Thats important. The truth of the matter is if you compare it to world war ii or world war i or the korean war or vietnam. Once the baby boom gets in charge things calm down. We are just too lazy and selfinvolved to do better things. Far too Many Americans died in war. Many, many few. Every death is horrible. Sheer numbers have gone down. You say we are spoilt brats. At the same time you say we are one of the most altruistic generations ever. Absolutely, and the other thing is we have been innovative. All the text stuff, we older baby boomers may not know how to use it, but we invent it. You do a divide. I do. Its a huge generation. It goes from 46 to 64. Yes. To Michelle Obama and cher. You divide us into seniors, juniors, and in your class you this Hillary Clinton. Bill. Bill also, a democrat. George w. Bush, a republican and cheetch from cheetch and chong. How can you generalise . On the first generation we were on the bow wave of a voyage, that we have been on, but we were closely tethered to our parents, the greatest generation. We were kind of keelhauled, dragged under the boat. Confused. Theres a good reason for t. Then you get the next generation, the junior class. Those are the tech guys. They were the worst hippies, worse than we were. Not necessarily bill gates, but steve jobs. Not bill gates, he pretty much belonged to the maths class. Steve jobs wandered around looking for phone abs. They come back and find shoes. They never found the neck ties. Then i have to complain about my group. Im a sof more, and you talk about us being mbas. Lisa, the author of the preppy handbook. Representatives of the generation. Obviously you guys were looking at us guys thinking, wow, this works in general, but maybe not specifically when the bong sets fire to the bean bag college, my favourite quote is how the sophmores looked at the juniors and seniors and said baby boomer believed passion for living should repraise working for one. Which is why im not retired playing golf. We were the first generation in the history of the world that had the opportunity to do what we wanted to do. Truly do what we wanted to do. By world historical standards we were rich, coming from a Stable Family background. The war was over, the depression was over. The hope and optimism of the 50s and 60s s s s s s s s s sa we took it at face value. We were going to go for it and do what we wanted. That stuff turned out stupid. And you write that we were happy. Kids and the baby boomers had a lot of things. One of the questions that arose was how did we turn into helicopter parents. I thought about that. We are. I know we are at my house. And its because we are the generation that never grew up. We know whats on their little minds, like the greatest generation personalities. They didnt know what kids were thinking. No, we know what youre thinking about pot, beer and know. That makes us more careful. Way more careful. And i have to blame the kids. It takes two. We would have shot the helicopter down. They let us hover. The other thing that you write about is you dont like the name of the generation. On the other hand you want to be millennial. No, the lost generation. That was cool. Greatest generation. Greatest generation is not bad. Just exploding infant. No one wants to be called that all their life. The book is fun. Since we got you here i want to ask you a couple of things. Chris christie, what do you think will happen . I think its a slow news week. We were talking about this before we went on camera. The story goes on and on. Here in new york you are like George Washington bridge traffic jam. Oh, my gosh. What are they thinking in ohio. Okay, the news tonight is jersey. Thatll be interesting to see how it place. It shows, i think, interesting part of the story is somebody is really scared of Chris Christie in 16. And, like, they are looking for scandal any place they can. If they think bridge traffic jams have legs that will last until 16, they have another thing coming. A final one, given we are talking about baby boomers and you mentioned pot. The legalization, what do you think will happen. How big a deal is it. It is a big deal. It leads to more use, no doubt about that. When you lower the cost the consumption increases. Part the of it is its a legality. You are taking some of the danger out of it. Im kind of torn about this. Basically i think its around, its so pervasive in our culture that we will not get the jeanie back in the bottle. This may be part of the drug war know. Its great to have you here. The book again is the baby boom. How it got that way and it wasnt my fault and ill never do it again. Straight ahead a new study todays data dive tries to keep up with the joneses and fails. Researchers in finland and france found most peoples friends are actually happier and more successful than they are. Its part of what they termed the generalised friendship paradox. Its mostly about averages. Most people have small numbers of friends, but will be pals with someone with a big Social Circle. That popular person skews the average meaning your Social Circle invariably will include richer more popular people. Those with more friends have more financial success. We are not sure if its the success leading to more friends and success. On average your romantic partner will have had more partners than you did and so on in the paradox. This follows a univerty of michigan study finding the more people using facebook, the more depressed they are. The study did not offer reasons for depressions, many weighed in to say facebook weighed in on users, having a reverse chardonfreud. Sometimes when you make more money it doesnt lead to personal satisfaction. New Research Released found the levels of people satisfied with their lives drops once a country has an annual income of 33,000. Thats called the bliss point. Its not great news for the u. S. The average american salary was more than 51,000. The happiest countries are rich, but not too rich. Maybe the extra 18,000 helped to edge the u. S. Out of the top so of the happiest countries in the world. Coming up, consumer space flight passes a test, meaning katy perry, Virgin Galactic hit a milestone to send tourists into space. It flew its test vehicle spaceship ii higher than before. Making a Maiden Voyage into space in 2014 more likely. An image has been released by n. A. S. A. Showing what is dubbed as the hand of god. What are we seeing. Dr Derrick Pitts joins us from the Franklin Institute Science Museum. Great to have you. Lets start with the hand of god. The picture went viral. Its aweinspiring. What is it . Its a beautiful image. Its wonderful. We have to realise that what we are seeing is gases that are left over from the explosion of a star. The process was called sooupa nova, and the upper layer of gases are blown away leaving a paul sitting star, neutron star, and the gases surrounding it are illuminated by the xray energy coming off the pulsar. If we had xray eyes, we could see the image that looks like that, perhaps. We see the shape of the gases given by the shock waves of the exploding scar. Beautiful. One thing we are keeping our eye on are the developments in commercial space flights. Virgin galactic sent its ship up to 17,000 feet. Is it a big milestone, what does it mean . It is definitely a big milestone. This is the third successful milestone. They have another couple to go before they put people on board and take them up into space. Richard branson said its coming this year. We have to remember they were trying to do that last year. They dont tell us about the hurdles that have to be overcome, but it looks like they are getting closer. Branson said do you think its realistic, that we will see the tourist flights into space. I think we will definitely see them. The list of people who paid for tickets, they are solid, they are there and in training for a couple of years. So people are ready to go. They are chomping at the bit to do it. It will be the ultimate in the bucket list of things to do for the well healed of our society who are adventurous. Quarter of a million for now. Maybe it will go down in the future and make it accessible to people. Lets talk about chinas change 3 moon lander coming out of hypernation, because it needed solar power and was under two weeks of moon night. N. A. S. A. Was concerned it may disrupt experiments with their probe. Problems . Yes, the concerns were once it came into the lunar atmosphere and filed the retro rockets to settle on the surface, that dust kicked up may cause a problem. I havent heard any reports of dust problems. The u2 rover is on the surface taking photographs of the parent spacecraft and sending photos back to earth. Everything looks good. The chinese did a fabulous job of getting the craft on the surface of the moon and operating well. Everyone was disappointed when comet ison disintegrated as it past the sun, but scientists in antarctica are hoping to collect comet debris. How will they get this, and why in antarctica . Hopefully theyll serve it up to you and we wont get it to go far, but the earth will pass through the orbital plain of the comet. Dust left over from the nucleus could fall as meetos, dust. The antarctic is a great place to find them because of the white expanse of ice. Against a white background they should be easy to find. They should exist in a pristine state. Keeping our fingers crossed scientists there might be able to find these. N. A. S. A. Has got good funding, a billion increase, a fouryear life extension through 2024. How important is this . N. A. S. A. s been doing a tremendous amount on essentially a seriously reduced budget. In order for n. A. S. A. To tackle the big jobs of going to the moon or mars, they need to up the budget significantly. This billion dollars extra will help them to continue the work on the launch system that we need to develop to carry the orionmanned capsule. N. A. S. A. Wants to do testing and have it ready to go. The funding will help to keep the operations rolling on. And a quick last question in. Theres shocking news out of iran. According to the iranian government newsagency. The u. S. Government has been run since 1945 by space ailiens that formally ran the nazi regime, and said this information has been corroborated by the scientists. Im not joking, they reported it. As chief as tron mer of a Science Museum have you had overlords. Weve been discovered, they said if i said anything about it theyd turn me into an newt. Great to have you with us. The show may be over. Announcer this is al jazeera. Hello, welcome to the news hour. Im here in our news center in doha and london. These are the top stories. The price of iraqs sectarian struggle, dozens of People Killed in attacks on sunni and shiite muslims. The biggest appeal in un history, 6. 5 billion needed for syrians war victims. The Central African republic interim leader appeals f