Transcripts For MSNBCW The Last Word With Lawrence ODonnell 20140912

Speech is getting approval from those in washington who approved every one of our ventures into the middle east. We do not give into fear ever. Today with massive symbolic meeting. 13 years later, are we safer . If you threaten america, you will find no safe haven. Secretary of state john kerry after all is traveling in the northeast middle east trying to build support. Will others truly put boots on the ground in syria . Somebodys boots have to be on the ground. Congress has been very timid. Major development in the ray rice scandal. The nfl is asking the former fbi director to launch an independent investigation. A report that a new jersey Law Enforcement official we sent a video of ray rices elevator assault to the nfl five months ago. Commissioner goodell has been adamant adamant. We nothave not seen any videotape of what happened in the elevator. We [ bleep ] up. It really adds up to a leadership failure. The commissioners hold on his job and the leagues credibility could be in serious jeopardy. President obama told the Defense Department to target and kill key leaders of the Islamic State according to the washington post. Today, the United States military conducted another air strike targeting the Islamic State in iraq today near the mosul dam, bringing the total number of u. S. Air strikes in iraq to 156. But thats just air strikes. Thats not a war. 156 air strikes. Not surprisingly washingtons Armchair Generals in both parties are supporting the president s call last night to revise and extend the war in iraq. I support his ask. Were debating this in congress and i think hell have bipartisan support. We dont want to play Armchair Generals. We dont want to second guess. Im glad hes changed his policy. I think hes going in the right direction. I think he needs to be supported for doing this. We stand ready to work with the president to put in place a plan that would destroy and defeat isil. Frankly we ought to give the president what hes asking for. Joining me now, phyllis bennes, director of the institute of policy studies and william mccantz who translated a 2006 book the management of savagery what was rin bywritten by an islamic extremist. The people speech on diplomacy that president obama should have given last night, what would have been the highlights of that version of the speech . Well, i think if we had talked about diplomacy, we would be talking about the need to talk to iran directly and openly. This may be a moment to really reopen talks with iran. Weve been hearing that maybe there are quiet secret talks already under way, but the talks with iran on the Nuclear Issues are going well. This may be a moment to extend those faulks to really get to the heart of the regional role that iran plays, and the regional role that the u. S. Plays. And talk about a grand barter. That would be number one. What president obama gave us was four mostly military parts to a strategy. Four parts oa diplomatic strategy would start with iran. Then we would talk to russia open up new discussions with russia. Specifically about the question of the civil war in syria, which has, of course morphed into at least six separate wars. This would also be an opportunity to perhaps build on the good will that was built between the u. S. And russia in the joint effort to eliminate syrias chemical weapons. And in doing so it might eliminate some of the tension around ukraine just as an added bonus. So that would be number two. Number three, the question of a coalition. We heard a lot about coalitions. We heard president obama use the language of former president bush when he said we need a coalition of the willing. Well, that was a coalition of the killing. We need a diplomatic coalition, not a military coalition. Because the military stuff is going to make it all worse. Its not going to make it better. So a Real Coalition that brings together the whole range of forces in the region in syria, in iraq and ul the supporting characters is not going to be easy, its not going to be quick. But a move towards creating that kind of a coalition absolutely should be on our agenda. And finally, the question of an arms embargo. Again, not something thats going to happen right away but we need to open the discussion on why flooding the region with more weapons ends up with more weapons in the hands of isis. More civilians being killed a harder struggle to end the ruinous kind of conflict that we see in this region. And instead go back to diplomacy. Those, instead of the four military things president obama said would have made for a much better speech. William, youve got inside the mind to some extent of the Islamic State, translating their working document. Ive been asking as many people as i can on this notion of destroying the Islamic State, is it possible, and how many Islamic State warriors have to be killed to destroy the Islamic State . I think what the American People have to understand is that the idea of an Islamic State is extremely powerful. And its one reason theyve gathered so many jihadists under its banner. The book i translated was first made available back in 2004 and it laid out a blueprint for how to establish small pockets of control and move from those eventually to a caliphate, which is an effort to reinvigorate this old islamic idea of an empire ruled by a single man. For a long time the Islamic State tried to implement this vision and didnt have any success. When the Syrian Civil War broke out, it empowered the Islamic State, brought them a lot of money and a lot of fighters. And a brutal crackdown on the opposition also fuelled its propaganda. And so theyve been able to implement the strategy set out in that book and take territory and now control somewhere upwards of 2 billion. Its a huge war chest. And William Mccants the president said last night, isil is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. Im not sure what he was trying to convey with that line. It seemed like he was trying to convey to the American Public that therefore its something that can be surgically removed, pure and simple. But isil is a terrorist organization, pure and simple . According to what ive read from you, there is nothing simple about it. Thats right. That line really bothered me. It seems to me that it was used for political expediency or perhaps not to rouse congress to demand a vote about the legality of the war. And this is a war on an Insurgent Group that has pretenses to be a state. It is not a terrorist organization by any classical definition of the world. And it lulls the American People into thinking this was going to be easy quick, simple and surgical. Its going to be nothing of the kind. Its going to be very long, messy and dirty. Phyllis, everything we know about barack obama as a president ial candidate for the first time and then taking office was that he was, as nearly as we would come to it the first antiwar president that we have elected. And he is the person who has said repeatedly there is no military solution to these problems. And yet last night after many years, saying there is no military solution to these problems, when hes con fronted with the current version of the problems, what he reached for is a military solution. You know i think thats a very important point on the one hand, but i think we have to be very careful not to put too much focus on what barack obama the man may believe personally. I agree that he seems quite reluctant on making these decisions. But that doesnt seem to change his decisions. There is no question in my mind that this decision to ramp up the u. S. Military response after all this time saying there is no military solution, and in the context of his own the head of his Counterterrorism Center the intelligence agencies in general are saying there is no threat to the United States. And maybe there could be maybe if something changed sometime in the future there could be a threat. And saying that is suddenly this urgent need to go to war, i think this was clearly a politically driven decision. The horrific phyllis, can i just hold you there for a second. Theres that but i want you to consider this additional element, which i know you know a lot about. And that is the National Security establishment in washington, which, as you watch this it seems that they eventually, no matter which president it is no matter what era it is that National Security establishment eventually imprisons the president , willingly or unwillingly. And that this president , like all of his predecessors, was being hammered with the military options every day by that establishment, in addition to the clear political connection to whats going on here. Thats absolutely right. I think we have to be careful in how we understand and how we define that National Security establishment. I think that, for example, parts of the military are quite averse to moving militarily. Some of the intelligence agencies, as i mentioned have been very clear they dont see the big danger here. The pressure comes from the military industry those who make a killing, as they say, on selling weapons. Theyre going to do great from this escalation. And then those in congress and elsewhere who feel accountable to the shifts in Public Opinion that with the media largely going along, there is this sense of hysteria that emerged with the very brutal of two individuals that somehow that was quickly morphed into being an attack on the United States. Despite the fact that these two were not targeted because they were americans. They were not killed for america in that sense. They were nosey journalists doing what nosey journalists are supposed to do and they got into a lot of trouble. The family of one of the journalists has indicated that their information is that the kidnapping originally was carried out by nonby isis but by Syrian Opposition forces supported by the west supported by the United States. Which is consistent with things that we know about those other organizations. The fact that the Free Syrian Army beheaded six isis prisoners that they held prisoners who could not do anything. They were not fighting. They were captives. And they were beheaded. So this level of brutality is something endemic in this Syrian Civil War and in iraq since the u. S. Invasion and occupation. Its in that con b text that it becomes very ease for Public Opinion to follow this mediadriven hysteria thats picked up in congress so that no one in congress is prepared to say wait a minute this is not an urgent moment when our nation is threatened. This is not an isexistential threat to our country. Weve already spent 500 million just in the last five weeks on these air strikes in iraq. Who knows how many millions and billions more were going to spend that will not be available here for desperately needed things. And thats a political reality in which the president , as you say, is responding to political and pressures in washington that dont reflect the reality on the ground. William, quickly, before we go the two beheadings that clearly have provoked the situation in washington to where it is now, and you can see it in the American Public tracking polls of their reactions to where we are now, when the Islamic State conducted those two beheadings is this what they were likely telling themselves was going to happen . It could be. It could have just been as a deterrence. They could have been seeking to provoke us to take military action, put boots on the ground. It could have been designed to get us out of the region. All those sorts of reasons were floated after 9 11 to justify it. But the president did not take action because of those beheadings. He took action when the Islamic State pushed close to baghdad. The beheadings came in response to that. And he was pressured to take action, not by people in this country, or if he was, he didnt listen to them. He was pressed by our allies in the region that we have security agreements with. Thats why hes moving to take action against the Islamic State now. Thats why he played down the direct Terror Threat to the United States in his speech last night. Thank you both very much for joining me tonight. Thank you. Coming up the nfl is getting a former director of the fbi to investigate the commissioners handling of the ray rice case. And in the rewrite tonight, a legal analyst understanding of the killing of Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson is changed, suddenly change by two witnesses who we heard for the first time yesterday, even though those witnesses have been telling their story in the media for a month. Theres only one thing that distinguishes those two witnesses, to eyewitnesses from all the other eyewitnesses we have heard from. Can you guess what that is . Tweet me your guesses about what is it about these two eyewitness sthass different. Mmm mmm mmm mm mmm mm mmmmmm here we go, here we go here we go. Fifty omaha set hut losing feeling in my toes nothing beats that new car smell chicken parm you taste so good nationwide is on your side mmm mmm mmm mm mmm mm mmmmmm the nfls socalled independent investigations into the ray rice case. Thats next. The National Football league wants the fbi seal of approval after an unofficial source said the nfl had access to the tape in april, commissioner goodell has hired former fbi director Robert Mueller to conduct an independent investigation into the handling of the evidence in the ray rice Domestic Violence incident. Muellers law firm confirmed he has been retained by the league, but the nfl also says muellers socalled independent investigation will ridiculously be overseen by john mara the owner of the new york giants who recently said the idea of Roger Goodell losing his job was, quote, misguided. Mara will also be joined overseeing this investigation by another owner, art rooney. The coowner of the Pittsburgh Steelers who in recent years has had his own problems with players off the field. Joining me now is sports column columnist for usa today nancy armor. Muellers law firm in washington has the following connections, nbc sports has confirmed the Firm Previously represented Washington Owner Daniel Snyder one of the most controversial owners in the league now with the name of that team, and several members of the firm have taken jobs with nfl teams. One former wilmer heal employee is the rayiders president , dick cass. So this is already painted. Hes coming from a firm thats already deeply enmeshed in the nfl. Hes overseen by these owners one who has already prejudged the case. Good evening. Its not a great way to start. No one has questioned Robert Muellers integrity or his independence. He worked under two different president s, republican and democrat, and has always been seen as fiercely independent, but the ties that his firm has had with the nfl and, as you mentioned, the fact that john mara and art rooney are overseeing the investigation. Now, they both came out and issued a joint statement saying they werent going to have any role in the investigation, theyre just there to make sure that mr. Mueller gets all of the cooperation that he needs. But it doesnt exactly give the best impression of complete impartiality. Its that tone deaf thing the nfl has all the way through this. If theyre not there to do anything, why mention them at all, why put them into this release . This Informational Press release about it. I want to go to this thing that stephen a. Smith said about the head of the National Organization for women after she called for the commissioners resignation. Lets listen to what he said. I think this woman is off her rocker. I think shes lost her mind. Thats right, i said it. This is the most ridiculous nonsense ive ever heard in my life. Roger goodell deserves to lose his job . Because you know why are you acting like hes ray rice . Roger goodell did not hit janay palmer rice. Its never good to sound like youre out of your mind accuseing someone else of being out of their mind. But my point is theres a Roger Goodell defender. Thats what they sound like. And with defenders like that it just makes the situation worse. Yeah. The nfl just has a complete mess on its hands. Theyve really kind of backed themselves sbroosinto a corner and theyre trying desperately to get out. But every direction they turn, they just seem go back into a different corner. And yeah when youve got people like stephen a. Going off like that, it does not help them at all. They released this notion last night of the independent investigation like 11 00 a. M. Theyre in a panic over there. Oh, p. M. , sorry, last night. Not the normal Business Hours over there these days. Nancy, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Coming up next the District Attorney who gave ray rice the easy way out. What about his resignation . Take a deep breath in. And. Exhale. Aflac and a gentle wavelike motion. Aahhh ahhhhhh. Liberate your spine, ahhhahhhhhh aflac and reach, toes blossoming. Not that great at yoga. Yeah, but when i slipped a disk he paid my claim in just four days. Ahh four days . Yep. Find out how fast aflac can pay you, at aflac. Com. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. While a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Staying active can ease arthritis symptoms but if you have arthritis, this can be difficult. Prescription celebrex can help relieve arthritis pain, so your body can stay in motion. Because just one 200mg celebrex a day can provide 24 hour relief for many with arthritis pain and inflammation. 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Get help right away if you have swelling of the face or throat, or trouble breathing. Tell your doctor your medical history. And ask your doctor about celebrex. For a body in motion. And now celebrex may be available for as little as 4 a month. Terms and conditions apply. To learn more, go to celebrex. Com. In the spotlight tonight, Atlantic City District Attorney james mclean. Atlanta county prosecutor james mclean finally spoke publicly about his decision not to prosecute ray rice after watching the video of ray rice hitting his fiancee with a knockout punch in that elevator in Atlantic City. The parameters as they existed were, is this a pti case or a probation case . Mclean added that he was on the fence until very late in the dlib a deliberative process just like its not just or fair to go easier on somebody because of who they are neither is it fair or just to go heavier on somebody because of who they are. I felt and still feel this disposition was appropriate. New Jersey State Senate president Steve Sweeney is not satisfied with the handling of the case and has requested that it be reviewed by the states attorney general. Joining me now is tracy garvey, a former assistant prosecutor in new jersey who specialized in Domestic Violence cases. Ho uh would you have handled this one . Thanks. When i was a prosecutor and i was a Domestic Violence prosecutor between 1988 and 19 im sorry, between 1999 and 2008 and during that period of time, i am not aware of any situations in our county in Camden County new jersey where any Domestic Violence offenders who actually used violence and injured someone was ever admitted to pti. It was something they were certainly eligible. I cant say no one would ever be admitted. However, in my experience that did not happen. And to clarify for the audience, pti is a pretrial agreement you make with the prosecutor. You plead not guilty, then if you stay out of trouble for a year, then we just erase the whole thing. Is that essentially it . Well thats a little bit of an oversimplification. Its not actually it could be entered before or after a guilty plea. Essentially, what it is its supervision. Not unlike probation. However, if you do successfully complete it at the end, in all likelihood assuming that the prosecutor has no objection and the court has no objection, then ultimately the original charges would be dismissed. And the prosecutor here is saying look i mean he wasnt going to go to jail either way, what does it matter if he gets a conviction and probation instead of me just letting him go now. Well, a criminal conviction is intended to sting for one thing. And what troubles me the most i think about the way the proffered justification for admitting this defendant into pti is the fact that the focus was on the victims wishes. And there is also a need to protect the public a need to deter other individuals, and admitting defendants who commit acts of violence especially in a Domestic Violence situation where we know from experience its likely to be repeated its part of not a onetime incident but its an ongoing issue of power and control that these abusers exercise against their intimate partners. That that simply isnt isnt usually taking the victims wishes and making that paramount isnt usually the most appropriate way to analyze these cases. Yeah. And James Mcclain, this same prosecutor has used your point, deterrence to deny pti to other nonviolent offenders that have come into his office. And his refusal to prosecute rice was used by the nfl as their justification for them also going light on him. There was a lot more at stake here than James Mcclain is admitting to. Teresa garvey thanks very much for joining us tonight. Thank you. Coming up in the rewrite, there are two more eyewitnesses to the killing of Michael Brown. Theyve been talking about it for about a month. They have not identified themselves. And they agree with all the other eyewitnesses but theres Something Different about these witnesses that is impressing some legal analysts more than other witnesses have impressed them. And its not what they say. What makes them so impressive . Tweet me your guesses. The answer will be in the rewrite. This is holly. Her long day of Outdoor Adventure starts with knee pain. And a choice. Take 6 tylenol in a day or just 2 aleve for all day relief. Onward i am so nervous right now, its not even funny. Oh my gosh. Driver 1 you ready . Yeah go [sfx] roaring altima engine woah ahhhha we told people they were riding nissans most advanced altima race car. We lied. About the race car part. Altima, with 270 horsepower and active understeer control. How did you . What i dont even, im speechless. Innovation that excites. 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Dont take chantix if youve had a serious allergic or skin reaction to it. If you develop these stop chantix and see your doctor right away as some could be life threatening. Tell your doctor if you have a history of heart or blood vessel problems, or if you develop new or worse symptoms. Get medical help right away if you have symptoms of a heart attack or stroke. Use caution when driving or operating machinery. Common side effects include nausea, trouble sleeping and unusual dreams. I did not know what it was like to be a nonsmoker. But i do now. Ask your doctor if chantix is right for you. And now for the good news. Good police news. Fred is a homeless man in indianapolis. Hes often seen asking for money for drivers stopped at a red light on an exit off of i65. When an Indianapolis Police officer stopped him on monday fred was sure he was about to get a ticket. But what happened next surprised both fred and the nba player who happened to be stopped at the red light watching the whole thing from his car. Indiana Pacers Center roy hibbert tweeted, just seen an indy police officer, pull over go into his trunk and give a homeless guy a pair of shiny boots. Cops. Hibbert later tweeted the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police department saying wish i knew the officers name or badge number. The Police Department identified the officer yesterday but requested anonymity. As for fred, the boots werent his size so he gave them to a friend whos also homeless. Its just luck. Good luck will continue i believe. A true story of paying it forward from all ends. The rewrite is next. Our last surviving summer intern. Thank you very much for doing that. This is an intern tradition here at the last word on your last night. I thought you were never going to quit. Everyone else has gone back to school but youre still here. Its been wonderful working here. You dont have to say that. I love that story, though. I love good cop stories. You know why . My father used to be a cop and he used to tell me stories like that when i was a little kid. You brought me back with that. Oh thats great. Why dont you see the rewrite is next. Is the rewrite next . The rewrite forget im here. Hey guys, the rewrite is next. I wish. Please, please, please, please, please. [ male announcer ] the wish we wish above all. Is health. So we quit selling cigarettes in our cvs pharmacies. Expanded minuteclinic for walkin medical care. And created programs that encourage people to take their medications regularly. Introducing cvs health. A new purpose. A new promise. To help all those wishes come true. Cvs health. Because health is everything. Its time to bring it out in the open. Its time to drop your pants for underwareness, a cause to support the over 65 Million People who may need depend underwear. Show them theyre not alone and show off a pair of depend. 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Tum, tum tum tum tums try great tasting tums chewy delights. Yummy. Mmm mmm mmm mm mmm mm mmmmmm here we go, here we go here we go. Fifty omaha set hut losing feeling in my toes nothing beats that new car smell chicken parm you taste so good nationwide is on your side mmm mmm mmm mm mmm mm mmmmmm n changes its coverage of the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson. They aired what they claimed were two new witnesses to the shooting of Michael Brown. The only new thing about them was cnn was talking about them. One witness told his story in st. Louis a month ago. The other was quoted in the st. Louis post dispatch last week. Their account is consistent with all the other eyewitnesses to the killing of Michael Brown, and they stress that Michael Brown had his hands up in the International Sign of surrender when he was shot. The two witnesses were working on a project in the neighborhood that day and coincidentally had an encounter with Michael Brown before he was shot that, if true, offers a neutral insight into Michael Browns personality unlike anything else that we have heard of him. One of the workers, whose names have not been identified by ktvi or by the st. Louis post dispatch or by cnn said that Michael Brown walked by the spot where they were working about an hour before the shooting occurred on that same street. Michael brown struck up a conversation with one of the workers that lasted about half an hour. And was sparked by something that Michael Brown overheard. As the worker explained to ktvi he said something angry and profane after hitting a tree root while he was digging and Michael Brown stopped and said something to him about feeling some bad vibes. The man told ktvi that Michael Brown said quote, the Lord Jesus Christ would help me through that as long as i didnt get all angry at what i was doing. Michael brown said he had a picture of jesus on his wall and the worker joked that the devil had a picture of him on the wall. The two workers were interviewed by a cnn reporter but did not appear on camera. The reporter then offered her verbal summary of what they told her to anderson cooper. And it was essentially the same as every other eyewitness that Michael Brown was running away from the officer, the officer shot him and that the final shots were fired with Michael Brown facing the officer with his hands up saying okay, okay, okay, okay. The only gruesome detail offered to cnn that we havent heard before according to the reporter, was that one of the workers said he saw Michael Browns brain coming out of his head. That report provoked this reaction from cnns senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. These two witnesses describe what seems to me to be a cold blooded murder. A perfectly reasonable reaction. And that is cnn presenting those witness accounts second hand summarized through a reporter. They had no recording of what those witnesses actually said. But it was enough to finally demonstrate to Jeffrey Toobin that there is testimonial evidence now in the case of murder in this situation. In fact, Jeffrey Toobin tweeted before that show huge breaking news ferguson on tonights ac 360 on cnn that changes my understanding of what happened to Michael Brown. So a hearsay account presented through a cnn reporter which is completely consistent with other witness accounts changed his understanding. In order to have his understanding changed, he and other cnn analysts would have had to completely ignore what Tiffany Mitchell said both on this program and to don lemon on cnn. As i come around the corner i hear tires squeaking. And as i get closer i see michael and the officer, like wrestling through the window. Michael was pushing trying to get away from the officer. And the officer was trying to pull him in. As i see this i pull out my phone because it just didnt look right. You never see an officer and someone just wrestling through the window. So as i pull out my phone the first shot was fired through the window. And i just like tried to get out of the way. I pulled into the parking lot right beside where the cop car was. And thats when michael kind of broke away and started running down the street. The officer gets out of his vehicle and he pursues him. As hes following him, hes shooting at him. And michaels body jerks as if he was hit. He turned around and put his hands up. And the officer continued to walk up on him and shoot him until he goes all the way down to the ground. When tiffany told me that a month ago on this program, i said what we had just heard was evidence of first degree murder not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but evidence. And evidence that a jury might find compelling of first degree murder. I was joined that night by someone with more relevant Law Enforcement experience than anyone working at cnn, James Cavanaugh who agreed with my analysis of Tiffany Mitchells account. First degree murder, there really has to be a pause. There only has to be slight pause. It doesnt have to be planned for months and years. And so you can get your analysis of the evidence in the killing of Michael Brown mere, or you can or you can get it on cnn a month later. I wasnt the only one surprised that anyone at cnn would change their analysis of the case based on a hearsay version of what two witnesses told cnn that was completely consistent with what other witnesses have already told me and cnn. Heres cnns legal analyst sunny hosta. Im just so surprised from the very beginning of this story, from the very very beginning, everyone was questioning the eyewitness accounts of the people in the neighborhood. I dont really understand why now theres this gamechanger. Why now you have two white witnesses that are somehow not connected to the community and now they seem to be the more credible witnesses. Its really befuddling to me quite frankly. Because now we have six, seven, eight witnesses saying the same thing. Oh, theyre white. Oh. Okay. Well befuddling is the nicest thing we can say about it. [music] defiance is in our bones. Defiance never grows old. Citracal maximum. Easily absorbed calcium plus d. Beauty is bone deep. This is the age of knowing what youre made of. Why let erectile dysfunction get in your way . Talk to your doctor about viagra. Ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. Do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain. It may cause an unsafe drop in Blood Pressure. 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To a casual observer and more importantly to an american citizen who thinks that every president is out to defend and protect this country and is engaged in seeing to it that this country triumph ofs that speech last night sounded eisenhower, reagan. Well whats true about it is it did sound like a speech that his predecessors could have given under similar circumstances. Thats partly because of the legacy of the bush administration. Thats because of the complete mess that exists in the middle east. And the dangerous growth really, very dangerous growth of isis and other groups all over north africa and the arabian peninsula. William, the president is dealing with the horrible aftermath of the mistaken car in iraq. Do you see other choices in this situation . He could have not gone to war again. Thats the simplest one. Thats the hard choice especially politically, but also in the complexities of the middle east. But by going the other way, hes hoping to sort of shuffle is his way through a crisis thats already been wildly expandeds by both first by the pundits, but also by the usual hawks who want to shoot and do bangbang. And i as i had written in the nation and will write some more this is a kind of deranged foreign policy. Its been deranged by our own militarism. The ideas that that we can use our military power to direct World Affairs doesnt work. Its crazy. Christopher, what do you think can realistically be accomplished in this situation with the tools that the president is talking about. I think youve already seen the momentum of isis stopped. I think there was a point, not so long ago when they were going to roll into irbil or baghdad. All of that has been stopped at the moment. That you can do with air power. The next is to try to beat them down a little bit more with air power. But ultimately theres got to be troops on the ground. And theyre not going to be american troops. If you want to understand american policy or at least obamas policy he has one major red line and that is do not occupy another country. Especially an arab or muslim country. I think he understands that has colonial overtones that make it impossible for us to deal with people on the ground and often in other parts of the world. But thats sort of his only red line. Apart from that hes willing to use air power. Hes willing to use special operations forces. Hes willing to use any kind of cohearsive power he can to track down and kill People Associated with al qaeda and related terrorist movements. Bill im getting kind of animated about the use of this word destroy, which we watched the president get politically pushed into saying. He didnt want to say it for the first few days. Then he got there. He said degrade, i understand what he means like that. Christopher said stop the momentum. In today as america, you cant get up and say i want to stop someones momentum. You have to say alirntly destroy. Should we all just sit back and say well, thats the rhetoric of the modern tv presidency. We know he doesnt mean it. We know its impossible well just all as a country let him say it and clap for that. Well what we should have learned is that those those nice sounding promises turn into unfulfillable wishes and then their bluff is called if not by the other side the adversaries who keep surprising us with their tactics, but by aur own political system. And thats what i mean when i say weve been deranged. We cant the governing elites and the military for good understandable political reason s cannot bring itself to tell the American People the truth about our situation. And i find that deeply dangerous in a way that the president doesnt roll the joint chiefs do not control. The media does not control. And they keep upping the anteand look where that got us. Ive been thinking a lot lately about something my great surgeon who put my bones back together this year said to me about what makes the great surgeon. You have to have the great hands and all that. Most importantly, he said you have to be tumble because the modern technology and all that stuff, they imagine they can do things they really cant do. And we want to tack about this as a kind of surgical strike. In this region. We cant call it war. Its just this surgical thing, but whatever the American Power goes in there surgically we never do it with humility. We cant bring any rhetorical humility to it at all. It goes back a lot further than that. If you got to kiplings white mans burden its dedicated to the United States of america after it tooked the spanish colonies and said it was going to do wonderful things. Wound up in a horrible war in the philippines. I think the real problem is very much what bill is talking about. The president in a sense is trapped. You can see him, you can see him. One of the things he came into so much criticism for was he was trying not to use the words that bill was talking about. He would say destroy and then back away and say we want to manage it. But his real thought is in fact youre going to have to manage the terrorist problem. Youre never going to destroy this. Youre going to be living with it forever. These guys are going to be a problem. Youre going to have to limit the space theyre operating in. But sometimes theyre going to break through, sometimes theyre going to kill americans or even here at home. And he cant say that to the public. Thats what bill is saying. You cant say that to the public, bill. Well, maybe you can. Maybe it will be more honest but for a politician to say that, that would be death. His ratings are already low enough in the polls. Also, you cant move anybody by saying that. Look at the pattern were in, the track were on now. And it keeps going off the rails, big waves, small waves. And the people each time absorb the lesson our government says is going to do these things but it cant do them or whatever. I believe were in a pattern now which that will continue until the cost of it to us are so immense that some politics will arise, i cant tell you which party, maybe neither, that says we want out of this game. To me, thats more dangerous politics. I think its down the road if we keep going this way, than anything else that faces us in the middle east or anywhere else in the world. I trace this back to the american hubris at the end of the cold war. The people in power and the people who wanted to be in power said we are the indispensable goliath, we can run the world now with all of our overwhelming military power, and we will do it for good stuff. And that was false. It was a false illusion. And were learning it every day. Thank you for joining me tonight. Stay tuned for an msnbc special 9 11 as it happened. We having news story to tell you about. Apparently a plane as this crashed into the World Trade Center in new york. It happened just a few moments ago parentally. We have very Little Information available at this point in time. But on the phone, we do have Jennifer Oberstein who apparently witnessed this event. Jennifer, can you hear me