Page 3 - Peter Burgin News Today

And unfortunate intersection between fighting a war and then applying legal principles to it. one thing to pick people up on battlefield and say youre dangerous and enemy combatant and then make a criminal case on them based on strict rules. it doesnt work. peter, jeff, thank you for joining us. >> coming up, look who is not number one in the u.s. economy will soon be surpassed in fact sooner than you might think. is there anything we can do to change the tide? details when we come back. [ male ...

Prison for terror suspects in guantanamo bay cuba and how impossible our job is there. wikileaks released 700 classified documents. joining me to talk about revelations, cnn national security analyst peter burgin and jeff toobin. welcome to both of you. jeff, you have been to gitmo twice in your capacity as a journalist, i believe. not as an inmate. just want to put that out there. what do these documents tell us about our capacity to prosecute successfully the 172 people we hold there? >> its r...

Guantanamo where there is real concern about their dangerousness but really no evidence to put them on trial. the obama administration effectively has come up with policy of indefinite detention. they didnt call it that because of course thats a sort of thing we associate with regimes like the egyptian regime but thats a fact. its an uncomfortable fact. obama came into office immediately within two days promising that guantanamo would be closed and it turned out to be a very hard mission. basica...

It is something. >> i was going to say, when i first went to guantanamo which was 2005, i remember interviewing the general then in charge. i said what does it mean to be interviewing people for actionable intelligence, that is intelligence you can use for years day after day. how can you learn anything new that is useful and i think these documents suggest they havent learned much thats useful. >> thats correct. this is many years after some of these individuals have been captured. how is it po...

Of providing law and order. the afghan military is a questionable institution. more importantly if not the government, the individuals have their feet in both camps. they are collaborating with each other and making billions of dollars off of us. when we hire a security company, that security company is then paying off the taliban not to attack or if they think their contract is in danger, they pay off the taliban to attack and demonstrate their value. the drug trade involves people who are asso...

One that is really sort of the most heartbreaking of all that there are people there among the 170 who we know are cleared for release but because yemen is such a disaster area and so unsafe, we are not going to send anybody there. its basically a system of paralysis now and we should try as many as we can in military tribunals and try as many as we can in criminal cases and reduce the number from 172 but obviously its going to be present well after obamas president. >> peter, you are one of the...

but many are too dangerous to turn loose. what in the heck do we do with them? is the age of america over? a new report that china will become the worlds biggest economy by get ready for this, 2016, five years from now. what does that mean for the good old usa? we start in afghanistan with a prison break that looks for all the world like an inside job. how did 500 prisoners leave their cells, climb down into a tunnel, and escape without a single prison official noticing? come on. this ...

On its head. however, if things continue at the pace they are, this could be a very long, protracted operation. one in which this civilian casualties in misrata exceed those which would have possibly come about from the alleged benghazi massacre which brought us into this situation in the first place. so fundamentally, i think we have a long road to hoe unless theres a significant game changer in the near turn to change the situation on the ground. >> all right, fred and peter and general kimmit...

Gadhafi is doing well. misrata looks like sarajevo at the moment, and i would be interested in hearing general kimmitts observations. >> well, my view is exactly as peter said. its not going very well. there has to be a game-changer on the ground. that game-changer either has to be the rebels get stronger, and it could well be that that could come about through some of these advisers that nato and france and england are providing. but it probably wont be enough. time will start taking its toll o...

Insignificant really compared to hot the soldiers went through. even more than that, im always thinking again of the wives and loved ones back home in america. 50 million people are connected to soldiers who are serving in the militarmilitary. soldiers dont come home just as journalists dont come home and tell their loved ones what happen, yet their loved ones need to know. >> tim hetherington was 41 years old. i want to bring in fred who has more on what happened today, and also peter burgin wh...