Continue negotiations. The u. N. Chemical weapons report is expected to be delivered to the u. N. Secretary general ban kimoon in new york this weekend. The state department is confident the report will confirm the use of chemical weapons. Although it is unlikely the results will assign blame. Thats results at this hour. Consider this is up next with antonio mora. Im John Siegenthaler. Ill be with you and the news. At 11 00 eastern time. For the lathest you can check out aljazeera. Com. We spend more than 60 billion a year to fight terrorism and protect our home land but theres no way of really proving its working other than the lack of successful attacks on the country. Consider this a dozen years after 9 11 just how effective is our counterterrorism effort . And is it hurting more than helping in some cases . Also why is the Labor Movement at odds with the white house over obamacare and what does it mean as the gop takes aim at the law . And who says women cant drink while pregnant and how challenging is an epidural. What to expect when youre expecting. And the only scientific awards ceremony where winners can be intoed of booed off ty an eightyearold girl. Im antonio mora. We need to know a lot more about whether our tack advertise against war on terror are really working. Al qaedas top leader Ayman Al Zawahri is calling for more attacks on the u. S. In the asame manner we defeated it in the gang warfare in somalia iraq and afghanistan, we should follow it with that war in its own land. The day after the anniversary of 9 11. Zawahri also called for the hits to hurt. We should hit by spending it massively on security. The u. S. Spends billions on homeland security, 50 billion last year and according to the National Priorities projects the wars in iraq and afghanistan have cost the u. S. Almost 1. 5 trillion since 2001. Its hard to measure what this massive investment has achieved. White House Press Secretary jake carney acknowledge, that al qaeda has been significantly weakened. There is no question over the last couple of years al qaeda core has been diminished not only because of the elimination of osama bin laden. The underwear bomber and the shoe bomber didnt act successfully, more attacks in madrid in 2004 which killed 191 people and london in 2005 which killed 52 people. But the recent boston bombing showed how vulnerable the United States is to even an international attack. Courtney ke keeley, al jazeera w york. There isnt really anything out there to really evaluate how successful our counterterrorism efforts have been and they say quote, do they programs work . The answer to this question is disturbingly we dont know. Your reaction to that . Reading the same article in the Washington Post i agree with the basic premise from a plans policy and operation he perspective you always want more research that informs the way to go, informs tactics and strategy. The however to that though, id have to say on the perhapses whether its intelligence military and Law Enforcement of the u. S. And allies its been a phenomenal success since 9 11. Obviously theres been no real successful attack on the American Home land since then. Youd think that that would be enough proof right there but its not really, at least not the study doesnt believe thats enough to say we have been successful . No, and i agreed the study did make passing reference to its awfully hard to prove the negative, okay . But someful things the leadership did point out whether decapitating the leadership, the jurys still out. Against the algerians, thats a tactic that didnt turn out to be effectively because it didnt go to the underapplying causes. Well go to that in a minute but i wanted to see how the study ran through the financial costs of war on terror. More than 47 billion last year from the dpaft homeland departmd security, a staggers 658 billion since 2001 for the war in afghanistan. I realize we dont have a lot of information about the line item, specific understanding of what was involved in every single one of to add up to those costs. But do you think the money was well spent . Well, you make the really good point, antonio, there that the context is somewhat incomplete. If you look at the budget of dhs you cant is all say it was towards terrorism. It was towards cybersecurity and all those things. There must be much more debate and even changes on the budget and policy side of the house. The authors also wrote and i quote, some counterterrorism interventions saw no evidence of reducing terrorism. And terrorismrelated harm. And may even increase the likelihood of terrorism. Lets go through some of the examples. The drone strikes. Thats one that has gotten a lot of press and people have talked about this a lot in recent months. Do you think the drone strikes in general are helping or hurting . Well, again, thats a good, very important topic for debate. Because the tactic, tended to become a strategy overall. But its important to talk about the particular context. Like for example in yemen you say tactic becoming a strategy. The focus is just on using these machines rather than a more a broader strategic philosophy . Well, when drones first came into the theaters it was typically to go after leadership and operations underway, the policies expanded beyond that. But it really depends where youre talking about. In yemen for example, theres no doubt on the one hand that its really done a number on the leadership of al qaeda in the asian peninsula, Princeton University data shows that hundreds of thousands of young mem are drawn to the fight. That tactic becoming strategy kinetically, but the blowback is huge. Osama bin laden has seen as a high point on the war on terror but the authors say that those decapitation strikes on militant leaders can also be an effective and in some cases counterproductive. They can but the Research Shows in less mature terrorist organization he strikes on leadership can be effective. Stop them in their tracks early. Exactly. Where the leadership cannot regenerate itself effectively and the movement tends to die off. Thats a broader point. Depends on the context and what group youre talking about. It has been seemingly effective, though, when it comes to the big al qaeda. Theyve had the leaders on the run in pakistan and afghanistan now for so long they dont seem to be able to get their act together. Absolutely. I mean by way of example, Ayman Al Zawahri, he couldnt get his anniversary message out until the 12th of september. So that by itself is one indication. If you heard what zawahri said deep within his message he said al qaeda was a message before it was an organization. Thats really important to understand those words, that the message, deconstruct the message what it is, death and destruction, no positive answers. Theres got to be a counternarrative to get in front of what zawahri is saying in his decentralized organization. I want to hear what zawahri had to say in just a minute but i want to welcome jim walsh, jim is an expert in International Security and a fellow at securities sorry to be a little late. No problem, we were talking about Ayman Al Zawahri how he got his message late. Yes. Lest listen to what he had to say. Ill quote what he had to say. He called for more lone wolf attacks on america, and do you think that that is an indication of big al qaeda not being able to put together those big strikes that they were known for . And are really going to focus on smallerscale terrorism operations . I think youre absolutely right. I think most folks if they hear that theyre thinking they hear diswaw zawahri and it senda tremor down their spine and another message what does that mean . I think youre right to tease that out. First of all al qaeda central if well call it that, had to rely on regional, al qaeda yemen al qaeda grahib. Where im in water town massachusetts, where there was a general strike. Whether our counterterrorism efforts have been successful, what do you think . Would i separate out two Different Things in the net in general are we safer today than we were yesterday or ten years ago i circulate say . And based just on what we were talking about, i think we can say that al qaeda is a lesspotent Organization Today than it was 12 years ago. And so weve had some success. Are we safer, yes, were safer, because we spent a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of timer and attention trying to go both on offense and defense to deal with that. But i think that study or that article is spoton. You know we have no idea of all the things that weve done, we dont have any idea which of those things actually contributed to that outcome. In other words helped prevent more terrorist attacks as opposed to things that had no effect what sore sofer or whatsoever or things that were counterproductive. We have evidence here that shows us what works and doesnt work and not only that, but when it works. Some stuff will work at some times and not others. Meantime we are spending a lot of cost on stuff for Foreign Policy and stuff we dont have any evidence we dont know what in particular which tactics were contoned. Robert one of the things that the article says, the study says is we dont know if some of the things were doing are then having a boomerang effect, to make airplanes more secure are then causing the terrorists to react and go in a different direction altogether. Are we going to go in a different direction . I agree, what is the dearth of information, what do we have to do . The defensive measures as well as the offensive measures, the policy operations have been effective. We still need to certainly they have been effective in that we havent been attacked. We have seen terrible attacks in spain and england in the years after 9 11. Jim you brought it up a second ago, there has been controversy, the National Security agency, spying on folks, terror attacks do you see evidence of that . I have seen qulaims and i would love to see the evidence of that. What you have is vague statements that this helped us stop ten attacks or it helped us stop 20 attacks. Is it the Prism Program or domestic spying where the government is collecting data about my childrens telephone calls . Is that what stopped a terrorist attack . What stopped the terrorist attack . It seems the me the threshold should be the following, we continual have stopped the attack in the answer of using this instrument. It may also have been the case that we could have stopped the attack with other evidence and other surveillance that we already had in hand. If thats the case then we should not be going you know needlessly and using tactics or instruments thats compromised civil little bit or other important values. So these general claims you know, thats not good enough for me. Robert, you dont fully agree with jim on this one . Some i do. Some not quite. Just a little bit different perspective. Like signals intelligence for example and that balance between Civil Liberties expect of security, i think the evidence is somewhat skewed in the debate today. Its apart of mosaic in keeping us safe. Being able to prove it was the soul source to thwart an operation, it shouldnt be looked at it that way, what does it contribute to the mosaic. I know from my experience its terrifically important. A lot of provoking items in this report, thank you for joining us. I hope you will be back. Big pr leaders clark with obama what it could mean. Our social director hermella aregawi is following. Please join us on twitter and facebook. Well be right back. The aflcio passed a resolution this week declaring the implementation of obamacare, quote, highly disruptive, showing the cost would drive up union heacialg plans. The administration which has long enjoyed labor support told the unions, no. Late on friday. Politicians who oppose obamacare were already smelling new blood and will likely seize on this big blow to big unions. Expect to see more commercials like this one. Teamsters president james hoffa said obamacare would destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that was the backbone of the middle class. Joining me to discuss all the issues involved are michael being, of in these times, he joins us from San Francisco and mike cannon, from the kato institute. Thank you both for being with us tonight. The white house has rejected the request from the aflcio to change the rules of the obamacare. What the unions are asking is that they want their low wage workers to be able to get, who are part of multiemployer health plans to be able to get subsidies that other low income workers who sign up for obamacare will get. Whats the issue there, mike . So basically, the issue here is that you have a two employers that are competing for workers in low wage transient workforces about. The way a lot of construction work works is that workers are employed for three or four weeks as long as the construction work goes on and then they may be unemployed for some period. If the worker works for two weeks and is unemployed for two weeks, the plan covers their hearing for those weeks that they are unemployed. But michael there are subsidies for those plans right . Let me explain whats happened here is most cruk contractors is less than 50 employees in this situation. And under obamacare, employers arent arent required to provide health care for workers with less than 50 for companies that have less than 50 employees that are in Construction Contracting dont have to provide any health care. And their workers that work for them can now get subsidies that are quite large under obamacare. So this creates a competitive disadvantage for unionized workers that work with contractors with less than 50 employees, that the employers do have to provide some form of health care coverage. What yoings are saying that unions are scaig that employers that do not provide health care shouldnt have an advantage over those that do. Michael is that fair . Fair is a difficult one to tease out here. I think the main take away from this development this clash between the white house and the aflcio is this law remains far more vulnerable than supporters would ghit, even though we are only weeks from signing up for health care exchanges, now you have a Union Resolution that was approved this week at the aflcio that began by saying either make these changes that we want or we will support repeal. It was watered down, to the point where it just said please make these changes we want, we feel very strongly about it. Now the white house has said to the aflcio no, were not going to make the changes you want. That is going to strengthen the hand for the people in the aflcio and broaden the Bipartisan Coalition of people who dont want this law. The white house lobbied hard to weaken that resolution. President obama had a confidence with aflcio president rimple richard trumka. Especially a organization like kato, while there are manyo he that hurt bowmg, at the end of the day, cps organized labor is going to start calling for the repeal of obamacare in this situation. While it mate hurt unions, unions have been going on with democratic president s who have hurt them for decades. Hold on for a second, i want to show something. There is no doubt that this is going to hurt unions because the benefits are a big draw and that will you know hurt their power to attract members. And this is what Terry Osullivan said last week at the big aflcio convention. If the Affordable Care act isnt fixed and it destroyed the health and welfare funds that we have all fought for and stand for i believe it needs to be repealed. We dont want it repealed, we want it fixed fixed fixed. That addresses what you are discussing, they want it fixed but that doesnt seem to be happening. Michael you think we will hear more calls for repeal from the unions . Well, i think so. I mean youve heard it for several months now. And theyre really serious about this. Because as you say it threatens their existence. If the workers arent getting Health Benefits from the union more reasons they dont need the union anymore and might not sign up for the union. They see this as an exingsial el threat. This is threatening jobs and the hours people have in a job because employers do not have to provide Health Insurance for are workers who work less than 30 hours a week. Some employers are trying to cut people back and not give people 30 hours, will this hurt workers . I think it will hurt workers, were seeing Companies Cut workers down below 30 hours so they dont have to qualify for Health Insurance. I think Many Employers are upset with um obamacare. It is an imperfect system. It hurts in multiemployer pension plans, hurts workers where theyre having their hours cut under 30 hours a week and hurts employers who are taxed on socalled Cadillac Health care plans. Verizon was asking workers to pay more for their health care, unionized workers more for their health care because they claimed obamacare would make it more expensive. Sure obamacare will help many individuals get health care through the individual market, it will help people with preexisting conditions. Obamacare is a very mixed bag, i think what it says is that obamacare will not fix it that obamacare is the result of compromises that at the end of the day some of those compromises will hurt some of those who supported it which are unions. There is a Kaiser FamilyFoundation Study a few months ago that said, a major of americans didnt even know that it had been signed into law and the administration has admitted it hasnt done a good job of explaining this but they have sent people all over the country to try to do it, trying to get nfl teams to support them and bill clinton has been hired as the explainer in chief and hes been out there lobbying for this. Lets listen to him. And im going to argue, as best i can, that well all be a lot better off, whether we supported or oppo