October 25 – The Double Standard Between Investigating Benghazi but Not 9/11 and Iraq; Sanders Takes the Gloves off in Iowa; A Russian Journalist on Putin’s Control of the Media

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the apparent double standard where Republicans investigate Democrats over extraneous matters like Bill Clinton’s sex life and overblown issues like the just-concluded eighth Benghazi inquiry which involved the deaths of four Americans compared to the Iraq war in which 4,500 Americans died, 32,000 were wounded and trillions were squandered. Yet there has not been one inquiry into the policymaking and leadership responsibility for that debacle that Tony Blair just conceded could be the cause of the rise of the Islamic State. Bennett Ramberg, who was a foreign policy analyst in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the state Department during the George H.W. Bush administration, joins us to discuss Washington’s lack of accountability for serious mistakes compared to the zealous pursuit of trivial matters.

Part 2

Then we get an update from Iowa, 100 days from the primary vote, where Democratic candidates sharpened their attacks at the Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner where Bernie Sanders criticized Hillary Clinton for her inconsistency and for last-minute changes to positions he has long held. David Redlawsk, a polling expert who is currently a Fellow at the Harkin Institute at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, joins us to discuss how much the gloves are coming off between the two leading Democratic candidates and Sanders’ march across a Des Moines bridge to the chant of “Hey, hey, ho. ho, the oligarchy has got to go”.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with a Russian journalist about Putin’s almost total control of the press in Russia and how the Russian war in Syria is being covered by the Russian media. Nataliya Rostova, a visiting scholar at the University of Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and a senior correspondent at the Moscow-based online magazine Slon.ru, joins us to discuss a new law that will close off most of the last remaining free press in Russia under the guise of reducing foreign ownership of media outlets to 20%.