August 20 - Did Assad Hand James Foley Over to ISIS?; A Reporter Just Back From Iraq Who Works for the Same News Organization as James Foley; Has a Turning Point Been Reached in Ferguson?

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the gruesome beheading of an American journalist James Foley at the hands of ISIS in Syria almost two years after he was abducted on November 22, 2012 after leaving an Internet café in Binesh, Syria, a battle zone contested by Sunni rebels and the Assad regime. Michael Kelly, the front page editor for Business Insider where he reports on Military and Defense joins us to discuss his latest article at the Business Insider “One Big Question Surrounds the Murder of U.S. Journalist James Foley by ISIS” and the possibility that the Assad regime handed Foley over to ISIS.

Part 2

Then we speak with Reese Erlich, a veteran foreign correspondent just back from the Kurdish region of Iraq who reports for the same news organization Global Post that James Foley was working for when he disappeared. We discuss Reese Erlich’s efforts with Syrian officials to find out where and who was holding James Foley and his latest book “Inside Syria: The backstory of their civil war and what the world can expect”, as well as his impressions from just being on the ground in Northern Iraq of how the offensive against the Islamic State is going.

Part 3

Then finally, we examine the latest efforts to bring calm to Ferguson, Missouri after 12 days of unrest and speak with Clarissa Haywood, a political theorist at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of “Justice and the American Metropolis” and “How Americans Make Race: Stories, Institutions, Spaces”. We discuss whether as Captain Ronald Johnson of the State Highway Patrol claims, a turning point has been reached, and what influence Attorney General Holder could bring to bear on the hunkered-down local police and whether the prosecutor Bob McCulloch is impartial enough to make a case against the police officer who shot Michael Brown six times, a sentiment shared by protesters outside the St. Louis County Justice Center where the grand jury was convenedWednesday.