August 9 - Syria's Bloody Stalemate; When the U.S. Senate Did The People's Business; Ruining Water While Running Out of It

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Part 1	We begin with an assessment of the Free Syrian Army which appears to have been driven out of parts of Aleppo. Robert Baer, a veteran CIA officer who operated in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, joins us to discuss the disarray amongst opposition fighters and, since Saudi Arabia is taking the lead in arming and equipping the insurgency, not surprisingly there is a growing influx of Wahhabis into the battle to topple the Assad regime. We look into what with end the stalemate and who will influence and shape Syria’s future.
Part 2	Then we speak with a veteran of the U.S. Senate who worked for Senators Gaylord Nelson, Abe Ribicoff, Thomas Eagleton, Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller. Ira Shapiro, the author of a new book “The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis”, joins us to speak about a time when the Senate worked for the American people, before it fell into the grip of gridlock. We discuss how the poisonous partisanship and the purging of moderates by the Tea Party can be be reversed.
Part 3	Then finally we examine a newly released study in the journal Nature titled “Demand for Water Outstrips Supply”. Emily Wurth, the Water Program Director at Food and Water Watch, joins us to discuss the extraordinary amounts of water being used by oil and gas companies that ends up polluted from the growing practice of “fracking”, hydraulic fracturing. We also look into the contamination of increasingly depleted aquifers from “fracking.”