February 12 - Yemen Falls Apart before Our Eyes; Republicans Demonize Food Stamp Recipients; A Veteran CIA Officer on What Went Wrong in Afghanistan

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the collapse of Yemen, a country on the front line of the war on terror that only recently senior national security officials were claiming was a success story in the battle against al Qaeda. Christopher Swift, a Professor of National Security Studies at Georgetown University and a Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Center for National Security Law joins us to discuss the dire warning the U.N. Secretary General gave to the U.N. Security Council that “Yemen is collapsing before our eyes” and the capture of an army base by al Qaeda where militants are now in possession of a lot of heavy weaponry.

Part 2

Then we examine Congress’ plans to cut food stamps again and the apparent compulsion among Republican lawmakers to punish the working poor by demanding that recipients are drug tested and should be required to show a photo ID when they use their government-issued debit card to buy food for their families. Jim Weill, President of the Food Research and Action Center, joins us to discuss this second attempt after Republicans tried to cut $40 billion from the program in 2013 but managed to strip $8 billion, and the false assumption that food stamp recipients are freeloaders when half are children and 43% live in households where someone is earning.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with a veteran CIA officer Robert Grenier who was the CIA station chief in Islamabad and the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. He is the author of the new book, just out, “88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary” and we discuss what went wrong in Afghanistan after the successful routing of the Taliban and al Qaeda in the first Afghan War, based on war plans that Robert Grenier drafted, and his refusal to sustain White House interrogation policies that led to him being forced out of the CTC.