February 8 - A Moscow-Based Defense Analyst on the War in Ukraine; Blurring the Line Between Fact and Fiction in America's Wars; The Crossing of the Line Between Embellishment and Fabrication by NBC's Brian Williams

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the growing possibility of a war breaking out in Europe which the French president warned about as he met with Putin on Friday together with German Chancellor Merkel on her first trip to Moscow. We will go to Moscow and speak with a leading military analyst Dr. Pavel Felegenhauer who is the defense columnist for Novaya Gazeta, one of the few publications in the Russian media not controlled by Putin. He joins us to discuss last-ditch diplomatic efforts to avoid an escalation of the war in Ukraine and the Russian military’s deep involvement in the conflict that is allowing them to test their latest equipment and new “hybrid warfare” battle tactics against a vastly inferior military force that is begging for Western military hardware to match what is arrayed against them.

Part 2

Then we examine the blurring of the line between fact and fiction that has fueled contentious political divisions among critics and commentators in response to the box-office success of the Clint Eastwood movie “American Sniper”.  Author, filmmaker, journalist and explorer, Robert Young Pelton, the publisher of Dangerous Magazine and author of “The World’s Most Dangerous Places” and “Come Back Alive”, joins us to discuss his many observations from the frontlines of America’s recent battlefields and the facts and fiction swirling around the warrior culture that leads to the phenomenon of exaggerated heroics and “stolen valor”.

Part 3

Then we examine further the line between fabrication and embellishment that has led to NBC’s news anchor Brian Williams stepping down from the anchor desk of the top-rated NBC Nightly News for what might be a short or long interlude, in the wake of claims Williams made about being under fire in Iraq which were recently disputed in a investigative article in Stars and Stripes. Veteran war correspondent and author of the bestseller “War is a Force That Gives us Meaning”, Chris Hedges, joins us to analyze the apparent need in our contemporary media culture of creeping infotainment, to glorify war and wartime heroics, possibly as a way to overcome the fact that we have not won a war since World War 11.