Judging Freedom - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson : (MUST WATCH) - Starvation Strategy / Aid Workers Executed

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson : (MUST WATCH) - Starvation Strategy / Aid Workers ExecutedSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, April 5th, 2024. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel, I want to talk to you about some latest developments with respect to the attack on the concert hall outside of Moscow. But before we do that, I need to ask you about other breaking news. The Israeli murders of the food vendors is utterly, in my view, without defense from a moral and legal perspective. We know from a variety of sources that they were chased and hunted over the course of a mile and a half and were attacked three different times. What's your take on how something like this could have happened?

I just, to add to your angst over that and my own too, I just watched Al Jazeera footage. And I understand why Netanyahu wants to kick Al Jazeera out of everywhere around the battle. I just watched footage of Israeli soldiers behind berms shooting Palestinians who were rushing out to grab the food baskets that had just been dropped by airborne drop. Shooting them, just killing them right there um do you know when this happened colonel uh according to the al-jazeera videos it was happening even as i was watching it so today yesterday last night in israel here so so very very recently to get back to the food workers, notwithstanding the so-called IDF investigation, the killers investigating the killers. I'm very familiar with that.

You know, I did the Rachel Corey three times. I went to the AG, I went to the foreign minister, and then I went to the government of Israel trying to get a reasonable explanation for why that bulldozer murdered Rachel Corey, because that was my determination. They murdered her. And I never got a satisfactory answer. Six months I couldn't get a satisfactory answer. The State Department of the United States of America could not get a satisfactory answer about the murder of a U.S. citizen in Gaza.

One of the food aid workers was an American citizen and an army veteran, dedicating his time and his adult years to working for this international food organization. Here's, I don't know if you've seen this, it went viral, Colonel. It's not that long. It's very moving. This is Chef Andres, the founder of this food organization, giving his understanding, his lamentable understanding of what happened. What I know is that we were targeted deliberately, nonstop, until everybody was dead in this convoy. This happened over more than 1.5, 1.8 kilometers.

So this was not just a bad luck situation where, oops, we dropped the bomb in the wrong place. Or, no, this was over 1.5, 1.8 kilometers with a very defined humanitarian convoy that had signs in the top, in the roof. That cannot be the role of an army. That cannot be the role of an army that has hundreds of drones above Gaza in any single moment. The humanitarians and civilians should never be paying the consequences of war. This is a basic principle of humanity.

At the time, this looks like it's not a war against terrorism anymore. It seems this is a war against humanity itself. A war against humanity itself. What do you think? That's not far from the truth. I think I would phrase it this way. It's a war against anyone who gets in the way of the IDF killing Palestinians. That's what it is. And the humanitarian aid workers and others like them are getting in the way. And so they are periodically killed or wounded, attacked in order to encourage them to go away, to discourage them from doing what they're doing. Now, I have not seen, and we would not be permitted to show, the in real time slaughter of people,

but tell us with a little bit more detail what you saw on Al Jazeera. I saw the food package land some 150 meters or so in front of the berm behind which Israeli soldiers were crouched. The food package came down from the sky on a parachute. Right. And it landed in the road in front of the berm where the Israeli soldiers were positioned with their weapons. And as you might suspect, Palestinians started out to the food packages and the Israeli soldiers started shooting them. Wow. I just don't... Well, look, Biden's laments,

his supposed conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, supposedly heated. Who the heck knows whether or not to believe this if the so-called laments are just aimed at Muslim voters in Wisconsin and Michigan? Because at the same time that he laments are just aimed at Muslim voters in Wisconsin and Michigan. Because at the same time that he laments, he continues to send 2,000 pound bombs over there, Colonel. I fear you're right. And I do not understand that munition going over there now. In fact, I don't understand anything over 500 pounds going over there now. I'd like to see even the 250 pounders

not go. But dropping bombs now seems to me to be imbecilic, unless you were just trying to make sure no one can live in Gaza anytime soon, particularly Palestinians, and that you've eradicated everything they might call home or something like that. That's the only thing you could be doing with aerially delivered bombs now, and killing people, of course, because you've rubbled the whole place virtually. So why do you need bombs anymore? You need courage. You need courage to go in there and root out whoever is in there that might be Hamas. And I don't see that happening. munitions tranches that have been going over there have been voted on by Congress. They all have been subject to the so-called national security emergency that the Secretary of State has certified. Can you tell me how that works? Did Colin Powell ever sign a document saying it's an

American national security emergency, and in order to address this, we have to send 2,000-pound bombs to Tel Aviv? In my memory, no. We never had an occasion for something like that. Had he had to do it, I'm sure he would have confided in me that he was doing it. And I don't have any memory of that happening at all. But I do have memory, as I've mentioned on other shows, of us not taking the kind of action that we should have taken with regard to U.S. law. And this is just an egregious sidestepping of U.S. law. It's using Pentagon money.

It's using all manner of found money, if you will, in order to get around congressional constraints and congressional legislation. We used to do that in the Pentagon. We would find 300 million here, 100 million there, and it would be slop money, so to speak. There's a lot of that in the Pentagon. And we would send it, and then we would ask for forgiveness afterwards. But this is big money that's going this way, and it's big ordinance that's going this way. And it's idiotic ordinance as far as I'm concerned. Unless, like Blinken and Biden in this case, they support the wholesale slaughter of people on the ground who basically are just innocent civilians. Now, I'm beginning to think that they support that.

Colonel, they're using American dollars to fund it. In the real world, they would all be charged with war crimes. Here's my friend and former colleague at Fox News, Peter Doocy, grilling your former colleague, Admiral Kirby. If the president is so angry about this, where the hell is he? Where is President Biden on any of this? When he wants to talk about how angry he is or frustrated he is about the high cost of insulin, he comes out and gives an impassioned speech.

Where is he on any of this? He's been talking about this. He's been issuing statements on this. In private? No, that statement last I looked was public. But where is he? Why isn't he here right now? I'm sure you'll continue to hear from the president about this and many other national security issues. Let's make you wonder just what you said, Colonel. It makes you wonder

how opposed to the slaughter Tony Bl, and Joe Biden actually are. Let me transition a little bit. Let me say one more thing, Judd, if you don't mind. When Kirby says things like that, it makes me ill. Yes, they're speaking. Blinken wastes no opportunity whatever country he happens to be in. He's speaking. He's bleeding all over the TV.

He's bleeding all over the cameras. He's bleeding over the people with whom he's meeting. But they don't do a single solitary concrete thing to help the situation. The Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate adjacent to the Iranian embassy on the sovereign territory of Iran, albeit in downtown Damascus, Syria. Is Israel trying to goad Iran into a war so that Israel can destroy, I don't know how it could given where it's located, Iran's nuclear capability and drag the U.S. into this war? Or do you have a different take on this, Colonel? That's exactly my take. And let me just talk about the sovereignty of a consulate or an embassy. And its treatment under international law even in wartime. Yes. Think back to that time when we had hostages taken in Iran and our sovereignty was violated, badly violated, and all the protests we made,

and we still have angst in our government circles over that. And here's Israel blatantly bombing sovereign territory of another nation, even though it's in another country. This is absurd what they're doing. But you're right. This is to provoke. Netanyahu is getting desperate, very desperate. He knows Gantz is way ahead of him in the polls. He knows Gantz is trying to orchestrate elections for September.

He knows he'll lose. He knows if he loses, he's going to jail. So Bibi is going to do anything he can to increase the war. That is to say, take on Hezbollah, take on Iran and Syria. He's going to do anything he can to make the war more intense, to make it wider. And his greatest wish is to drag the United States in, particularly against Iran. Colonel, what is your view as to what would happen if Israel and Iran fought a war and the United States came to Israel's defense? Your colleague, Colonel McGregor, and others believe Russia would come to Iran's defense and Israel would lose. I think we'd have a wider war for sure.

I'm not sure Russia would come directly to Iran's defense, but it would come to its support in such a way that would make Iran unbeatable unless we were to invade. And that's bad. That's really bad. And then you don't know what Russia's going to do, should we put troops on the ground and invade Iran? Which ultimately is the only way to ensure, for example, that the Iran nuclear program is exterminated. The only way is to go ashore and find it and destroy it. We found that out with bombing in North Korea, for example, or not bombing, but trying to figure out how we would bomb North Korea. We came to the conclusion that we could not take out their program with bombing. Nuclear bombs, yes, but not with conventional bombs.

Do you expect that Iran will retaliate? I know it's not a democracy, but they must be under enormous pressure from the populace. I think it will not a democracy, but they must be under enormous pressure from the populace. I think they will be enraged. I think it will be asymmetrical, and I think it will be a delayed fuse, if you will. But I think they will respond. And that's in itself what Netanyahu wants, because the more Iran responds and can be found guilty of that response, which I'm sure will be pretty easy this time, then the United States has got a choice to make. Does it take the war to Iran? Does it take it more violently to Iran in another country? Or does it take it inside Iran? And here we are, going up the escalation ladder, which is precisely what Bibi wants. Here's Peter Doocy again to Admiral Kirby on whether the CIA has already warned the U.S. of Iran's plans.

Cut number three. Did the CIA warn Israel or did President Biden warn Netanyahu today about an Iranian plan to attack inside Israel within 48 hours? I'm not going to talk about intelligence matters, Peter. I think you can understand. But they did talk about a very public and very viable, real threat by Iran to Israel's security. And I think I need to leave it at that. It's really as far as I can go. What do you think, Colonel?

Well, look at how we do this. We pitch this and we let a little bit ooze out so that we can start to build the propaganda around it that it will be all Iran's fault. Israel will have no blame whatsoever. The United States will have no blame whatsoever. This will be Iran's fault. They'll do it inside Israel. It'll be a little bloody incident, and it'll be Iran's fault. And then we will be, and Israel will be, fully, fully without blame in doing whatever it does in response. This is how we build the packages.

Can Israel alone win a war against Hezbollah? Can Israel alone win a war against Iran? Not alone. It'll be the United States. That's Bibi's greatest dream, is that he gets the United States to take care of Iran for him, and he means really to take care of the nuclear program. I want to transition, Colonel. Do you know or do you have an understanding or a belief as to whose fingerprints are on the attack at the Krokus Concert Hall outside of Moscow two weeks ago? I've watched Putin. I've watched Sergei Lavrov. I've watched other Russian spokespersons who are quite good, by the way. And I've talked around to the people I know in our own intelligence community, most of them retired.

And I've said, this looks a lot like what Nord Stream turned out to be, a U.S. operation. Only the CIA led it. And they led it with people they had recruited during the run up to the Ukraine conflict, probably, and others whom they've come across. Let's face it. We have done as much to create and to nurture ISIS as anything else on the face of the earth, whether it be Abba Musab al-Zarqawi or any of the instigators of the so-called ISIS consulate in the beginning. We've used ISIS. And when I say we, I mean that agency called the CIA, the same agency that does so many nefarious things in our name. And they have worked ISIS and worked operatives from ISIS in order to do other things. And I'm hearing, and it makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm watching the behavior and the signals coming from Moscow, which are usually very indicative of the truth when it's something like this. And I think that's what Putin believes. And I think the intelligence community in Russia,

whether it's the GRU, the NKVD, the KSB, the FSB, or whatever, they believe it too. And that makes this Ukraine conflict a different conflict as of that killing of that many Russians that close to Putin and blame lying, at least in part, with the people who orchestrated it being the CIA. Colonel, you and I have lamented and condemned the Israeli slaughter of innocents in Gaza. Is the American intelligence community indifferent enough to international norms and American law, callous enough to human life, immoral enough, thoughtless enough,

out of their minds enough to attack young people at a concert outside of Moscow and kill them. If you're Alan Dulles type, you push that aside. I remember the Andy Goodpaster, General Goodpaster, who was in the Oval Office with Eisenhower in the last year of his second term. And Eisenhower turned to Andy and said, don't ever leave me alone in the Oval Office with that man again. And he was talking about Alan Dulles. Well, you've got people like that at the agency. Sometimes you ask yourself, are they doing things that the president is not even aware of? Did, for example, Victoria Nuland, as the NSC person responsible, which is increasingly the way things work now, someone on the NSC, a senior director on the NSC or the NSC deputy or the NSC advisor, the national security advisor,

in this case, Jake Sullivan, actually supervises the clandestine operation. And others, as Eisenhower was saying, a good pastor, have a distance from it. They don't have anything to do with it. Did Victoria Nuland carry this out as her last act because she was supervising covert activities at that time, especially covert activities involving operatives from Ukraine. Who knows? But I don't put it past us doing these kind of things, Judge. I mean, we've been doing them since 1945, pretty heinous things that I actually know fully about. And there's no doubt in my mind that we're still doing it. What should we expect from President Putin in return? I think we're going to

get a reaction. That's what I'm talking about. That's why I think this is really visceral. This is the kind of thing that crawls into his home and tweaks him personally when he's trying to get as much as he possibly can, some kind of negotiated ceasefire and a settlement going in Ukraine. I don't think he wants this conflict to go on. Incidentally, if it does go on, he's just going to take more and more and more of Ukraine. But I think this is the kind of incident that goes personally to his absolute distrust of us now, and now his hatred of us. And probably it solidifies those around him who are of a like mind, but maybe had some doubts from time to time, particularly about the special operation

in Ukraine. They no longer have any doubts. This is the way you solidify the leadership group in Russia. And they start thinking about other things to do back to you in terms of vengeance. This is a bad development. Just like the Nord Stream pipeline takedown was a bad development. How degraded is Ukraine and its military? For example, Colonel, the EU has offered to loan 100 billion euros to Ukraine. I don't know how they expect Ukraine to be around to pay it back. It's in

tranches of 25 billion a year for four years. The Ukrainians are complaining, why are you demanding interest? Why are you demanding we pay it back? Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, as we speak, Colonel, is attempting to cobble together a unique agreement that involves some sort of a benefit to the natural gas suppliers in Louisiana, where he's from, in return for a vote on the floor. No surprise, you know the way the Congress works. In return for a vote on the floor of the House to adopt what the Senate adopted and the President says they'll sign. What good will that do Ukraine? 61 billion, 40 of it stays right here, goes directly into the pockets of Boeing and Raytheon

and all the others. So that's a long-winded question. I apologize for the length. I wanted to set it up. What remains of Ukraine military to even receive and utilize this kind of cash? It won't do anything for Ukraine. It's over for Ukraine. It's over. It's done. They may kill some more people. That's always easy to do. They may slaughter some more people. They may kill younger people. They may kill older people. They may kill another third of Ukraine, but nothing's going to change. Russia has won. And Russia, do you agree with this characterization, Colonel? Russia has defeated NATO in Ukraine. That's true. That's very true. It is NATO's fault that that's the perception, and I think increasingly the reality, but it's true. Here's our Secretary of State, hand-wringing as usual. I don't know if you've seen this, and you may not believe what you're about to hear.

Chris, I'm trying to find it. I know you. Oh, here it is. It's cut number 10. No, no, it's not 10. It's the one, Chris, where he says that Ukraine is going to join NATO. You can play it now. Ukraine will become a member of NATO.

Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership and to create a clear pathway for Ukraine moving forward. We've done a lot of work on that. Well, that does us provoke. First of all, it's impossible for that to happen under the current circumstances. Can he possibly really believe that? And does he think it advances the ball toward peace, Colonel? This is a man that I'm convinced knows what happened at the concert site in Moscow. This is a man who talks about Israel in terms that are so bleeding hard that you just want to vomit on him and goes on with everything that's happened in the past, continuing to happen, and even reinforcing it. This is a man who speaks for America with a mouth that is as vile as any Secretary of State, and that encompasses quite a few, that I've ever studied

or listened to. This is a man who doesn't speak for me. He speaks for himself in the eyes. I assume he speaks for Joe Biden. And frankly, I think he's insane. And I think the whole administration is insane. This is another blow. We did the concert, I think, and now we're sticking this in Putin's eyes. Every inch of defeat that we suffer, every inch of defeat that NATO suffers, we come back with bravado and language that defies it. Well, that doesn't work in the real world for very long, and they're going to find that out. Here's someone you may know, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, recently opining that Russia's military is actually stronger now than it was before the special military operation. The special military operation, by the way, the Kremlin now says

it's no longer a special military operation, it's war. But that's not my point. My point is an acknowledgment by the U.S., maybe at an unguarded moment, I don't know, you'll hear him in a few seconds once I stop, that Russia has retooled? Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily. And after the initial setbacks on the battlefield delivered to them by a brave and hardy group in Ukraine, with the support of China in Ukraine, with the support of China, in particular, dual use capabilities, a variety of

other efforts, industrial and commercial, Russia has retooled and now poses a threat to Ukraine as we are struggling to get the supplemental, but not just to Ukraine. Its newfound capabilities pose a longer-term challenge to stability in Europe and threatens NATO allies. So this is the domino, second part of what he said is the domino argument, trying to scare Republicans in the House into voting for the aforestated $61 billion. But is it credible what he said at the outset, that the Russian military is stronger now than it was before this started? Yes, very much so. In fact, the only thing he left out is India and Iran. India, Iran, and China have helped Russia, but Russia has done it internally as I knew Russia would do. She's reconstituted almost

all of her industrial base and changed it to the needs of the war as she sees them now and envisions them in the future. So I would say right now, in terms of a military, Russia's ahead of the rest of the world. They are battle-hardened, battle-trained, and in the middle of fighting right now. And all the technology that's been developed and all the experience that's been developed is, think about the Nazis when they invaded the Wehrmacht, when it invaded France in the spring of 1940. They had done what they had done, and people had thought, no, no, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. Even the German high command didn't think it was going to work. Then they rolled through the Ardennes, and France fell so fast, everybody took notice quickly. Everybody took

notice very quickly. Well, that's what Russia has done. She's used this period to get her military back on its feet, trained, educated in real war, and tested, and now she's ready to go, whatever she needs to do. Colonel, last question. Is the Russian military as a fighting force superior to the American? Absolutely. Absolutely. Listen to Tom Ricks talking. Someone is finally talking about the poor quality of the American military's leadership. And not only that, the Army can't, three years now, the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, they can't even recruit the numbers they need. And they've asked Congress to reduce their instincts so they won't be so embarrassed at the end of the recruiting year.

This is shameful, what we're doing. And Blinken and Biden are out there bellicose remarks talking about at least Campbell was honest about the situation. Now, if he's trying to build up NATO, like you said, and scare everybody to death, that fits in with the rest. Then Kurt's not being any different from the rest of them. He's just coming at it from a different angle. And we haven't even talked about the Marines that are camped on that island right outside the mainland of China in Taiwan. What are they doing there, Colonel? They're sending a signal. They're sending a signal. They're sending a signal to what, two and a half million Chinese?

These little handful of Marines that if you attack Taiwan, you attack the United States of America. If I were Beijing, I would say, so what? Wow. Colonel, you're terrific, my dear friend. Thank you very much. These Friday afternoons have been sort of a burst of energy at the end of the week when most people are winding down. You're fresh when everybody else is tired. Thank you, Colonel. Much appreciated. Look

forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you. I assure you, I'm as tired as you are. Well, you don't show it. you colonel take care wow uh coming up at four o'clock uh eastern the round table the true end of the week and the end of our friday afternoon larry johnson ray mcgovern right here judge napolitano for judging freedom Judging Freedom. Thank you.