Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : No Chance for US to Prevail in Iran

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : No Chance for US to Prevail in IranSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes, to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government? government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. John's judge, Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Today is Thursday, August 27th, 2006. I apologize that I was looking down. I didn't realize that Trump is trying to become geographer in chief of the United States, and he has ordered the Department of the Interior

to rename Lake Ontario. No other country on the planet will recognize this. The U.S. can call it what it wants, and people will laugh until January 20th, 2009 when the name will revert back to Lake Ontario. Anyway, Colonel, how are you? Welcome here. I'm doing well. I hope you are too. Good, good, thank you. Before I ask you about Iran, why do you suppose the Director of Central Intelligence spent four hours in the Kremlin this week?

I'd want to say, Judge, because one of the most powerful men, if not at times, the most powerful man or woman in the United States government is director CIA. And we could talk about that all day long, but it's the truth. It's happened since World War II and Bill Donovan and he's putting together the OSS and then coming up to the CIA and Truman's objections there too, which didn't weigh with anyone. CIA is an incredibly powerful and well-moneyed organization. The American people have no idea how well-moneyed it is. So if it were a man like Richard Helms or even Bill Casey, I would say, hmm, okay, sending one of the most powerful men in America to be a diplomat with Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lovov, not a bad deal. This guy, I have no idea how to answer your question,

Judge, because he's not a diplomat in any way, shape, or form. And I hear he's not really a very good director of the CIA, except that he looks after Israel and BB Netanyahu's interest zealously. Does he have a history in the intelligence community? Not really. I mean, we've had people like that before. Look at George Tennant. George Tenant was a Congress staffer, essentially looking after intel issues. So at least he had some kind of inside knowledge.

And he had John McLaughlin, one of the most experienced men ever at CIA. as his deputy and really running the agency while Tenet was the DCI, the director of Central Intelligence, when we didn't have a DNI. So it's not uncommon to have that occur. What is uncommon is to have someone from the political realm, more or less, come in and be such a good director and so revered as H.W. Bush was, as testified to by nine months, his director, and he gets the whole place named after him. Come on, man. This guy had been in the intelligence business for about 40 years.

Wow. Here's what the president had to say about John Radcliffe's trip. This is a radio interview with Glenn Beck. You tell me what you think. I think what the president said is without one iota of credibility, but you let me know your thoughts. Chris number 15. The CIA director, ours, is in Russia. Rumors are saying Putin is going to test NATO resolve all the way to speculation that is crazy. He's going to strike England all the way to this is maybe the U.S. telling them about the Iranian sanctions saying we're serious about him. Can you tell me why our CIA director flew in the middle of the night to meet with the Russians? Well, none of the above.

He's there on, you know, very sort of semi-routine. I hate to disappoint people. We would like to see the war with Ukraine end. The United States... Not a bad answer, Judge, because CIA is very much responsible for the U.S. part in the war in Ukraine. Right, but the United States hasn't sent a government official to Moscow in five years. How can he claim this is semi-routine? Well, I think for him it is because he's dealing with Putin in the way that he's

become accustomed to deal with Putin. And it doesn't seem like there's been a huge gap to him. I mean, after all, this guy can't even keep up with where he's saying this on Monday and that on Tuesday. So I don't expect him to keep a real historical knowledge of what he's done with anyone in the administration with regard to Putin in particular because he hasn't done very much. Why do you think Ratcliffe was there? I think that may be the reason he's there. And we are at a point where if we don't stop, this thing, it has every potential to escalate and it is gaining some absolute insanity from the Europeans like the new English leader, British leader, over there giving them or sending

them a tech data package for storm shadow missiles so that they can build their own storm shadows to send deep into Russia. Now it would take forever for them to do that. I'm told two to three years before they could ever get that. data package implemented and in some place where they could make stormshadows. But nonetheless, it shows you how this is looked at by the EU as a long-term proposition. They're not backing off. It comes out of 90 billion euros that they've allocated for Ukraine.

And this is about a six or seven billion segment of that. So it's a signal to Putin that these guys, at least in Europe, are serious about never giving up, hounding him until they've removed him from office. That's their objective. Well, where is the Secretary of State, who was also the National Security Advisor, was also the National Archivist in Iran and Ukraine, or is he becoming the Viceroy of Venezuela, Uncle Larry? Well, that plus the aspirant to be in charge in the wings of Cuba, I suspect we'll rename the Mona passage and the windward passage after Marco Rubio. He is void, distant from, if ever even at his national security advisor job.

And I would say he's really very distant from other than the things you just enumerated. His job is national security advisor and Secretary of State. Because I think his attention is not only on these other things. that might be fulfillment of his dreams like Cuba, but he's also very much concentrated on running for president. Wow. I'm going to play a clip from Victor Boot, B-O-U-T. Oh, I know Victor Boot.

Right. So the audience knows who he is. The International Arms Dealer convicted and sentenced the solitary confinement in Florence, Colorado, and then exchanged for Brittany Griner, the American. American basketball player, who knows if her arrest was legitimate or not, whatever he exchanged. He gave a fascinating interview yesterday. This is a theory I've not heard before. I wonder if you might be familiar with it.

Chris, cut number 21. We know now from all the documents discovered when we occupied several cities in Ukraine that the plan of Ukrainian was attack Russia on the 8th of March, 2022. So Russia, just two weeks before that, you know, start our operation to prevent that attack on us. The President Putin said, clearly, we will never allow repetition of the June 22 of 1941, when we've been attacked, surprisingly, by the German troops. America is still holding the keys to this conflict that can turn off the flow of intelligence and switch all the Starlink communication.

And if these two done, Ukrainian army are not able to fight even three hours to last after they would remove this support. He's certainly correct about Intel and Starlink, but had you heard this theory about a Ukrainian attack on Moscow planned for March 8th to 2022? Matter of fact, I had from some fairer. good sources. In other words, the special military operation was a preemptive operation, too,

or at least it sought to do that preempt the Ukrainian initiative. We have to go back and look at this entire thing and how it unfolded as much as we know. And I think now, through leaks and other things, we know quite a bit about it. And the way it unfolded, and Chancellor Merkel was the one who described it best when she said, the only reason we did that was to gain time to rearm and make sure Ukraine could stand up to Russia, meaning the Minsk agreement. All of that is Putin's evidence that we were duplicitous, we being the Europeans and the Americans, duplicitous as hell, that our intelligence agencies were all over Ukraine, that we were training them, that we were helping them kill Russians in the Donbass, that we were

attacking with them and killing Russians in the Donbass, that they had to every intention of making that hold and stay that way, getting rid of the Russian language, getting rid of anyone, killing them if they wanted to stay and be a part of Russia in any way, fashion or form. All of this was happening. All of this was watched by Putin. His intelligence was telling him these things. And I'm surprised, shocked even, that he had as much patience as he did before he moved. And one of the reasons preemptively, moving as he did preemptively to fort the Ukrainian initiative to do more in the Donbass and beyond was just that, what Boots said.

And Booth is a clever dude. Let me tell you, I had to study him for the special working group. I resolved with regard to North Korea, the AQ Khan network, and so forth. He's a rare guy. He's very smart and he's very talented. But he's exactly what we said he was. He was the arms dealer in the world and other things that were associated with that, Torex-L-L-L-L. I'm going to move to Iran, Colonel, and I want to ask you a question, but I don't want you to answer it until I run a clip.

So the question is pretty basic. Who controls the Strait of Hormuz? But hang on, because here's what the side. Secretary of Defense, of course, himself the Secretary of War has to say about that. Chris cut number 18. On the economic fury and all the pressure that he can bring to bear. And we know that Iran can't handle it. Ultimately, their economy is in a spiral. They also know that we control the Strait of Hormuz, that our blockade is ironclad, and that oil is flowing through, ultimately, and you've seen some of the numbers. Iran can't run anything through. We can. The world economy

realizes that. And so they made a big bet on controlling it, and they can't. can't. Planet does he live on? That's a good question. There's some truth to what he's saying, but it's hour by hour, day by day, I should say night by night, truth. Because what is actually happening right now in both corridors, but principally the corridor, I won't say principally, most of the time the corridor that goes south, what is

happening is ships are clandestinely negotiating. that portion of the straight of or Moos that they consider to be the potentially most dangerous. And by that, I mean they're turning off their transponders, their lights, their radios, they're going silent. And they're slipping

through as they can the water that Oman basically controls from a point of view of geography but doesn't have the facilities to do the kinds of things that they would do if they were really monitoring it. And so you get both sides,

getting their ships through. The Iranians, the Omanis, if you're looking at them, and the U.S. to a certain extent. But it's not because we control the strait. It's because, as the SOAR would say, the Special Operations Regiment in the Army, the really nighttime people, we operate at night. And that's only time we operate. Well, that's what's going on now. And it's not nearly enough, as Heggseth was suggesting, to sustain, what we need to sustain to get the global situation change majorly because of new access to

and free access to the Strait of Homoos. So it's nonsense what he's saying because it's very painful, very painstaking. And by the way, the insurance companies and the shippers are not looking at this with fully full confidence that they can sustain this because the first ship that goes down or is interrupted in this clandestine transit, as it were, is going to cause them to back off again, as they are now doing wholesalely in the Red Sea. The Saudis are having to sneak up through the U.S. Canal and try to go the long way around with anything that they're trying to ship. And the Houthis have picked up on that, so don't look for that to go on much longer.

Wow. What happens when the Secretary of Defense is perceived by troops and diplomats as a self-indulgent clown. It's very dangerous for the military. Right now, it's very dangerous, especially the middle of the ranks. Hagseth has done, I have to give him credit for this, and I assume some of his subordinates have done this more than he has, but he has assured that the flag ranks, the admiral's and the generals, are either quiescent, fat, dumb, and happy, anxious to get their sinecure in the civilian world for a 600, 700,000 salary a year or whatever. He's kind of quieted them. He's made

them very frightened, especially getting rid of Randy George, the chief of staff of the army. And some other things he's done behind the scene. So he's taken care of that to a certainty stand. I don't see anybody coming out and saying anything. On the other hand, the middle ranks are very restless right now. And I'm talking about officers now and all the services with the possible exception of the Air Force. That's a long story. And then the lower ranks are being co-opted by Hegg Seth as best he can through Christian nationalism and other efforts like that. I mean, these prayer meetings have a purpose.

These sessions that he has with people in the Pentagon where all the flags sit in the front row and don't bleak their eyes and all the enlisted sit in the back and are sort of clocked in and clocked out, they have a purpose. And that purpose is to indoctrinate the ranks. and more and more, particularly at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, if you're keeping up with it, we're getting more and more input from people we've never heard from before who are telling us stories about what's happening with this Christian nationalism. One of the latest was a briefing, a special forces team briefing in Israel, in Israel, on the ground in Israel. And they were getting ready for a special operation.

It never came off, but getting ready for one, possibly in Iran. and the guy who led off the briefing gave a Christian prayer ending it within the name of Jesus Christ. Now just imagine that. You're sitting there with all these different people, including a host of Jews, and you end the prayer within the name of Jesus Christ. This guy called us right away and said, man, you've got to do something about this. This is insane. Have you seen this in your years at state or defense? No, not.

When I was asked to replace the gentleman that was killed in Ghazi, he was a special operator too, but he was retired. He was working as a contractor for the CIA. He was killed, Glenn Doherty. When I was asked to replace him several years ago now, over a decade ago now, I thought this was preposterous. What they were telling me, see, I'm 20-plus years out of the Army. I had a little bit of problem with this, but not something I couldn't handle. When I found out what was going on, when Mikey Weinstein gave me a full-up briefing on what was going on, I said, sign me up. I'll be a member of your advisory board. And it's just gotten worse ever since then. Can Trump devise an exit from the quagmire he created in Iran?

He's got one going right now, Judge, and we're seeing the parameters of it right now. What he has done is he has put, his good offices people, principally the Pakistanis, but others too, into some sort of effort to keep the Iranians busy talking. He's also implemented this rather draconian economic sanctions regime, which is not going to have a whole lot of impact on Iran. They're already sanctioned to the gills. But nonetheless, it looks like he's doing something. And all of this is so he can stop the kinetic action, let the military.

military recoup, let Lincoln, for example, get home and have some leave time, let the ships rest for a while, let the airplanes rest for a while, there'll be some of them flying and so forth, maybe rebuild some of the colossal damage that Iran has done to our eyes and ears, particularly in Bahrain, where they completely wiped them out. There are no more eyes and ears there. And that'll be a delay enough. It'll keep the American people, he thinks, content with what is happening because it's not really killing people, as he was before. And up until the elections, they'll see how those elections go. And if they're not too bad for the Republicans, they're not too indicative of Trump's peril, then he'll resume it after the election. So between, let's say

the end of November, middle of November to end of November and Christmas time, we're going to resume this war with a vengeance. My question of the people who are telling me this is, where are the munitions coming from that we're going to resume it with because you're telling me you're going to resume it the way it was before and I'm telling you you're just about out and I'm telling you the question out of my mouth colonel what are they going to resume it with well here's what I'm you know the hit is that we're going to use a big bomb wow I guess he wants to go down in history as a as a slaughterer of innocence in the grand scale. I don't know how that'll be reacted to by Beijing and Islamabad and Moscow. But what better way, and this I think increasingly, I read Paul Krugman's piece twice, increasingly I think Trump wants to leave something that will ensure he is remembered forever, much the way Hitler did. And Hitler got, as Krugman points out, really demonstrative in this way, against the German people as he knew he was leasing.

He blamed the loss on the German people and began to kill them and to do everything he could to ensure that they didn't have any future. Hitler himself was doing this at the end. Thank God he was sort of constrained by the fast speed. The Russians were moving into Germany and into Berlin, ultimately. But nonetheless, he was doing that. I think Krugman's right in the sense that Trump is the same kind of psychological maniac. And what he will want to do if he thinks his memory is going to be clouded at all is leave something really big to remember him by.

What better than to be the only man that resumed using nuclear weapons against human beings? Why have you said that there's no chance that the U.S. can prevail in this war? We just don't have the moxie. I could go into it at length with you, Judge. I was there when H.W. Bush could cut 25%. I was there when Les Aspen came in with Bill Clinton and cut another three to four percent. I was there when Colin Powell told the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States at this time, Aspen and Clinton, this is crazy.

You've taken us down below the base force. That was his name for the force necessary to sustain us post-core war. You have taken us down to the point where we can't even do two major regional contentencies. Then Aspen crafted this strategy with his brain children in the state. SECS office that we would do two major regional contingencies, shaping them around North Korea in one direction and Iraq in the other direction. And that would be our force planning template. Well, we got to joint staff out, having been made the finest military staff in the world by Colin Powell implementing Goldwater Nichols, we had the finest military staff in the world.

And they said, this is crazy. There's no way you can go to and fight and win and then use the air bridge and the sea bridge and go to Iraq and fight and win or vice versa. There's no way you can do that. So you're lying through your freaking teeth. We then went to Afghanistan and then to Iraq simultaneously, almost. And we proved it. And now, Judge, we're much weaker than then. Well, so here's what the New York Times is just reporting on a Ratcliffe's visit.

It's long, but I'll just read the first two paragraphs and tell me what you think. John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, made a secretive visit to Moscow this week to privately share his bleak assessment of the state of the Russian war against Ukraine and to urge the Russians to cut a deal before their military and economic situation gets worse. Current and former officials have said. Mr. Ratcliffe delivered the message to Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's FSB Intelligence Service, and made no threats about potential consequences for the Russian side,

should President Vladimir v. Putin ignore the CIA director's assessment and choose to continue fighting. CIA analysts have long questions whether Mr. Putin's advisors have given him honest assessments of the war's trajectory and toll. That's a direct contravention, Judge. of what I'm hearing from people in the agency whom I trust and who will still talk to me, who are what I would call the old type

Sovietologists now Russian experts. It's the same division I see in the CIA that I saw with George Tennant, when George Tenet and John McLaughlin, directed by Richard Cheney, kept the analysts in the bowels of the CIA who really knew what was the situation in Iraq. I mean, really knew it.

A couple of them on the National Intelligence Council, too, really knew the situation in Iraq, because I've been studying it for 30 years. They knew it, but Tenet wouldn't let them in front of Powell, wouldn't let them in front of me, because he knew the pooch would be screwed if he did that. That's what's happening now, and Ratcliffe is no intelligence expert anyway.

So what he is telling the Russians, if that's true now, I'm not sure I believe that story, But if it's true, what he's telling the Russians is what he's been preached to by the people that want him to tell the Russians what they want, period. Wow. Colonel, pleasure chatting with you, my dear friend. I'm traveling next week, and Chris may ask you to come on at a time different from your usual. If you can accommodate us, that would be terrific, and I would look forward to it. I'll certainly try.

All right. All the best, Colonel. Thank you. You too. Take care. Looking forward to seeing you in your divorce. New York. Yes, very soon. Thank you. Coming up at three o'clock if you're watching us live in 34 minutes, the golden boy, Max Blumenthal. You ready for this? Max quotes Bibi Netanyahu

was referring to England as the Islamic Republic of Great Britain. We'll ask what that's all about. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.