Judging Freedom - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson : The State Dept Lies for Israel

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson : The State Dept Lies for IsraelSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Colonel, it's always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. I'm the biggest gremlin. I want to talk about a number of things. The president of France suggesting he's going to send troops to Romania to train with other NATO troops and then over to Ukraine. The attack on and slaughter at the Moscow concert last Friday. I want to start with the UN Security Council and its vote on calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. As you know, Colonel, there have been five of these votes, three of them the U.S. vetoed, the fourth one the U.S. sponsored. It was so meaningless that

the Russians and Chinese vetoed it. The fifth, which was very similar to the first three, the U.S. abstained on. So this one from earlier this week was a vote of 14 to 0 to 1. 1 was the U.S. abstention. Within minutes of the vote, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said it wasn't binding. So let's start with big picture. Is it binding? What would be the purpose of the Security Council if the votes are not binding on members of the U.N.? And what's your take on the U.S. flip-flop on all of this?

Domestic politics or recognition of realism by Joe Biden? Let me take a shot at the last part of your question first and say it's a little bit of both and maybe something else. But in terms of the legality of the term binding with regard to the United Nations Security Council, or for that matter, with regard to anything the United Nations does, or for that matter, anything any international body does in the way of international criminal justice, international humanitarian law, or international law, period, is never binding unless the power that has the power to defy it agrees not to. That's the simple truth of it. That's the reality of it. And that's the reality of the

weakness of any international organization. About the only way you can overcome that weakness is a preponderance of the world's interested communities, lawyers would say, that have standing, weigh in mercilessly until the preponderant power power has to relent or has to do something to back up and readjust its attitude. I don't think that's going to happen with the United States, but I do like to see this piling on. Piling on is about all you can do when international law is judged not binding by superior power. Here's the comments. This is a montage of three comments from the American ambassador, the Israeli ambassador, and the Palestinian observer at the UN. We fully support some of the critical objectives in this non-binding resolution. And we believe it was important for the Council to speak out

and make clear that our ceasefire must, any ceasefire, must come with the release of all hostages. The resolution just voted upon makes it seem as if the war started by itself. Well, let me set the record straight. Israel did not start this war, nor did Israel want this war. This must be a turning point. This must lead to saving lives on the ground. This must signal the end of this assault of atrocities

against our people. A nation is being murdered. A nation is being dispossessed. You heard his voice, Colonel. That observer, Ambassador Mansour, also argued before the International Court of Justice. He sort of wept right there at the Security Council. He did weep at the International Court of Justice. When members sign the UN Charter, don't they agree to be bound? I realize it can't be enforced unless some military is going

to enforce it, but is there some moral or legal compulsion because they agree to be bound by what the Security Council does? Otherwise, the Security Council, the whole principle of the UN is meaningless other than just to exchange ideas. Of course, that's been the argument of the realists in the world, like John Mearsheimer and others, and myself from time to time, and even Colin Powell from time to time, whom I wouldn't call a strict realist. It's all, as Mao Zedong said, international law and

the enforcement thereof comes out of the barrel of a gun. And whoever's got the biggest gun is what determines it, not the United Nations, not the International Criminal Court, none of those international organizations, the nation with the biggest gun. That said, I do think there is a tremendous value in having a body where these kinds of views and opinions can be aired. And I disagree completely with the Israeli spokesman there who said they did not start the war. he may be correct in that very tiny little assertion. He did start the genocide. Israel started the genocide. And that's what we're talking about. We're not talking about war. This is not war. That needs to be clear for every American, indeed for every global citizen. This is not war. This is genocide. And that's a very different

proposition under international law and should be a very different proposition under international law and should be a very different proposition under everybody's domestic law. In fact, I suspect it is in most states. But here we go again. The United States is the preponderant power. And if we don't agree to it, then we can stiff people. And that's what we're doing. Genocide is a war crime for which there's no statute of limitations. The Congress of the United States is about to invite the genocider-in-chief to address a joint session of Congress. Prime Minister Netanyahu theoretically could be arrested. It's not going to happen, but it shows you what the American government thinks of genocide.

He's the genocider in chief. Joe Biden's funding it. My Texas friends used to say that's lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut. And that's how we have become in our Congress, lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut. And I put Lindsey Graham right down there in the bottom of that wagon rut, and the Speaker of the House right down there in the bottom of that wagon rut, and all the people who were assembled around them to cheer this man, to cheer him in opposition again to the sitting President of the United States, regardless of what we may think of him. And incidentally, I looked at the list this morning of Western leaders. They have the lowest approval rating from Berlin to Washington

of any set of Western leaders since World War II. It should tell them something. It should demonstrate something to them, that they aren't doing a very good job. And not only their own publics feel that way, but the world feels that way. You once ran the State Department. I'm going to play a clip now of Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesperson, being very effectively grilled by a reporter. I don't know

the reporter's name, but we've seen him before. And he generally asks very lawyer-like, effective questions. I don't think you would have hired Matt Miller to say this. And so what do you expect now to happen as a result of the passage of this resolution? So I think you expect that Israel is going to announce a ceasefire. I do not. So do you expect that Hamas is going to release hostages? So I'm glad you mentioned that because one of the things that we have objected to for some time is that most of the people that call for a ceasefire, we believe, are calling for Israel to unilaterally stop operations and not calling for Hamas to agree to a ceasefire

where they would release hostages. Well, I think it goes both ways, doesn't it? It could. But so the... Wait, wait, wait. No, but the resolution today is a non-binding resolution. Okay, so what's the point? Why did you abstain?

Why didn't you veto? So I think that separate and apart from this resolution, we have active, ongoing negotiations to try to achieve what this resolution calls for, which is an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages. I can't say that this resolution is going to have any impact on those negotiations. But those negotiations are ongoing. They've been ongoing over the weekend and they've made progress. So I don't expect you to answer this now, but to me you just stick this in your pocket. If that's the case, what the hell is the point of the UN, of the UN Security Council?

So we think it plays an important role. It does, even though its action does absolutely nothing. And that you're going to get what you would like to see not out of the UN, but out of discussions in Doha. So we believe it's important that the UN speak and the UN Security Council speak on matters of international security. It's why we've been engaged in this process, why we thought we were going to have a successful vote on Friday that Russia and China unfortunately and quite cynically vetoed. But I do believe that ultimately if we were able to achieve a ceasefire and the release of hostages

is going to come not through a UN process but through the process with which we've been engaged, yes, in Doha. I'm not sure what message Mr. Miller was trying to convey. I realize he represents a vastly different State Department than the one you ran, but it's almost that back and forth, the part of it that came from him was almost ridiculous, Colonel. It was. And the more I watch spokesmen for the government, whether it's Admiral Kirby or it's Miller, the more I'm convinced that we are embarked on the most insane message deliverance that I've ever seen. It constitutes Orwellianism taken to a new height. The words they speak have nothing to do with reality. The words they utter have

nothing to do even with their own conception of reality. A ceasefire, let's just parse that for a minute. A ceasefire would mean that both sides agreed that their objectives are in jeopardy of not being accomplished. That'd be the first thing they'd probably agree on, on both sides. Not necessarily together, but on both sides in their conversations. And then they would say, okay, we need at least a week to satisfy the diplomatic concerns that are around us, maybe a month to do that, and to have some reasonable talks about how we're going to exchange hostages if we're going to do that. And let me tell you that militarily, it would make absolutely zero difference. What it does, of course, is extend the time that Bibi, the center of mass in all of this,

is in jeopardy, in jeopardy of being tossed out, in jeopardy of being tried, in jeopardy of going to jail. So that's Bibi's main motivation for not wanting any kind of ceasefire at all, because it gives people time to cool off a little bit and to think about their next steps and their next steps. That's what you want to ceasefire for in conditions like this. It also gives you time to make a reasonable deal about a hostage exchange and get your citizens back if you're Israel alive, and to get some of the people that have been in prison, most of them for

about no reason at all, some of them, a few of them, like we were at Guantanamo, a few of them are hardened terrorists, but not that many. It gives you a chance to decide which of those you're going to release, if any of the hardened ones. It gives you a chance to think. And that's not what Bibi Netanyahu wants. He just wants to kill as fast as he possibly can, as many as he possibly can. Look what he's doing now. He is not only committing genocide with military force, he is committing an even more heinous

version of genocide by denying food. This is something we have said repeatedly over the last 50 years to all the nations in the world who have experimented with this sort of thing, that it's the most heinous thing they can do is to make people starve to death. We got to the point in Yemen where we were beginning to raise that with the Saudis and the Emirates. This is a crime of all crimes, killing people by denying them food and water. And that's what they're doing now. So he's adding to the genocide this other war crime of refusing people food and killing them thereby. This is nonsense. We need a ceasefire and we need it under no conditions other than we're going to stop the shooting and the killing for a specified period of time so we all

can think. Colonel, for whom does the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations work, the President of the United States or the Secretary of State? Well, all ambassadors for the United States are charged by the President himself or herself. They get a letter, a separate letter from him, and they all work for the President, but herself. They get a letter, a separate letter from them. And they all work for the president, but they work through, technically speaking, the secretary of state. Now, they don't have to.

They can go straight to the president if they want to. Usually, they go through the secretary of state, but that's the way it works. But this is obviously a political call on the part of whoever told her, hey, you're not vetoing, you're abstaining, whether it's because Joe needs votes in Wisconsin and Michigan, or Joe wants to aggravate Bibi, whatever the reason is. Somebody told her how to vote. She

didn't make this judgment on her own, did she? Absolutely. Absolutely. A UN ambassador would never make a vote on their own. I can't think of a single time since World War II, since the creation of the UN, that we've done that. Now, let me just say this. If you're looking at what's happening right now with a clear vision, I think what you're looking at is Biden is setting Bibi up for a fall.

The expectation there amongst those who are going to vote for Biden, or at least he feels like enough of them to get him reelected, is that that'll be a relief. They'll go back to the ballot box and cast one for Joe. But it isn't going to change a thing. This is all a political shell game because Benny Gantz is just as bad as Bibi. Anybody else who comes in is going to be just as bad as Bibi. They're going to continue what they're doing right now. And we'll take a sigh of relief and Joe will get reelected and the genocide will go off. You probably never thought that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, commonly known as AOC, would agree with you? Well, here she is.

When we are talking about famine, the actions of Hamas should not be tied to whether a three-year-old can eat. The actions of Hamas do not justify forcing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to eat grass as their bodies consume themselves. But we are talking about a population of millions of innocent Palestinians. We are talking about collective punishment, which is injustifiable. When they're talking about inspections, we're talking about U.S. aid, the United States aid. She's right. I mean, the implication is, and we have heard this from Aaron Maté and

Max Blumenthal, that there are U.S. trucks that have attempted to deliver aid from Egypt and the IDF have stopped them. Not by using violence. Nobody was killed, but wouldn't let them in. Well, the way to beat that

is to look at the central command commander and say, General, get your troops ready. I want you to escort those trucks into Israel. And you have authority to engage. If they engage you, you have the authority for self-defense. You have the authority to go beyond even that if you think your troops are in danger and a tactical maneuver or whatever will save more of them than not. In other words, you have carte blanche to get that food to the people who are starving. That would have to come from Lloyd Austin or from the president, right? Yes, it would. It'd have to come from the president.

Right. Transitioning, Colonel, to the Moscow attack, when the United States stated it was not Ukraine, it was ISIS, 55 minutes after the attack had started and with no evidence in front of it, was that perceived as credible in diplomatic circles? I hadn't heard that. You mean our intelligence indicating the attack was imminent didn't get to them until 55 minutes after the attack command? No, our intelligence got to them on March 7 saying an attack is imminent somewhere at a concert in the next 48 hours.

The concert on March 9 came off and there was no attack. The law enforcement believes that these creeps were there on March 9, but because there were Russian officials in the audience, there was a lot of security, and they feared they couldn't get in with their weapons, so they held it off for two weeks. Then when the attack occurred, within 55 minutes of it being over,

the U.S. State Department said it was not Ukraine, it was ISIS. So my question to you is, is that credible in the international community? It is. It jives with what I'd heard, although I hadn't heard the part about the two separate attacks. I heard that it was some week or so before the attack that was successful, if that's the right term. I think you've got a situation here where Russia really doesn't, and Putin and Lavrov too have been very adamant about this time and time again. They really don't trust Washington anymore. And in this case, I don't know how it was received in the Kremlin. I don't know how it was received by the Soviet military or its Spetsnaz, its police or whatever. But I suspect it was received the same way Putin says he receives almost any message from Washington now.

And that's with total disbelief or even worse, that it's something used to confuse him or to get him in a situation that he doesn't want to be in. So that's what you do when you practice diplomacy. I hate to use that term for us, the way we're doing right now. No one trusts you. No one believes you. So even though the CIA might have had some decent contacts with its equivalent in Russia, they probably were very disbelieving. And when the first one didn't come off, they probably said, well, that's what we expected.

So they just proved it. And ISIS, ISIS-K, is turning out to be as smart or smarter than the leadership of al-Qaeda. Here's Maria Zakharova. There's an English translation. She's the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman. This is yesterday, Carl. In order to deflect suspicion from this very collective West, from Washington, London, Berlin,

which literally discussed in direct text, as I said, possible tourist attacks in our country, Paris and other NATO countries, they had to find something, anything, something, some explanation. So they resorted to ISIS, took this Trump card out of their sleeve, so to speak, and the White House, together with the State Department, declared at the Maidstat that Ukraine had nothing to do with it. End quote. On the basis of what data? On the basis of what information did they draw that conclusion? It is completely unclear. Only one thing is clear.

They began to excuse the Kiev regime in order to excuse themselves because everyone understands perfectly well that there is no independent Kiev regime without Western financial support and military aid to this regime. Well, she is right about the last statement. There is no independent Kiev regime without Western financial and military support. Why are the U.S. and the U.K. so adamant that Ukraine was not involved? Well, her final statement was typical. We do it all the time, too. You connect something that is illogical

to what is logical. But to your question, that's a good question. If I were Putin and I were in his shoes and I'd experienced what I've experienced since, really since 2005, but certainly since 2014 and without question, since Boris Johnson, authorized by us, ended the best attempt to settle this and bring about peace, I wouldn't trust this for anything. I agree with John Mearsheimer. No one in the world, in any capital of consequence, believes anything the United States says anymore. In fact, their first thought is, what are they trying to do to me?

What are they trying to do to my ally? What are they trying to do to my security, to my economy? That's their first thought. That's what you get when you make hostile enemies of about a third of the world's population. Paul Jay Colonel is- Robert R. I'm not surprised by Putin's feeling here, but I think we all, including Putin, need to take some, as Ali Soufan said the other day, probably the best counterterrorism person I ever met in government, FBI, extraordinary guy, speaks fluent Arabic, Lebanese-American, I think himself, runs the Soufan group now.

ISIS-K is showing quite a bit of capability. It attacked, killed over 100, I think, in January in Iran. Now it's in Moscow, killing that many or more. We're going to get hit too. I guarantee you, Judge, that we are going to get hit. And it may be worse than 9-11, because this group has got its capabilities together, its brains together, and it apparently can work across borders even better than Al-Qaeda did. So all of us need to stand up and take notice of this because it's coming. It's coming to all of us, all of us in the West in particular. Is there significance to you, Colonel, that the Kremlin has recharacterized and rebranded the special military operation as a war.

It is because you enter an entirely new realm of executive power, even in Moscow, and an entirely new realm of law when you declare war, as George W. Bush. We had this conversation in 2001 after 9-11. You really put the executive branch, certainly in any Western country, and look at Macron, if you want an example right now, into a position where it can usurp all manner of power that it otherwise would be checked in exercising. And you unleash, you open Pandora's box in terms of what can be done. And right now, France and Macron stand as a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the pleasure, my dear friend. Happy Easter to you and your loved ones.

And thank you very much for joining us. I hope we can see you again next week. Thank you for having me. Of course. Coming up at three o'clock Eastern, Kyle Anzalone, and at four o'clock Eastern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with the boys, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Altyazı M.K.