Judging Freedom - Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: What Does Netanyahu Want?

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: What Does Netanyahu Want?See 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 Tuesday, August 13th, 2024. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson will be here in just a moment on what does Prime Minister Netanyahu want? What does he really want? What does he deserve? But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%.

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Get your free gold report. Same experts who predicted the 23% rise that I've enjoyed have predicted this $3,200 an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Colonel Wilkerson, welcome here, my friend. Thank you very much for your time. It's deeply appreciated. When Prime Minister Netanyahu was in Washington addressing the joint session of Congress and attacked you and other demonstrators in the street

and received the longest standing ovation of the 58 that he received for attacking your and other colleagues of ours exercising your rights protected by the First Amendment. What do you think his goal was? Threefold. First of all, to get a kick in the polls when he got back to Israel, which he did get. He always gets it when he comes to the United States because he approves to those, now we know, 47% in the latest poll of Israeli Jews who approve of everything he's doing. And so he got to kick in the polls he wanted. Second, he wanted agreement from key members of the Senate in particular, but also both possible administrations, if you will,

the Trump and the Harris. He wanted assurances of continued support. And third, he wanted to give the image off again, which is his most powerful and potent methodology, that he owns America. And from that standing ovation series in the Congress, one can hardly argue with that in terms of the useful idiots who sit in our Congress, at least. And from the actions of the executive branch over the past eight, nine, 10 months, them too, because there has been very little restraint placed on him in conducting what is, everyone knows now in the world, who cares, a genocide. What does he want in the Middle East? He certainly wants more than the defeat of Hamas. Does he want a regional war with the United States supporting him and with

Iran as his adversary? Yes. And his latest proof of that is he's just added more conditions to the current talks, which your State Department has not told you anything about yet, that will certainly derail them. We already have a position now where Hamas is saying, even under its new leader, Yair Sinwar, that they probably will exceed to what was spelled out in May and now is sort of spelled out with more conditions with regard to the position that's supposed to be the going in position. But Netanyahu screwed that up. He does not want a ceasefire. He wants a temporary ceasefire so he can get some respite and maybe reposition and call up some more troops. But he doesn't want a permanent ceasefire and he doesn't want certainly a peace agreement until he's finished in Gaza.

And he will do everything in his power to do that. Now, secondarily, primarily for him, he wants the United States to eliminate Hezbollah and Iran, particularly Iran's nuclear facilities, because I just read Gary Samor's latest piece about where they are in terms of building a nuclear weapon. Though I agree with Gary that everything they have to do, in addition to enrichment, which is almost there, they have to build the warhead. They have to put it to the missile. They have to test and such. And that would take probably a couple of months at least to do that.

So I think now what he's betting on is that we'll take out their nuclear complex, not necessarily invade Iran. That would be a tragedy of the first order if we did that. Can he take out their nuclear complex or is it so embedded underground or otherwise protected that it would cost more to take it out than it's worth? That's a huge question. I think it's a 50-50, maybe 60-40 for the positive side, if you want to call any of it positive, that they would do enough damage to where it would set them back considerably. And then that would give you an interim period in which to begin talks and even do something more devastating, which Israel has proven it can do.

After all, if it can kill Ismail Haniyeh inside Tehran, there's hardly anything it can't do in terms of clandestine activities. So you would have a good start on teaching the Iranians, if you will, that they best not go that route. It would seem to me that he does not want a ceasefire because he keeps upping the ante and because he murdered, murdered the chief negotiator on the other side. Have you ever experienced that in all your years in the State Department with all the negotiations in which the United States participated, that one side murdered the guy on the other side of the table? I know it wasn't physically on the other side of the table, but he was calling the shots. Never. I must hasten to add Harlan Ullman,

a consultant of Colin Powell's for a long time, confidant. Harlan's got a good mind, especially a good strategic mind. Put an article out yesterday or the day before wherein he said Israel's not admitted to the killing. There are other possibilities. I think he's wrong. I think Israel probably did do it. And now there are two versions of how they did do it. The second version is that a very, very fast missile came through the wall and killed an E. Of course, the first version is that it was a pre-planted bomb and they detonated it.

The first version about the missile coming in hones in on his cell phone. And I know about that technology. I know well about that technology. So you set the missile and the missile tracks the cell phone. So I don't know the particulars yet. And I'm not sure we'll ever know everything. It's like Khobar Towers, the bombing of the Marine Barracks Hotel in Lebanon in 83. You probably never know the full details. But there is enough

speculation now where I'm wondering if the Iranians have actually determined with some kind of positive nature that the Israelis did it, and how that's factoring into their considerations of what to do next. Well, our friend and colleague and regular contributor to this show, Alistair Crook, has a source that was in the building, in the building, in the guest house where he was when he was murdered. And he says it was a missile from the outside, that it was not the Washington Post, New York Times, Mossad-planted version of a bomb put in there two months before, and they knew exactly what room he was going to be in. And that, to me, reinforces Israeli complicity.

It's like the Stuknex. You remember the Stuknex virus we put in their nuclear computers that ruined those centrifuges? Maybe some US complicity there, but I can't imagine. I know we're insane, Judge. I know we're insane on Ukraine, on Gaza, but I can't imagine that we would help the Israelis kill the leader most apt to bring about a ceasefire and an ultimate peace agreement. Well, I don't believe everything he says, but Secretary Blinken almost immediately said, we didn't know anything about this and we had nothing to do with it. That doesn't mean anything that he denied it. These people regularly lie. But he did make that statement.

I've been there. You would not tell the Secretary of State. You would not tell the Secretary of State. Secretary of State is not supposed to lie, and so you wouldn't tell him because he'd have to lie. Who in the United States government would have known about this outside Intel? Probably that and the Pentagon. I mean, surely Intel knew, did they not? Could the Israelis have pulled something like this off

without the CIA knowing about it? That's what worries me. This is some really high-tech stuff, very, very high capability. Somebody probably knew about it in the United States. And was there a legal, now I'm going to go where I know you want me to go, or moral obligation on the part of that person to tell his or her boss so that it kept going up the food chain? Yes, but that's something rarely exercised in the U.S. government these days, rarely. If Prime Minister Netanyahu gets what he wants, an all-out war with Iran, what do you think will be the level and depth of American support of Israel? Would it be Navy?

Would it be air? Would it be troops on the ground? Would it be cash? I think it would start in sort of burst. So you would have a major attack, which I think is imminent. I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's imminent, from Hezbollah. And that would be maybe 200, 300, 400 missiles a day ad nauseum. So you would have from Haifa all the way down to the southern part of Israel, you would have a, Israel would be aflame. People would be leaving. Netanyahu would close the airport so they couldn't leave.

You'd have a real disaster in Israel. So that would mean U.S. air power probably out of Al-Judeed and Saudi Arabia and elsewhere and U.S. air power off a carrier in the eastern mid. But let's check right now. We only have one carrier there. That means 24-hour operations. That doesn't mean around-the-clock operations. You need three carriers for around-the- clock operations. You need two for 72 to 96-hour operations. So two would be adequate. One, I would not want to start the thing with unless I had major reinforcements from Al-Yadeed, which could be forthcoming. You saw it in April when we all got together and took down essentially the Iranian equipment, missiles, drones, and everything else coming into Israel. You would have to have to have

air power like that, but that was a burst of air power. We're talking about around the clock to take on something like Hezbollah. But that's the way I think it would start. And then that would morph into Iran joining in with other elements of the axis of resistance from Syria, from Iraq, from Yemen and such. And I think it would spread slowly. And then eventually it would get to where Netanyahu wants it to get to, and we would get there because Israel would be in flames. And Austin's comment about we will come to Israel's defense would be relevant, at least in terms of most Americans watching it. And we would go.

We would go ho-hog and the thing would spread. And now we're talking about Turkey and Russia and China and others. Putin's strategy now is absolutely delicious to watch. People think I like Putin. I don't care for Putin, but I have to admire his strategy. Putin is now designing the apparatus in the world and in Russia to take on NATO because he is so sick of our duplicity, so tired of our lies, so sick of our obfuscations and our empire that he thinks, I believe now, that he is going to have to in the future, in his lifetime, take on NATO. So he's building these apparatuses around the world to take us on from the exterior. At the same time, he's building his defense industrial base in Russia so he can sustain it. He thinks he's in an existential struggle with NATO. Does he provide military support to Ukraine?

I'm not talking about the defensive equipment, the electronic blocking equipment, which you have told us and others have told us have already been delivered to Tehran. Does he supply offensive equipment with which to hit American ships? I think he will if he hasn't already. Right now, the Iranians have the capacity to sink an aircraft carrier. It's that plain and simple. Now, it would take some really exquisite planning, and it would take a real jump on one, say, that was way too close, but we have tendency now. Judge, we've actually said, I remember sailors telling me during the earlier period with Iran, that time when we shot down the airliner with Vincennes, the Aegis cruiser,

I would never put a carrier in the Persian Gulf, never. Water's too shallow, you're just asking for it to be sunk. Well, we have subsequently put an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, but all you have to do is get close in the North Arabian Sea, the Sea of Oman, and you're in a really high vulnerability envelope, especially if you're a single carrier with just the escort ships and normal strike group pass. Where is the single carrier that's there now which might be used to attempt to degrade Hezbollah? Is it in the Mediterranean?

We told it, Austin told it to go flank speed. which might be used to attempt to degrade Hezbollah. Is that in the Mediterranean? We told it, Austin told it to go flank speed. That's in excess of 30 knots. That's pretty damn fast for a ship that big to the Eastern Mediterranean. It was in the northern part of the Sea of Oman. Another one was transitioning from Japan, I believe, and going to the West Coast. It's now been told to go at flank speed for the Eastern Mediterranean. And there may be others, but I doubt it because, as you know, our carriers are in some pretty dire straits these days in terms of extended maintenance and in terms of the crew necessary to sail them. 5,000 people on these carriers. Ritter and McGregor tell me it's very easy to degrade the top of the carrier. You don't even have to sink it. Just degrade the top of it where the planes are, and you've rendered it useless.

You've rendered it a white elephant. You've rendered it a sitting duck. Do you agree with that? I do. And the second thing people don't realize is that we now have these 65-centimeter wake-homing torpedoes. We've had them for a long time, but they are very sophisticated now. You fire it only at the wake from a diesel sub, for example. You fire it at the wake, and it turns.

It can turn 90 degrees. It will go towards the wake at about 90 to 100 knots. That's fast. And then it turns towards the bow of the carrier as the cowers carrier sailing. It then goes up to the carrier, slows, goes about 90. Then it goes up underneath the carrier and explodes. It's not even a big warhead because all it needs to do is be directly beneath the carrier when it explodes and it breaks the back of the carrier. And incidentally, it goes down very fast because it's broken in half and both halves are taking on water. And as one Navy admiral has pointed out, retired, of or so, that might be in the water once this happens. So what do you do?

Now, we have this, I'll call it a smart torpedo. Do the Russians. Does anybody else? Oh, yes. Yes. Tell you something else. We have created a 3D produced submarine that we have put in the water, sailed to Le Havre, France, and recovered back to the East Coast of the United States. We built that for about $100,000. Think about building 14 billion dollars worth of those. That's what a carrier

costs. And put them in the ocean and say, go see carriers. Put a smart mine on them, smart torpedo on them and say, go see carriers. Carriers are passe. The only thing carriers are good for is showing the empire's flag against countries like Venezuela or Somalia or Yemen or whatever. And the Houthis have proven it might not even be too good to show it against them. What do you see happening now? Do you think, I think you said a few minutes ago, you hope not, but you do think Iran will strike. The last time Iran struck, you were not very happy with the Israeli and American response because I think you told us, correct me if I'm wrong, Colonel, that they sent a lot of stuff up there just to draw down, force Israel and the U.S. to

draw down their defensive weaponry, but the one that they wanted to get through did get through. Do I have that correct? Yes, and I think Hezbollah took some really good trajectory and capability studies from that. I think Hezbollah knows precisely how and where and the timing of shooting its missiles now. And when you talk about 300 to 400 missiles a day for a year, that's devastating. 300 to 400 missiles a day. What would that do to the Israeli public, to the Israeli infrastructure, to Israeli cities?

I think it would devastate them. I think Haifa would virtually disappear to the Israeli infrastructure, to Israeli cities? I think it would devastate them. I think Haifa would virtually disappear because it's in the arc where Iron Dome can't even get to the missiles, basically. And Iron Dome has shown increasingly now that it can't handle these swarms of missiles and these types of missiles. And we haven't even seen the most sophisticated ones, which Russia could be providing, if not already, then in the very near future. So that's why I say Austin is going to get his wishes, and we're going to get our desserts when this starts, if it starts, because Israel will indeed need defending. It will disappear otherwise.

Does Israel have subterranean facilities for its governmental officials? Netanyahu really hasn't been seen in public for 12 days. Is he somewhere underground? Could be. I think he's busy doing such things as trying to deal with Yoav Galat, for example, who came out yesterday or the day before. That's the defense minister. That's the defense minister who said defeating Hamas is nonsense. Defeating them completely. It's nonsense. So he's got some contradictory voices every day now. So he's got IDF contradicting him, IDF military people. He's got the Minister of Defense contradicting him.

He's got an economy in shambles. He's got an IDF that's exhausted, and he wants to start another war. Is he crazy? Crazy like a fox who's a demon. He's wanted this ever since he was finance minister. He's been plotting to get the United States to take out what he thinks is his premier enemy, Iran, particularly to take out their nuclear program. And now he's at the point where it's all in. You've got your possibility. You've got your situation.

It's all in. It's all or nothing. You got to keep going. You can't back up. Will the American people tolerate this kind of, I guess it's a political question, Colonel, this kind of and this level of, I guess it's a political question, Colonel, this kind of and this level of involvement. What happens if an aircraft carrier is sunk and 5,000 boys drowned? 5,000.

The American people, it's clear to me they'll blame it on Iran. They'll blame it on Israel's enemies. They won't blame it on Israel. It'll be blamed on Israel's enemies. And Netanyahu's counting on that. I'm not so sure he didn't have some discussions about the publicity campaign that he and the United States would conduct once Graham, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton. What the heck do you think they were talking about? Promises to him, guarantees from the United States Senate and even from the House. Absolutely. Remember, you're talking to the man who sat in the White House Situation Room on 29 January 2003 and listened to Doug Fyfe regale us with the fact that we were, in fact, going to war and that Saddam's attachments to al-Qaeda were going to be the principal thing we should publicize to the extent that Steve Hadley in the chair at the time, the deputy national security advisor,

had to tell him to shut up and sit down finally. But that's the kind of people you're dealing with. Was Colin Powell there when that happened? No, he sent me that day. I had the chagrin of coming back and debriefing him. And did you remain uncharacteristically silent, Colonel Wilkerson? I essentially looked at Steve like, when are you going to stop this? Steve's not like Condi. He's a gentleman. And Steve was just letting fight go on and on and on. Finally, it even got to him and he stopped it. Condi would have stopped it pretty quick, I think, but mainly because he was disclosing things that she knew were true.

She didn't want him to in front of that very varied audience. Does anybody ever talk about the USS Liberty and how Israel is not an ally that's advantageous to the United States? 34 dead Americans, 171 wounded, and they paid in three installments over a number of years, the last installment essentially for the ship itself, 13 some odd million dollars. The first installments were for the killed and then the second for the wounded. And Dean Rusk said very vividly right after it happened that it was a lie, that they knew what they were doing. Who paid that money? The Israelis or the US? The US did. Look at 13 some odd million dollars. We give them 3 billion a year. I mean,

that's chicken feed. They gave us our own money back. Right. Right. And then the machine gun. It was Rafael fighters and it was motor torpedo boats. And when some of our crew were in the water, they machine gunned them in the water. Can you imagine any other country's military doing that to the United States and the U.S. doing nothing? It would have cost us a belly. We'd have destroyed whoever did it to us if we had the capability to do it. And not Israel, though. I mean, and now we're seeing the results of this gradual increase in the obeisance that Washington pays to Israel. And Netanyahu has played that like a maestro.

I mean, Netanyahu walked into the House of Representatives as if he were the President of the United States giving a State of the Union address. A popular President of the United States. Popular with both parties. Ronald Reagan in his first year. I'm trying to think when we last had something like this. Look at his face when he makes that remark about the useful idiots outside, including me,

who were protesting. I mean, his face tells you everything. I own you people. I own you people. Wow. We have the useful idiots thing. I've run it until I'm blue in the face, and you've seen it as well. At the time he said it, I did not know that two of my friends and colleagues and collaborators, three of them, you, Max Blumenthal, well, four, Anya Parampil and Aaron Monte were outside. For all we knew, he was talking about the four of you. What turns my stomach is the ovation, which is essentially a condemnation of your exercise of the freedom of speech.

And that ovation was by human beings who took the same oath you and I did when you entered the military, when I became a judge, which is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, which of course includes the freedom of speech. Yes. I don't want to raise your blood pressure, so we won't run that thing again. Do you expect that before I see you next midweek, next week, Iran will have retaliated and will be of such a magnitude we'll know about it? We are fiercely, and I do mean fiercely, trying to prevent that. Everything from Bill Burns to not necessarily covert threats, overt threats about what will happen to Iran if they do. It's both tracks, punishment and let's work this out because the peace agreement is coming. That's the real lie right now. We are saying to Iran,

don't do this because you're going to screw the pooch on the peace agreement. The peace agreement is right at our hands. It's imminent. What peace agreement? You know, the ceasefire peace agreement, whatever you want to say. The one that Netanyahu doesn't want and will never agree to. Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. Put up the Smotrich full screen. You know who this is, the Minister of Finance, one of the most right-wing members of the government.

He says that any ceasefire is effectively a surrender deal, and he and his buddies will pull out of the government. Yep. And Ben Gavir made his trip, I'm told, yesterday to the Temple Mount, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Islamic world. What do they call it? The other term for it. But it's the second most holy site in Islam, next only to Mecca. And the status quo agreement, which has been in effect for some time, says Jews cannot go to pray there because they realized it was volatile. So they passed this agreement.

Ben-Gavir went there to pray. And there is a movement in the right wing of these religious zealots to take over the entire thing, destroy the Temple Mount in terms of the Islamic value and build the old fortification there, the old temple there, and make it purely a Jewish site. We're back to the Crusades. We're back to the time when, you know, Jerusalem was seized by Saladin and finally taken by Saladin. And that's what will happen this time. I think it's Shaz Freeman, Ambassador Freeman said the other day, it might have been on your show. Netanyahu has done what for a thousand years no one could do. He has used the two elements of his law. He did say that, and I hear that you agree. Yes. Colonel Wilkerson, a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter what we're

talking about. My goodness, to me, the 30 minutes went by like that. It's a delight to be able to pick your brain and to hear you unleashed, if I may. It's your incredible ability as a judge to elicit the truth. Chris, I want to hear that one repeated. Thank you, Colonel. All the best to you, my friend. Take care. See you again soon. Bye.

I just want to make sure I have the rest of the day down here. I do. At 2 o'clock, Matt Ho. More on this same subject. At 3 o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski has written an unbelievable piece at JudgeKnapp.com about Scott Ritter. And my column this week is about Scott Ritter and the FBI. My column comes out Thursdays. Karen's is out now.

And at five o'clock, always worth waiting for at the end of the day, because you never know where he is anywhere in the world. Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.