Judging Freedom - Drone Incident_ Biden_s Dangerous Escalation - Scott Ritter

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 16, 2023. It's about 3 o'clock in the afternoon on the east coast of the United States. I have been waiting for this segment for the past 48 hours

since we learned of the confrontation between two Russian fighter jets and an American spy drone over the Black Sea earlier this week. Who better to talk about this and all things related to it than Scott Ritter, who joins us now. Scott, welcome back to the show, as always. What happened? I mean, you wrote a piece about this, which is the best I have seen anywhere from any source in the past 48 hours. Obviously, I don't see classified things, but I devour this stuff. What happened over the Black Sea earlier this week? Well, the United States was carrying out what it claims to be a freedom of navigation type exercise using the drone flying what they claim to be international airspace. The problem is the international airspace that they claim to be flying in is adjacent to the Crimean Peninsula, one of the most sensitive military locations for Russia at any time,

and especially so now that Russia is engaged in a war with Ukraine, where the Crimean Peninsula figures heavily. One of the things that nations can do during times of conflict like this or crisis is to declare exclusionary zones. So normally you have a 12 nautical mile extension of your you know your territorial limit but what you can do is say we're going to extend that for a period of time um because of special national security reasons we do it other nations do it and russia has done it uh basically telling the united states don't bother flying your drone uh through this space or any aircraft through this space. But we opted to fly our drone through that space because we claim that Crimea doesn't belong to Russia.

It belongs to Ukraine. And therefore, the territorial extension out of Ukraine belongs to Ukraine. And Russia doesn't get to impose its own exclusionary zone on that. You know, so we're playing semantic games and on the surface of that you you know the russians may not in and of itself on that uh choose to create a conflict we know the british tried this with a ship back in the summer of 19 uh 2021 i remember they sailed a destroyer right along the same path that the that the reaper was on uh at that time the russians fired warning shots and when it was done they told the British, if you ever sail here again, we'll sink the ship. No questions asked.

We won't put up with it. Well, the British stopped sinking ships or sending ships. We sent the drone and Russia gave us instructions, get out of here. 19 times they flew by it, 19 times. If you don't get the hint by the 19th time, then Russia gets to do things like dump fuel on the drone to break up its aerodynamics and bring it down. They didn't shoot it down, but they brought it down.

But here's the question. Why? Was this just about a diplomatic spat? No. You see, the United States is in the business of using intelligence information collected on Russia, giving it to the Ukrainians so the Ukrainians can carry out attacks against Russia. So we are an active participant to the conflict. So the notion that we can come in and claim some sort of international freedom of navigation status, that we are purely an innocent party, is absurd in the extreme. We collect intelligence. On the left wing of that drone was one of the most sophisticated signals intelligence collection platforms available for that drone.

It was actively collecting intelligence against Russia to give to the Ukrainians so the Ukrainians could use it for war. We were a legitimate target of war. Russia should have shot us down out of the sky. The fact that they didn't means that Russia's in the business of escalation management, not trying to make this a big deal, but it is a big deal because the intelligence we provide Ukrainians results in dead Russians and destroyed Russian equipment. Did the Americans, I'm going to use a phrase that may not be correct, turn off a transponder or turn something off on the drone so as to make it more stealthy and less observable? I've heard that, but it makes no sense. First of all, this drone was flying at an altitude that is eminently detectable. It's flying through airspace that the Russians are monitoring every

aspect of it. It was picked up on the moment it took off and the moment it came in. They might have turned the transmitter off for this reason. There are people out there call themselves the OSINT, the open source intelligence community. These are a bunch of non-military, non-governmental people who monitor stuff. And there's a lot of people who put out flight paths. So they'll sit there and say, we monitored the drone as it did this. We monitored this. And they'll show aircraft flying we may have turned off the transponder not to fool the russians but to fool them so that we can tell a story about where the

drone was flying that can't be verified by somebody because if osun people had this transponder they would show exactly the flight path and any logical person looking at they would say man if that was an american a russian drone flying that close to an American space during a time of war, collecting information on America to give it to people trying to kill Americans, we'd have shot it down too. Let me make sure that I understand what you're saying. Russia and Ukraine are backing up Ukraine with cash, with military equipment, and secretly with human beings on the ground. The drone was engaged in an act of war by spying on the most sensitive aspects of Russia's military gathering of human beings and of equipment anywhere in Russia. The drone was a legitimate target of war, intentionally sent into the theater of war by American military authorities. Is all of that true?

Absolutely. Here's what, I can't say this with a straight face, here's what Senator Lindsey Graham would have done if he were the president of the United States. Well, we should hold him accountable and say that if you ever get near another U.S. set flying in international waters, your airplane would be shot down. What would Ronald Reagan do right now? He would start shooting Russian planes down if they were threatening our assets. I can't imagine that Ronald Reagan or any American president is right. Mind would kill Russian pilots because they came too close to a an American drone in an area of airspace that Russia has claimed hands off on because of its sensitivity to what's going on on the ground. Lindsey Graham doesn't know what he's talking about. I mean, I'm going to be polite on your show, Judge, out of respect for you. And I'm not going to call him what he deserves to be

called. Isn't he a general in the Air Force Reserve? And he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about? Well, I think he's a colonel and he's a lawyer um so there we are but the the fact is you know unlike lindsey graham i can say he's served but he he doesn't know he's not during the cold war during the time of ronald reagan we flew the most sensitive reconnaissance missions all along the periphery of the soviet union and on numerous occasions uh the soviets challenged us. You know, what would Ronald Reagan do? Hey, Graham, Lindsey Graham, how about the USS Caron? In the Black Sea, 1988, an American cruiser was coming too close to Crimean Peninsula. Imagine that.

And what did the Russians do? They sent a ship out. They rammed it and knocked it off course. Made physical contact. What are you going to do, Lindsey? S the russian navy you idiot no this is what big boys do you see big boys play big boy games and they understand the consequences of the big boy game we pushed it too far the russians put down the drone big boys back off and go lesson learned lindsey graham a little boy uh wants to play tough guy it ain't going to be him in the cockpit of the American aircraft. And I'll also tell you this, Lindsey, you don't have enough airplanes to put up and shoot down two Russian airplanes next to Crimea because they got an air defense system that includes the S-400 missile. They'll shoot down everything you're bringing in at it. And what are you going to do now? Bomb the air defense systems? Then they bomb your airfields. Then what, Lindsey? We got a nuclear war. Is that what you want, Lindsey Graham? Everybody listening to Lindsey Graham should

dismiss him immediately as a dilettante, an idiot, and a warmonger who only wants to get America in trouble. And if you take a look at his face, you'll understand he's not going to be the one who's paying the price. Here's his colleague and a fellow neocon, Senator Marco Rubio. ocean to have a situational awareness of what's going on in the area, totally according to international law. And so I think we should fly more of them. We shouldn't stop flying them. And in many cases, we should be prepared to scramble jets and respond if they are threatened by Russian aircraft. Again, the dumbest man in the world. Does he not understand, Marco, who's never served in the military, you want to fly, you want to take American military aircraft and fly them escorting a drone. Do you understand that the only advantages we have in air-to-air combat is long distance engagement? You see, we don't do dogfights anymore, Marco. It doesn't work that way.

We take off and at a long distance with AWACS aircraft vectoring us in, we fire missiles to engage them in a long distance. You want to take all that advantage away, come up close next to their battle space where their air defenses will shoot you down. Their aircraft don't have to come close. They'll shoot you long distance. You're an idiot. He doesn't know anything about war, and he doesn't know anything about international law. Pro hint, Marco, when you fly an intelligence asset, collecting intelligence on one target, and you provide that intelligence to the other side to kill that other target, you're a participant in

the conflict. You lose all the protections you have. You should be thankful the Russians aren't shooting down everything we got. What is the, you know, if I were a guest on the show instead of the host, I'd be going, you go sky. I apologize. Oh no, no, no, man, you,

you be yourself. And the audience loves it because they don't get this from, uh, from anywhere else. And mainstream media is filled with the Lindsey Graham's and the Marco Rubio's of the world who don't know what the blank, uh, they're,

uh, they're talking about. What is the status of the affairs on the ground in Ukraine? Are we at a stalemate? Is Bakhmut about to fall? Are the Russian troops amassing, waiting for the earth to dry so they can come in in enormous numbers? What do your sources and your observations tell you, Scott? Every day this battle for Bakhmut goes on, the Ukrainians are suffering close to a thousand dead a day. So this isn't a stalemate. And the Russians? Maybe 80, 100.

It's still a lot. I'm not trying to minimize it. They're suffering casualties. Those are casualties that would break the heart of America. Remember, we lost 200 guys a week in Vietnam, and we freaked out as a nation. The Russians are losing 80, 100 guys a day. That's a heavy casualty, but it's not what the Ukrainians are losing, which they're suffering overwhelming casualties

and their equipment. The Ukrainians are on the you know they're on the cusp of the breaking point and that will be reached sooner rather than later i can't sit here and say bakhmut will fall tomorrow fall in a week bakhmut will fall we know that and when it does fall it will open up the ukrainian front like you know like a can that bursts. And as President Zelensky has said, if Bakhmut falls, all of the Donbass falls. It opens up the entire Donbass region for the Russians to move in and take it. That's why the Ukrainians are fighting so hard for it. They are fighting hard.

Let there be no doubt about this. This is not an easy fight. So this is not a symbolic victory or an emotional victory or a victory. This is not a symbolic fight or an emotional fight or a fight for morale. This is a substantive fight, which when lost by the Ukrainians will have a substantive and material effect on Russia's march westward. Agreed? Agreed. This is serious.

This, look, can't predict the future. And we don't know how this war is going to, I mean, I think I have an idea. I've been very forceful in saying it. I'll say it again. This war ends in the summer, early October. Ukraine can't win this war. And with that assessment in mind, this battle for Bakhmut, what has been taking place since May, but especially since the last couple of months, will go down in the history of this conflict as the critical battle of the war. This is the one that where the Ukrainians burned up their strategic reserves. The Russians were able to initiate the beginning of the collapse of the Ukrainian army. This is the battle that will go down as the Kursk. Kursk was a key battle during World War II on the Eastern Front.

This will go down as the Gettysburg for Americans. Understand that. Gettysburg was the turning point in the American Civil War. Bakhmut is the turning point in this conflict. The Poles have agreed to send four, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it is the first time any Western country is doing this, fighter jets to Ukraine. So a couple of questions. Will these be manned by Polish pilots or by Ukrainian pilots?

Is this a game changer? Is it significant? Is it a breakthrough for President Zelensky, who's been begging for air power for months? Well, the Ukrainians lose around four MiG-29s a week. These are Russian planes? Yeah. Does that mean they were left over from the old Soviet Union days or that they were captured from the Russians? These were Soviet MiG-29s that the Polish Air Force had acquired. And so they're old

aircraft that date back to the Cold War. They've been refurbished, modernized a little bit, but they're old aircraft. They're maintenance nightmares. And the Ukrainians do have pilots that can fly them, so they don't have to be Polish pilots, although depending on the avionics in it, even though it's a MiG-29 airframe, if the Poles have upgraded the avionics, a Ukrainian pilot may not be familiar with those. So hopefully they've been getting some sort of cross-training and familiarization. How they're going to get the aircraft from Poland to Ukraine is an interesting thing because if it takes off from a Polish airfield, flies into Ukraine, Poland just became a participant in the conflict so they're going

to have to somehow tow the airplane across time etc but four four will accomplish nothing they will be shot down uh they probably if the russians you know can detect them they might be destroyed on the airfield before they ever get a chance to take off this is not a game changer it's a political stunt what do these things cost? Well, again, because they were produced, you know, back in the, you know, the 1980s, you know, you can't compare, you know, let's put it this way. An Su-27 of the kind that took down our $32 million drone cost the Russians around $30 million. This MiG-29, when it was built, probably runs in the area of $12 million. With upgrades, you could probably take it up $15 million. So four airplanes, you're probably looking at around $60 million worth of stuff. But then again, it has to be spare parts. I mean, this is not as easy as people are like, why don't we just

give them four airplanes? Because they're four logistical nightmares. Earlier today when interrogating Jack Devine, I got him to acknowledge, I then causing the people in Russia that can pull the levers of power to say, enough is enough, it's time for you to go. after he said that, I countered with, and suppose he's replaced by his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, who has called for an invasion of Poland. This was Jack's response to that. He fails. Why? Because he didn't bomb enough houses? Because he didn't kill enough people that he didn't put his best? No, the next person isn't going to have new armies. So the next person is doomed to fail. I'm working on when Putin goes, they're going to sit around the table. Hey, enough of this stuff. Let's get an air gap. So I do not think they can't be more hostile. There's no more hostile play. It's not like Putin's laying back and being nice to us.

Does he know what he's talking about? No. First of all, any, anybody who thinks that we're going to succeed in removing Vladimir Putin from office, doesn't know Putin, doesn't know Russia, doesn't know anything. And I hate to say that about Jack Devine, because clearly he's a man who served his country honorably in a very difficult role.

But, you know, no, the Russians just, again, as NATO basically bleeds out i mean all the equipment to uh to ukraine and understand the united states military has come out put an additional budget requirement in 300 million dollars is what 300 billion dollars i'm sorry is what it's going to

cost to replace the equipment that we sent to um to ukraine 300 billion. So we said- Wait, wait, wait, wait. Joe Biden has a blank check for 113 billion. It's going to cost us three times that to replace the equipment that he's given to President Zelensky? Yeah, yeah. I'm not making the number up. Pentagon said that. So that's the case.

So meanwhile, we're going to go bankrupt trying to get back to you know the status quo does jack devine understand that russia has expanded its military from 900 000 to 1.5 million uh these will be professional troops that russia's defense industry is working overtime to build the equipment uh to do this i don't think jack devine knows anything about russia i don't mean to be disrespectful to the man, but clearly what he's saying, he doesn't understand the Russian military. He doesn't understand the Russian defense industry. He doesn't understand Russian politics. He doesn't understand Vladimir Putin. Putin's not going anywhere. He's more firmly entrenched today with the broadest base of support of the Russian people.

And unlike the United States, name the last Russian bank to fail. You can't. Okay. And I don't want to go down that road. They just built a new subway. This is all connected. The federal government wasting and blowing money and then deciding who it's going to bail out and who it's not going to bail out, picking winners and losers. From my perspective, there's one guiding principle in all of this. What will help old Joe get reelected? That seems to be the guiding principle of this federal government. If it'll help him to get reelected to be a wartime president like his heroes, Abraham Lincoln and FDR, he'll make sure we're in war. If it'll help him get reelected to bail out the depositors at a bank over and above what the federal insurance is, but not the investors in the bank, he'll bail out the

depositors. If it will help him to get reelected to bail out the investors, he'll bail out the investors. There's no rhyme or wrong. There's no constitutional principle here. It's what will help old Joe. Here's Jack describing President Putin. Actually, before we get to that, President Putin said something earlier this week that made me think of you. I also thought of Jack and I thought of Colonel McGregor. President said, Germany is still under occupation. He was tweaking and mocking Chancellor Schulz for the sheep-like, lapdog-like way in which he permitted the United States of America to invade his country by destroying the pipeline, as if the U.S. were still occupying West Germany as it did after World War II. And when I heard President Putin say that, I never thought I would applaud something he said, but I applauded it because it was morally correct, it was historically analysis, and it was true. Look, the United States acts as if Germany is not a sovereign state. It's not just the bombing of Nord Stream. Do you recall under the Obama administration that the National Security Agency

was listening to the personal cell phone conversations of Anglo-American? We have military bases. Do you remember Donald Rumsfeld mocking the Germans in the lead up to the Iraq War, calling them old Europe? we wanted to turn germany into a lily pad where we would just assume our ability to go in and use military space in germany to carry out our adventures in the middle east um well legally speaking germany isn't occupied you know in the aftermath practically and functionally and psychologically, it's very much an occupied country. And Vladimir Putin is right on all counts.

Here's Jack on how dark and how evil Vladimir Putin is. Is Putin evil? Yeah, I think he fits into that category. When you kill the way the deaths that are mounting in Ukraine and you're not remorseful about it, it puts you in a new category. So I think he's dangerous. And the second thing about him is I thought, you know, he was more political than I take. You know, I was tough on him, but I will take him down a few more notches on the big things that I thought were important and that we needed to have an accommodation with Rush and there was room. There was no room. He has a different mindset and is much more black and darker than I thought.

And I think it makes this problem more formidable. Evil, black, and dark, whereas he's actually moderate. Not just that, I mean, with all due respect to Jack, the United States killed more people invading Iraq in 2003 than Russia has killed, and I'm talking about civilians, than Russia's killed in Ukraine in a year. You know, the Russians have been very, very, very very very soft touch with the civilian population of ukraine i just remind people when we liberated normandy we killed 60 000 french civilians 60 000. uh you know russia's killed and i say russia 12 000 civilians have died in this conflict many of them died because the ukrainians are shelling their own people many of them died because ukrainians are

using civilians as a human shield, which is a war crime in itself. Jack Devine doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't know who Vladimir Putin is. I would challenge you to have Jack come up and tell me how many speeches of Putin he's listened to, how many conferences where Putin is talking to, how many conferences that you know, that he, that he's a third night. My guess is that Jack Devine hasn't, doesn't follow Vladimir Putin.

It's not aware of Vladimir Putin and shouldn't be talking about Vladimir Putin. Scott, we're going to set up that debate with you and Jack, maybe a Maverick can moderate it with me. I shouldn't laugh, but you, you, well, he was supposed to be locked up in the bedroom. I don't know how he got out. I'm going to investigate that issue. You should be worried about that. Divine would say Vladimir Putin, let him out. Putin did it. Putin did it. Uh, can't thank you enough, uh, for all your time with us,

my dear friend, all the best. Well, thank you. Boy, if you like what you just saw, like and subscribe. Like and subscribe on Judging Freedom. More as we get it. More Colonel McGregor. More Scott Ritter. More Maverick. More Maverick.

Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning with courses available 24 seven and monthly start dates. You can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.