Judging Freedom - In Ukraine the Fighting Remains Intense w Tony Schaffer

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, February 28, 2023. It's about two o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. My guest today is a longtime friend of mine, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer, United States Army, military, intelligence, CIA-trained career in that end of the world. Today is the president and chief executive officer of the London Center, which concentrates on addressing the foreign policy moves of the United States of America in a constitutional way. Oh, whatever happened to the Constitution, Colonel Schaefer? Welcome. Welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to be with you. Judge, thank you for having me. I always appreciate the time with you. And yeah, I don't know why the truth and the Constitution seem to be very unpopular when it comes to national security.

Something that I learned as a whistleblower, as we've talked about on your show. And I'm just at a loss for how we simply don't have, boy, the left is always talking about having a democracy and discussion and debate. They seem to be the least wanting any discussion of these issues when their side seems to be gaining advantage politically from it. So it's frustrating. Colonel Schaefer was a whistleblower in the 9-11 investigation, and unlike some whistleblowers, came out as a hero, in my mind and the minds of many of us who covered it at the time. So, Colonel, Congress has given the president a $100 billion, with a B,

blank check. He gave some cash to Secretary of the Treasury Yellen. She went over there yesterday. We'll run a little clip of her in a minute. I don't know why she's getting involved in this, but she is. The president has spent about half of that $100 billion, and some of the equipment that he has sent over there, he sent American troops to operate. So we have American troops on the ground. Your colleague and our friend, Colonel McGregor, says that some of these pieces of equipment can only be operated and triggered. It's not a trigger, but whatever they press today to get it to throw its projectile by Americans. And so the question for you is, are American troops either on the ground in Poland, in Ukraine out of uniform, or on the ground in Poland in uniform, shooting at Russian troops.

So I validate that with Greg. Greg is completely correct. And what we see now from the sources I have, I don't necessarily know if my source is the same as his. I don't know his sources. He doesn't know mine. But yeah, I can tell you from the folks I speak to directly that that's ongoing. What we have right now, Judge, is essentially from the folks I speak to directly that that's ongoing. What we have right now, Judge, is essentially a logistics and command and control chain that goes into Poland. And that chain requires that you have individuals who are either in uniform but not wearing uniform, or contractors who have to go in and actually do the hard job of maintenance. These technologies, especially you're talking about artillery systems

with complex algorithms and computers, you're talking about patriot systems, things like that, those are all things which require a great deal of expertise and maintenance. And boy, howdy, when you get armor in there, you start getting all these other things, there's going to be a literal path that has to go from all the different battle locations in Ukraine over to Poland for those things to be recovered. Because I don't think they're going to be able to recover in Ukraine. They just don't have the technology to do it. So I think inevitably you're going to have the death of service members, U.S. service members, or contractors in a very short order if the war continues at

its current pace. How dangerous is it to have American troops out of uniform? They don't have the protections of the Geneva Convention. They can be shot. They can be arrested as spies. They can be summarily executed. Now, Putin's not crazy enough to do that. The last thing he wants is American troops on the ground in uniform shooting at his troops, but the exposure of American troops that way for what? Just so the president can say, we don't have troops on the ground. They're there, but they don't have uniforms on, so I don't have to admit they're there. That's absurd. Plausible deniability. And yeah, I got to admit, I mean, look, most of my career doing this sort of thing, I was a uniform member, like Afghanistan. I never wore a uniform once and I was there as a major. So these things do happen.

And I understand there's times necessary, but yeah, there's a fig leaf of deniability right now, Judge, with Biden. They're trying to say, oh yeah, yeah, no, no, we're just giving it to them. We're not. There's no way that you can sustain this technology without having actual qualified people do it. Otherwise, it's like a big piece of metal or brick. It's like, yeah, good luck with that. It doesn't work. So if you're going to be effective, always remember this, Judge, if you're going to be effective in providing technology to an ally, you have to provide adequate supply chains and technicians to run it. That's just the way it is. And again, I wish more reporters would ask this hard question. It's like, who's sustaining this stuff that you're giving? Right, right, right. Here's the Secretary of

the Treasury. Tell me if you've ever seen this in Kiev yesterday. On this trip, I'm particularly interested in discussing the economic assistance we've provided. The U.S. has provided over $14 billion in economic assistance, and in the coming months, we will provide an additional over $8 billion in economic support. Thank you very much, dear minister, your team, ambassador. You're very welcome. Thank you. What he really meant to say was thank you for the check that you brought me. I mean, she's tipping the president's hand. Now, it's hard to keep track of the numbers, but if you add up the numbers that

we know he spent and the numbers she mentioned, it's probably now close to $60 billion with a B, which leaves about $40 billion left until he has to go back to Congress, one house of which is now controlled by Republicans. The small government Republicans in that house are personal friends of yours and mine. Right. They don't want to see. I know how they feel. I've spoken. We both do. The people watching us now, the good folks watching this show now know how they feel. And we all feel the same way. So the president may know that he's not going to get any more than what he has, but she's spending it like there's no tomorrow. She's talking about cash, cash in the hands of the most notoriously corrupt government in the Western world. Judge, the only thing I can

think of is that they're going to put pallets of cash in the back of C-130s and drop it over Mariupol and hope that those big pallets kill Russian soldiers by the weight of the cash hitting them. I swear to no, think about it. I mean, what else do you do with that? You personally saw, or you knew of, pallets of cash. I have, and I'm not joking, yes. And I forget if it was Iraq or Afghanistan.

You're the one that told me about it when I was at Fox and I saw a picture, and it's like, you're going to me, Judge. I was there when they took that picture. So what was George W... We're they took that picture. So what was George W. We're getting off the top. What was George W. Bush thinking if he's sending pallets of $100 bills overseas?

It takes a lot of bribery at that level to get leaders of countries to do things. And this is the same thing. This is the same thing, Judge. This is, to me, another form of bribery. Basically, we have a political class in place who's willing to use your money and my money, the taxpayer money, to accomplish political objectives which have nothing to do with our domestic or national security. And that's what I find. Again, that's why we have the debate. And let me do a shout out to our friends in Congress. Andy Biggs and I have

spoken about this a couple of times. I don't think Andy would mind me bringing it up because we just did an interview together. He is a regular on this show. I'm crazy about him. The viewers of this show are crazy about him. He'll be on with us Friday. Yeah. So Andy and I have spoken about this and we simply, I believe, based on the Constitution, based on the fact only Congress can declare war, and basically based on the appropriations process, there needs to be a debate and discussion about how this actually links to the domestic issues relating to protecting the American people or creating conditions for freedom and economic success. I just don't see the link. And I'm just asking for people to think it through. And I don't know why that's so hard. Let's talk about the practical aspects of ammunition.

Here's Secretary General Stoltenberg of NATO. Now, this is 10 days old. It's been reinforced by other things that others have said, but this is how bad the ammo situation is in Ukraine. And then you can tell us how good the ammo situation is in Russia. The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition and depleting allied stockpiles. The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defense industries under strain. Many times higher than our ability to produce. So sooner or later, they're all going to run out of ammo, Ukraine and

NATO. How perilous or how sanguine is the Russian ammo situation? So, Judge, the Russians never gave up the basic structure of their economy as it was under the Soviet Union. They modernized it. They have oligarchs. They've kind of moved into the 21st century. They have for-profit enterprises. But the one thing they never gave up was critical infrastructure relating to munitions. So they right now are, by sources, and I think Doug has said this too on your program, and I agree with Doug, they have a wartime footing. They are producing ammunition 24-7. And oh, by the way, if they get tired or want more, there's the PRC, the People's Republic of China, who I think is already engaged and willing to do it. I'm not sure. According to some of my sources, they're already obviously

nosing up to doing more with the Russians. We can debate on the wisdom of that one way or another. I think Doug and I don't quite agree on all of that, but we're close. But the idea is they have all these resources that the West simply is not willing to produce. And this is another thing I think is in our favor regarding not going to war. No country that I know of is actually for putting their entire economy on wartime footing to keep up with the Russian production of just artillery shells. And that's what they've done. Judge, they tried the fifth generation warfare. Let's go in and do things like George Bush with a light footprint. Got their butts kicked.

Let's face it. They just didn't do well in the first round. So they're going back to what they know. Or is the Ukraine situation and the NATO situation as bad as Secretary General Stoltenberg just indicated? NATO is not prepared for any armed conflict, period. Two reasons. First. Wow.

Will you say that one more time? Yeah. NATO is not ready for any armed conflict whatever period they're just not and there's two reasons first the very thing you brought up the what the amount of ammunition and high-tech weaponry it's not there we've lost it we've used it it's been used for the ukrainians and let me tell you something that people don't want to talk about it all the indications are that maria pole has is now controlled by russia that's a huge win that's a huge win by the russians by the fact that that you know this is like the third quarter in a

football game and you have a team finally putting some putting a score on the on the on on the uh on the billboard and it ain't it ain't ukraine so So I'm just saying that the fact that the Russians appear to have prevailed is going to have huge ramifications. To my second point, the political will to fight. Nobody has the stomach at this point to actually take on a fight, nor do I think the Russians want to prompt that. The Russians have stated very clearly, Putin said in his speech what they're trying to accomplish. And again, I'm not pro-Russian. I'm not pro-Ukrainian. I'm trying to just assess things for what they are. And people don't seem to want to do that. So I'm saying the Russians clearly indicate to me, looking at the numbers, they're winning. They're doing what

they said they're going to do. They're wearing down the Ukrainians. And NATO has been willing to provide all these resources without an understanding or assessment of what are the chances of an actual victory by Ukraine. In other words, they've wasted all these resources on the Ukrainians, and there's no hope of recovering them in time to actually, if they want to go to war, to have them available to go to war. So NATO cannot go to war at this point. One of the guests that we have on regularly that my regular viewers love to hate is Jack Devine, career CIA. Strong-willed guy. He's got a lot of opinions about a lot of things. He was in charge of tracking the Russians when they were here, engaged in their espionage, and he was in charge of American espionage in Russia, as I understand it.

He, of course, mouths and defends as articulately as he can the NATO pro-Western Putin must go line. Here's an answer he gave me to a question I put to him just three or four days ago about, hey, Jack, what would victory look like? You push until the Russians cease and desist. I don't believe this piece, right? But I do think you'll reach a point where everyone's using up so much ammunition, so many soldiers have died, that you slow down the pace of war. No one wins. War could go on for a long time, but it will not go on for a long time at this level. And victory is not about Ukraine. It's the geopolitical risk of the world today. And it's the China, Russia, and their allies, the alliance against the West. If Russia fails to accomplish its goal, he will go. And that will change the geopolitical. There's

bigger thing at play here than just the current day-to-day fighting. And I think there's a world that's going to be unstable if we allow Putin to go unchallenged. And I think there's a world that's going to be unstable if we allow Putin to go unchallenged. And I think we're doing a very good job of challenging. So when I asked Jack, what is the American goal? What is NATO's goal? Is it to remove the Russian military from Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which I think, and you can comment on this better than I, Colonel, is militarily impossible, is that the removal, like Senator Lindsey Graham wants, of Vladimir Putin from office, I think that's militarily impossible. But I think that's really what their goal is. They don't want

to say it because they can't sell it. You're right. And the only point I actually agree with Jack on of those comments is that if the Russians lose, Putin goes. That's true. Every Russian leader who loses ends up losing their reign. But that's it. I disagree with everything else. First off, Jack actually disputed you, which I took exception to regarding the fact that we're dealing with a culture we don't fully understand or willing to accept. Look, the Russians have been invaded. You can Google Russian invasions and it lists all these invasions, Judge, going back to before the Tsars, every time the Russians have had their territory compromised. So until you actually can understand that the Russians are paranoid for a reason, you can never deal with them. So this whole idea that Putin is just doing this to be Putin,

that's not entirely correct. There's a history. And so you need to understand their culture. He states it clearly. So the dismissal by Jack, let me put it this way. I think Jack Devine graduated from the Bill Gates School of Russian Assessment, where Bill Gates was actually, well, two months before the Russian wall fell, said publicly, oh, the Soviet Union is going to last another 20 years. And two months later, the wall is gone. So I'm just saying that the CIA and people from Jack's circle have been historically and demonstratively wrong

because they don't embrace and understand. Not embrace like, oh, I want to be part of it. Embrace the fact that they see the world differently, and you have to accept their perception of the world if you're going to deal with them. So that's the first thing. Secondly, this is where Doug and I, there's some daylight between us. Putin's is a thug, And Putin wants to put the old Soviet Union back together. No doubt he wants to do that. And this is where Poland has every right

to be worried because Poland, as you recall, in 1939 was carved up between Stalin and Adolf Hitler. So you'd have to accept Poland too as an informed paranoia. So this is where we should be coming in, not like what Jack's saying is that we need to seek regime change, is to understand that there's perceptions that we have to manage and accept if we're going to be helpful in ceasing this. Our objective should be to end the hot conflict via diplomatic means and take a step back to figure out how we can be helpful, not be involved. And that's something that we're not doing. All right. The informed paranoia, great phrase, Colonel. The informed paranoia of Poland has resulted in the following. 40,000 active duty armed uniformed American troops, about a quarter of them 101st Airborne in Poland, training with 90,000 of Poland's best troops, armed and in uniform.

All these guys, I don't know if there's gals among them, are within half a day of the Polish-Ukraine border. The president of Poland saying, we think we can expel the Russians from Crimea. Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia in that little interregnum where Putin was nominally the prime minister and wasn't the president, saying we can push the Ukrainians all the way to the Polish border and maybe go into Poland if we have to. This kind of language and Colonel Schaefer's phrase, informed paranoia, has us how close to World War III? Miscalculation is the ultimate deciding factor.

I have a number of friends and mentors. Tony Zinni, General Zinni, has instructed me on this. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Joe Dunford, has instructed me on this. There's some pretty big folks I've listened to about this. There's always a potential judge of miscalculation, which happened to fall back just about, what, six months ago, where rockets went into Poland, turned out they were Ukrainian, Hussein. So I think we're... Zilinski wanted to claim it was a violation of Article five. Right. Of course. American troops there tomorrow. Of course.

So my assessment is we have the conditions very similar to those which resulted in a global war of World War One, because everybody has their own agenda and it's very dangerous. So those are the conditions I think are most parallel to what we're seeing right now. OK, Gary, let's run Admiral Kirby, either yesterday or this morning. How Mr. Zelensky goes about restoring his territorial integrity is a question for him to answer. It's an operation or operations that he must conduct. We're not getting involved in telling him how and when to do that. But we've never recognized Crimea as anything other than a part of Ukraine. But what they do going forward is going to be for them to decide.

We want all of Ukraine's internationally recognized borders to be restored. I'm speaking out of both sides of his mouth because of that last statement that he said. He thinks NATO can rid Crimea of Russian troops. I guess he's going to have to rid Crimea of all the Russians that live there as well. First off, let me just comment on, don't you think John is such an happy dresser? I mean, he's always dressed well. I just say, no matter what he says, I've never dressed like him. All those years of wearing stripes on his cuffs, like uh anyway back to your question um look if you go back to the budapest accords in i think it was 94 95 94 where the agreement was ukraine gave up its nukes for territorial

integrity so that is an issue they didn't you know just say it uh it didn't happen right uh us then also promised not to expand nato which they did so we've got a lot of issues that go back to miscalculation and breaking of treaties on both sides so just saying neither side is pristine the idea somehow that militarily we can achieve the objectives that that john kirby just said is insanity and to your question, that would result in nuclear weapons exchange in some form, no doubt, zero doubt that if you actually decide that you're going to take and use offensive military action, and I'm, and this is a numbers game. And I think Doug would agree with me at this point, there is no number the Ukrainians have that result in them

winning the conflict or taking back anything, let alone Crimea, not in the cards. The only way you're going to do that is by bringing in NATO to use all of NATO's military force. And that includes, you know, large brigades of armor, like Doug did in the desert, you know, large brigades of them ones. I could just see Doug out there, you know, with his, you know, as a Colonel riding over the plains of Ukraine towards Crimea. I mean, that's what it would take. And we don't have warriors like Doug who could actually do that right now, just saying kudos to Doug. And NATO doesn't have warriors that can do that. Bingo. So it's completely without any credibility, Judge, zero credibility. Colonel Tony Schaefer, it's been wonderful. I hope you'll come back and

visit us again. Thank you, sir. I can tell from the number of people watching and from the level of comments they're sending in, you're a new fan favorite on Judging Freedom. Thank you so much. Thank you.