Judging Freedom - Iraq War II, 20 Years Later _ Ukraine Today - Scott Horton

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, March 27, 2023. It's about 2.15 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Scott Horton returns to the show from antiwar.com. Scott, of course, is a great defender of the peace, P-E-A-C-E, a great analyst of the futility and horror of war, is writing a book on the Iraq War. And of course, this is the 20th anniversary of the commencement of the Iraq War. Why do we talk about the Iraq War. And of course, this is the 20th anniversary of the commencement of the Iraq war. Why do we talk about the Iraq war? Because those not knowledgeable of the past are doomed to repeat it. Right, Scott? Yeah, that's definitely true. But the good news is I already wrote my

Iraq war book. That's all in enough already. Chapter three is all about iraq war two there um currently i'm working on a book about russia and ukraine well the cold in america's called the new cold war with russia really ukraine let's start with russia and ukraine and then i want to talk about uh uh about iraq the um iraq war was started by republican neocons this war is being fought by Republican neocons. This war is being fought by Democrat neocons. The mindset is the same. It doesn't matter which party they're in. They want to kill people and they want to use a bludgeoning force to advance American hegemony, which they call exceptionalism. Bush called it democracy. Biden is unable to articulate it. But as we speak today on the 27th of March 2023, what's your understanding of the relationship between the combatants in Ukraine?

Well, I mean, on the ground, the situation seems pretty dire for Ukraine's forces. I mean, I don't know why anyone should trust any group's numbers unless you're really an expert and you know how to suss out the information from many different sources. Certainly, the Ukrainian government reports every day these mass casualties for the Russian side. And it does make sense that the Russians might be losing more people per day since they're the attackers and having to advance on defensive positions. On the other hand, the Russians seem to have the Ukrainians overmatched in terms of numbers of men and in terms of weapons as well. And there have been a few recent reports, I think, as far as I know,

most importantly in the Washington Post last week, saying essentially the jig is almost up here, guys, where the guys are out of ammo. The front lines are manned by people with basically no training and experience whatsoever. They're fighting for this town of Bakhmut that, depending on who you ask, is strategically important or maybe only symbolically. And the Ukrainian side had been saying, Judge, that, well, we're building up our reserves right now. We're training in Germany and in Poland, and we're getting new weapons from the Americans. And so we'll have a spring up. Right. And then, but there was a recent report, in fact, it was a Japanese newspaper, it's on antiwar.com right now, because there was a report in a Japanese newspaper where they talked to President Zelensky and he admitted to them that

really there's not going to be a spring offensive. They don't really have the power. Now, it could be that maybe there still is, but he's just saying that because he's not going to be a spring offensive they don't really have the power now it could be that maybe there still is but he's just saying that because he's really trying to play uh you know drive a hard bargain and trying to get more weapons and equipment and and expenditures from the the western side here i'm not sure the americans have much more ammo to give i mean they've been saying for months they're running out here. What do you think President Biden's goal is? I mean, it can't be the, if he were being really candid, it can't be the removal of the Russians from Crimea. That's not militarily feasible. It can't be the removal of Vladimir Putin from office. That's not militarily feasible. What the hell is he trying to accomplish?

Well, I mean, I think, I don't know about if he was candid. I mean, if you asked him, he would probably disavow Crimea. His secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has disavowed taking Crimea, saying, geez, that'd probably be a red line for the Russians. In other words, that ship has sailed. They're willing to accept that. But then their argument, now, Victoria Nuland, his underling overruled him and said, oh yeah, we're coming for Crimea. All right. So who knows who works for who there, but then, you know, the, the official state of position is that they are going to drive the Russians all the way out of Donetsk and Luhansk and, and Kursan and Zaporozhye and take all of, you know, Ukraine under its 1991 borders, less Crimea, which seems to be

just absolutely impossible of a task for them to accomplish. Now, at the same time, the Russians don't control all of Donetsk and Luhansk, but I think as Colonel McGregor would argue, they're not trying to now. It's not a matter of just biting off territory. It's a matter of destroying the other side's army, and then they can take whatever territory they want the question then is will they settle for you know uh even the four provinces they've already annexed might they go all the way to the nipa river um you know in other words almost all the way to kiev which is just on the western bank of the nipa River there that bisects the country. And on the other hand, could there be a peace deal now where maybe the Russians would settle for two out of the four provinces they've supposedly annexed here and maybe keep a bit of Zaporizhia,

southern Zaporizhia in the so-called land bridge to Crimea, which would include the city of Mariupol. Well, when President Xi was in Moscow last week and before he publicly suggested a ceasefire in the presence of President Putin, wouldn't have said that without President Putin knowing about it ahead of time and approving it. The American spokesperson for the National Security Council, Admiral John Kirby, said, if he proposes a ceasefire, we're not in favor of it because it freezes the Russians in an advantageous position. Stated differently, we want more untrained teenage Ukrainian boys to be slaughtered before we agree that this has to stop. That's really right. And it comes right back to your point before about the ideology of American empire here, right? Where you can see how baked into all of this is the good and bad morality play where America's Superman and Putin is Lex Luthor and we're the

heroes. And after all, it's against the law to change international borders by force. And that's what's going on here. And he must not be allowed to get away with that, et cetera, ignoring entirely their own role in picking this fight. And in fact, where their role in picking this fight is extending their military alliance right up to Russia's border, making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO and normalizing their military interoperability, they call it, with ours and the rest of this, while all the time essentially judge, I guess, smoking their own public relations, that this is a purely defensive alliance. I don't know what you claim to pretend to be worried about. We would never attack you. We're just trying to ring your country with opposition military forces. That's all. And you're crazy

for thinking that there's a provocation here to react to. That's what I'm talking about. Imagine the Chinese putting ICBMs in Mexico aimed at Dallas. And we know how President Putin thinks. I want to switch gears because of the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war and because of your extraordinary expertise in this area. Every once in a while, I would get in trouble at Fox for saying something management didn't like. But one of the times I most got in trouble was for saying on a non-Fox venue, I was being interviewed by Ralph Nader, the great Ralph Nader. I remember that great interview on C-SPAN. Yes. Yes. And he says to me, should George Bush and Dick Cheney be prosecuted? I said, yes, they absolutely should. He said, for what? I said, for war crimes, for murder,

for slaughtering innocents, for bringing us into a war under false pretenses, for destroying a nation, for destroying a society. Obviously, I caught hell from Roger Ailes. I stayed at Fox and my life went on. Would you back me up for what I said when I said that? Yeah, listen, you're totally right, Judge. The whole thing was just the damnedest thing in the world. It should have never happened at all. From a strategic point of view, it was a massive unforced error. From a moral point of view, it was purely a crime from a moral point of view it was purely a crime and legal point of view is purely a crime and no authorization from congress no even you know not that this is good enough for me but according to them uh this would be good enough no authorization from the u.n

security council to start a war they pretended that they were enforcing u.n resolutions that banned iraq from having uh unconventional weapons when they knew good and well that they were enforcing UN resolutions that banned Iraq from having unconventional weapons when they knew good and well that they had disarmed Iraq as early as 1991. Hussein had tried to hang on to a little bit of mustard gas, but he got caught in 1991. And it was all gone by the end of the year. All the inspectors were completely satisfied of that fact by 1995. And, you know, Ralph Ekius was ready to certify that in 1996. Dick Cheney lied and said that Hussein's son-in-law,

Hussein Kamel, who had defected to Jordan in 1996, admitted that Hussein Saddam had lied and kept the weapons, but he didn't finish the sentence. But then he got caught and destroyed it all by the end of 1991. That's what Hussein Kamel had said. And he had told the CIA and the MI6 and the IAEA and CNN. And people can still find the interview online where he explains that he oversaw the destruction of every last bit of their unconventional weapons so i i have often opined uh that george bush was a very small small-minded narrow-minded petty person agree who orchestrated this uh invasion including that speech that colin powell gave which we all thought was the greatest speech of his career in which he would live to regret and renounce and we all know was filled with lies, the one at the UN. But George Bush really wanted to go after Saddam Hussein and he actually said

this in an unguarded moment because, quote, Saddam tried to kill my daddy. You have another belief as to why we fought this horrific, hellish, destructive war war, trillion dollars, 4,500 American deaths, soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, other civilian deaths, countless hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths and the destruction of a society. Why do you think Bush, Cheney, and their neocon cabal orchestrated this war?

Yeah, well, it certainly wasn't for the reason that you just stated there. Seymour Hersh proved in The New Yorker that there never was a plot against H.W. Bush in Kuwait in 1993. It was just a whiskey smuggling ring that the Kuwaitis blew up into this plot against Bush because they were trying to prevent Bill Clinton from normalizing relations with Saddam. The entire thing was a hoax. And in fact, the same guy who perpetrated the hoax of the assassination attempt against Bush senior was the same guy whose daughter had claimed to see the Iraqi soldiers throw the babies out of their incubators two years before. It's the exact same hoaxer in charge. Okay. So that, that sure wasn't it. Now here's what it is quickly. W. Bush wanted to prove he was better than his father. He was smarter than his father.

He had advised his father to go all the way to Baghdad, just as the neocons had in 91. It'll help you get reelected to be in the middle of a war. And what happened? Bush won his war too early. It took another year and a half before the election and then he lost. And so the lesson for W. Bush was you have to have a war to be a successful war president. This kind of exactly just one dimensional, you know, short sighted and frankly, cruel thinking, you know, at the expense of all these people. Karl Rove agreed that was his charge. Get Bush reelected, privatize Social Security in the second term. You got to have a war to get it done. Now, Donald Rumsfeld's interest was in pulling rank. Remember, he'd been secretary of defense before, and he wanted to push transformation of the military,

cut down on big army, build up special operations command in the Air Force. And he was going to accomplish that with these test case wars to show how that worked. Dick Cheney had been a terrible CEO of Halliburton. People would say, oh, he was the CEO of Halliburton. He had failed. He had bought a company called Dresser Industries on the eve of them being found liable for literally, Judge, billions of dollars of cancer asbestos claims. And then, so Dick Cheney and his right-hand man at Halliburton bought that company right before they got nailed. So he owed Houston big. He was a terrible businessman. So what did he do?

He put Halliburton- He's also a former, at this point in his career, Cheney is also a former secretary of defense. Am I right? That's right. So that was why Halliburton hired him in the first place was, oh, we're going to make a lot of government money off of this. He's a terrible CEO, but his deal is just wait, guys, I'm going to be vice president. We're going to have a war and I'm going to put you guys right on the dole. You'll be, you know, give you a state department ATM card and you'll be set, which of course we know is how it played out, right? But then you have, Judge, the neoconservatives, and they are one part

representatives of the military-industrial complex, one part ideologues of American imperial hegemony, and one part servants of Israel's Likud party. And in fact, at the time, Ariel Sharon was the Prime Minister of Israel, but the American neocons in fact, at the time, Ariel Sharon was the prime minister of Israel, but the American neoconservatives led by Richard Pearl, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, of course, Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan and all of these guys, they were closer to Netanyahu's faction of Likud. And he was always much more an Iraq hawk than an Iran hawk and wanted to do Iraq first, which of course coincided with Bush and Rove and Cheney's goals as well. And so even though Sharon wanted Bush to hit Iran first, he quickly got on board. And if you search my name on Twitter and 23 articles,

you can find where I recently put out a thread of 23 articles all about how the neoconservatives lied us into war. And essentially where the CIA analysts were somewhat reluctant to come up with tall tales, although they played their role. And the CIA operations guys were perfectly happy to torture innocent men into pointing the finger at Saddam. At the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Fythe, and Abram Shulsky ran a group called the Office of Special Plans, where they brought together Michael Ledeen and Michael Rubin, a bunch of other neoconservatives, and they were the ones who laundered the majority of the lies from the Iraqi exiles and whatever else they could just make up and funnel that intelligence into the stream. How do we prevent this from happening again? Because that mindset, we called them neocons today. I don't know what they call Tony Blinken and his crew today, but the mindset is the same. American exceptionalism, and we will kill to advance it.

Yeah. Well, look, I mean, I think there's a great argument as just Raimondo always did argue. His great book is called reclaiming the right. And it's about how the neoconservatives, why do we call them that? It's not because they're just conservatives nowadays. It's because they used to be leftists and, and cold war Democrats. And they were the new conservatives because when the liberals got soft on war in the 60s, they decided instead of being like hardcore Truman cold warriors, they became more like hippies. And so the neocons moved to the right so they could be Reaganites and support militarism. And now if the conservative right in America is feeling much more America first and would rather preserve their republic at the expense of the empire, we can see how the neocons are perfectly happy to move right back into the

democratic party where they're from, which is that's really what they are is they're like Hillary Clinton pro war right wing Democrats. That's what they are or Democrats. Well, if, if Trump or DeSantis were to be elected in 2024, though,

those Republican neocons would go fleeing to the Democratic Party, would they not? I'm not so sure how welcome they would be or not in a DeSantis administration. And frankly, Trump made his compromises with the neoconservatives. Yes, he did. He hired Eric Edelman and John Bolton is not a neoconservative. He's a very close friend of theirs and might as well be one of them. And so he would have to really run on, oh, I disavow them and that's never going to happen again kind of thing. And then DeSantis has always been a hawk. And he said one or two's son, said, oh, yeah, I want to have a humble foreign policy. And I didn't believe him for one instant then. And I really don't believe DeSantis. Now, Trump, I know, is of two minds about this. He can be very hawkish, but he can also just want to throw up his hands and say, I want out of Somalia. I want out of Afghanistan. I want out of Syria. And he has that going for him in a sense. So I'm very anxious,

Judge, to watch for the next year and year and a half until the conventions and everything to see these men fight this out of whether to be a true Republican nowadays means you're a George W. Bush hawk or whether you hate that stuff. Last question. How long do you see the war in Ukraine lasting before Zelensky is either dead or has to give up the ghost? I really have no idea. I mean, frankly, I look at it and I'm not a real expert on the armaments and the troop division strengths and all these things. I'm looking at it from a further zoomed out point of view than that. But it just seems to me like an irresistible force versus an unmovable object. You have this hugely powerful Russian empire still with essentially millions of men at their

disposal if it comes down to it with an industrial capacity to produce armaments at a rate that Ukraine can't match and that apparently even the West can't match when it comes to simple artillery and stuff like that. But the West does have all this intelligence, all these satellites, all this, you know, long range rocket artillery and all of these things that they're able to put to great use. And the Ukrainians are defending territory dug into their foxholes, right? So I don't know how, as far as I know, one side or the other could collapse tomorrow,

but I don't think so. It looks more likely the Ukrainian side will collapse rather than the Russian side ever. But I don't know how long that might take, frankly. And I really wish that somebody with a cooler head would just insist that we negotiate instead. You know, the war in Yemen finally came to an end when some guy in a robe, judge, I don't know who, came to the crown prince and said, enough of this. Negotiate with the Houthis,

end the war. And that was right around a year ago. And then that's exactly what happened. Well, where's our guy in a white robe to tell Biden, knock it off now. This is enough. Send Blinken to Geneva. Somebody shows up. Can be reasonable. If somebody shows up to talk to Joe Biden in a white robe, Joe will think the person is a ghost. Yeah, seriously, right?

He brought it to himself, though. You know what? It was a pleasure. What do you want me to do? I love your anti-war passion, and so do all of your fans on Judging Freedom. Thank you very much for joining us. Absolutely. Thank you, Judge.

More as we get it. Douglas McGregor tomorrow. Judge Napolitano on Judging Freedom.