Judging Freedom - Kyle Anzalone: House Republicans Cave On Ukraine.

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Kyle Anzalone: House Republicans Cave On Ukraine.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 Monday, April 8th, 2024. Kyle Anzalone from antiwar.com joins us now. Kyle, it's a pleasure. My friend, thank you for coming back to the show. This morning, an Israeli journalist reported and Alistair Crook reported and analyzed on the use by the Israeli military of an algorithm called Lavender, which is apparently AI, and by which the Israeli computers directed who should be killed. That the AI system using this algorithm actually put up images of people that the Israelis felt were in or were sympathetic to Hamas and assigned them numbers from zero to 100, zero being the must-kill, excuse me, 100 being the zero to 100, zero being the must kill, excuse me, 100 being the must kill, zero being stay away. Does any of this surprise you? Does any of this absolve, I can't imagine how it would, the Israelis from moral culpability by pointing

to a machine or a computer? Yeah, I guess shocked but not surprised, Judge. And this is a high-tech genocide, basically, what's going on here. They're cleansing their genocide. They're washing their genocide in AI tech, allowing that article that you're talking about is from 972 Magazine, a Tel Aviv-based outlet where they talked to several Israeli officers and military personnel who are involved in the procedure here. And what they say is, you know, this is the worst kind of social credit score in the world, right? Where the Israelis essentially assigned all the Palestinians a score, as you said, between one and a hundred and above a certain number, which has changed by the way, they bumped it down or bumped it up a couple of times to, you know, add more people to the kill

list, making it so that, you know, a lower score will put you onto the kill list. But the Israeli military, they said if the AI program Lavender recommends a name, they put it on the kill list within 20 seconds. The only thing they check is that the intended person is male. They didn't even say they checked the age. And so it could be some of these intended targets are very, very young, absolutely horrifying. But maybe the worst part of all this, if that's not bad enough, is that the Israelis actually waited till the names on the kill list returned to their houses and killed not only the person on the list, but their entire families and intentionally in the program was called Where's Daddy? And of course, this is a reference to when kids are excited for their dad to come home after a day of work, they start asking

mommy, where's daddy? Where when the Israelis answer, where's daddy? It is coming home with a very large bomb. The same article is interesting. You mentioned very large bomb. The same article indicated an Israeli propensity for the so-called dumb bombs. Even though the AI supposedly pinpoints and targets individuals, now you have informed us it's not only them but their family, whether innocent or otherwise. The Israeli preference is for the 2,000-pound or even 500-pound dumb bomb, which destroys anything in sight, as opposed to the more expensive smart bomb that aims for an individual. It seems like the more we learn about this, the worse it gets. Last week, we were all upset over the killing of the seven aid workers, which seemed to have caused more of a kerfuffle in the West, perhaps because they're white, than the killing of 33,000 Palestinians. Now we find out that those 33,000 were designated by a computer. Does Netanyahu actually think he can absolve or he can escape moral and legal condemnation for this slaughter by pointing to an algorithm named Lavender?

Yeah, I'm not sure if this is Netanyahu's way to absolve himself or if he really cares if the moral international community condemns him for being immoral. I think he really just cares about his perception in Israel and maybe his legacy in Israel overall. And I think maybe he calculates that his legacy is either going to be one, years of propping up Hamas and using Hamas as a cudgel so he didn't have to negotiate at all with the Palestinians until it ultimately led to October 7th. And of course, his legacy of corruption. And so if he could be the Israeli leader that finally deals with the Palestinian problem, and particularly in Gaza, and just ethnically cleanses the place and removes all the Palestinians, I think that's what Netanyahu is concerned about, his legacy being. And that's his thinking on what he wants to have his public image

be, at least in Israel. Here's Leon Panetta, not my favorite public official, although a longtime friend of mine, admonishing Netanyahu on one of the talk shows yesterday, saying, you're never going to destroy Hamas. Cut number five. Netanyahu keeps saying we're going to destroy Hamas. Look, you're not going to destroy Hamas. Hamas is going to be around. What you can destroy is the leadership that was involved by Hamas in the attack on October 7th. And I don't think he's made that clear, that ultimately this is about killing the leadership of Hamas, not just wiping out Hamas. If we had a better sense of mission here, I think we'd have a better sense of how this war could come to an end.

Barry Johnson says, this is absurd. For every leader you kill, he'll be replaced with two people who'll be more ardent than he was. Right. I guess one important point- Let me just stop you. What we're watching, I want your answer, but what we're watching are the massive demonstrations in front of Netanyahu's house. This goes on seven nights a week now. Go ahead, please, Kyle. Right. I guess the two points I would want to make on that clip are, one, this is something that most Americans have known. They watched what happened in the war on terror when on 9-11, the members of Al Qaeda could maybe fit in a pirate boat, as my boss, Scott Horton at the Libertarian Institute likes

to say. And now there's tens of thousands of jihadists spread all the way from West Africa to the Philippines. And so obviously trying to eliminate jihadism with bombs only creates more jihadists. And so that would be a failure. But what I think he really gets wrong in his analysis is that Israel isn't trying to wipe out the leadership. As we saw and talked about with the Lavender program, what they were doing, they put 30,000,

I think 37,000 names on the list. And most of these were junior members of Hamas. If you look at the number of people in Hamas that Israel claims to kill, almost all of them are low-level fighters. They've gotten almost none of the leadership. And so what Israel is trying to do isn't even kill the leadership of Hamas, as Panetta is suggesting. What are they trying to do? Isn't it ethnic cleansing? Isn't it, as Ben-Gavir said, to turn these Gaza cities into soccer fields? Yeah, I think the goal of the Israelis at this point is to make life in Gaza so unlivable that the Palestinians, quote, willingly leave. That, you know, they would choose to go to another country rather than starve to death. And I think the Israelis are going to

try to incentivize countries, maybe Rwanda, the Congo, or something like that. We'll pay you $100,000 if you take 100,000 of these Gazans or something like that to try to offload their Palestinian problem. In the meantime, the uproar over the killing, the slaughter of the seven food workers seems to have died down. Bibi seems to have survived it. Right. We had President Joe Biden say that the Israelis did everything that he asked them to do, which really indicates that the White House isn't looking to change the policy for Israel in any meaningful way, but just to change the rhetoric a little bit to stave off the political pressure building in the U.S. It's amazing that, you know, we've had 200 aid workers in Gaza killed over the past six months,

hundreds of journalists, hundreds of doctors, you know, just civil servants everywhere and innocent people. You know, we're talking about at least 13,000 children have been killed. People, the most innocent people, babies have been starved to death. And none of this resulted in the White House's ire. And yet it finally takes somebody who's a personal friend of Joe Biden losing some of the members of his aid organization. I guess one American being killed, one white American being killed to really start to change at least the serious rhetoric out of the White House. Now, it also goes to show how much leverage the White House really has in all of this, because we did affect a little bit of Israeli policy change as far as opening border crossings with just a buying phone call to Netanyahu. Here's a clip from Martha Raddatz at ABC News.

She and her team put together a timeline, which is startling. Event, U.S. comment. Event, U.S. comment. Event, U.S. comment. No change in U.S. behavior. Cut number three. I want to show you a timeline, Admiral Kirby,

and wonder why things might change this time. November 6th, death toll in Gaza passes 10,000. November 10th, Secretary Blinken, far too many Palestinians have been killed. December 12th, Biden says Israel is losing support to indiscriminate bombing. December 22nd, death toll in Gaza passes 20,000. February 8th, President Biden calls a response in Gaza over the top. February 29th, death toll in Gaza passes 30,000. March 2nd, Vice President Harris said there must be an immediate ceasefire

for at least the next six weeks. April 1st, IDF strike kills seven World Central Kitchen aid workers. So why do you think anything will change? I'm glad you brought that timeline up because it shows the degree, the growing degree of frustration that we've had with the way these operations are being prosecuted and the way that the Israelis are acting on the ground in terms of civilian casualties. So we have been increasingly frustrated. And again,

that was a core message that the president delivered to Prime Minister Netanyahu in their phone call this week, this past week, that if they've got to do more, they've got to make changes. Now, the prime minister assured the president that he would do that. We've seen some announcements in those early hours. That's welcome. We've got to see more. We've got to see it over time. We've seen some announcements. That's welcome. Has there been any change whatsoever, any measurable, noticeable change in the behavior of the IDF except to make things worse? Not at this time, Judge. They opened up one border crossing. They said they are going to allow checkpoints to happen at another port. They say the amount of aid going into Gaza has tipped up some, but it's still far shorter

than 500 aid trucks that were entering Gaza every day prior to October 7th. And a big part of this, too, is there were hundreds, if not thousands, of other trucks, commercial goods, entering Gaza every day. And so simply going back to the 500 aid trucks today won't save really anyone. You need far, far more aid than that. And the Israelis at this point aren't making any real meaningful changes here. And so it seems like, you know, what we see in that timeline is rhetoric, right? Where the White House is using rhetoric to reduce political pressure in the U.S. without actually changing the policy that's causing the political pressure against the U.S. without actually changing the policy that's causing the

political pressure against the U.S. because the Americans are absolutely sick of supporting what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. Why have Israeli troops largely left southern Gaza? Are they going to give up on Rafah, notwithstanding Netanyahu's promises, or is this some sort of a regrouping? I think there's a couple things going on here. One, as you mentioned, sort of a regrouping? I think there's a couple things going on here. One, as you mentioned, it is a regrouping. That's what the Israeli military is saying that those troops were in Gaza for four months and that's a long time to serve as an occupation role day after day in that fighting. And so they said it's to rest their troops and prepare for the assault on Rafah. I also think the Israelis, Tel Aviv, have found

themselves in a little bit of a pickle here, Judge, where not only have they pit the fight with Gaza in Gaza and they have embroiled themselves in a war there, they're also in essentially a war on their northern border with Hezbollah, but also declared war on Iran by striking an Israeli consulate in Damascus. And now they're worried about a very serious response coming from Tehran. And I think they're right to worry about that because of what they did by bombing that consulate building. What do you think the response will be? One of the Iranian generals said, no Israeli embassy or consulate on the planet is safe? Yeah, I really don't know. In the past, I've always said that the Iranians tend to be pretty careful and reserved in their responses.

And even this was the case in the response to the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, one of the most popular figures in Iran, was killed on a diplomatic mission at the Baghdad airport by an American drone strike. And the Iranians didn't kill a single U.S. troop. They signaled their attack to the U.S. to allow the American troops to get into their bunkers. And so it may be that the Iranians do end up being careful here. They may take their time. The Israelis have evacuated a lot of their embassy staff. And so I'm sure that this is costing Tel Aviv quite a bit to be trying to prepare for the Iranian response. And so they may wait some time, but I do think the Iranians are

going to have a pretty big response. I just don't know what it's going to be. Transitioning to Ukraine and associated matters, you expect Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republicans to cave, to craft some sort of a bizarre compromise that has nothing to do with foreign affairs, but mollifies enough Republicans so that Johnson can safely put the Ukrainian package on the floor and that ultimately Biden will sign legislation to send them $61 billion in cash or military equipment? I do think it's ultimately going to get passed. How much Johnson mollifies the Republicans, I think, is the real question here. There are some methods that Johnson could use, including working with Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic Party to just bring the bill that the Senate passed to the floor for a vote, assuming that enough establishment Republicans and Democrats will support his speakership to continue and not even, you know, put in some

immigration money for immigration or immigration reform into the bill to try to mollify the Republicans. I'm not sure when it's going to get passed. I assume it's going to be sometime later this month. Initially, the Republicans said they were going to rush it. But then last week, I saw Bloomberg reported that they think it's going to take a couple of weeks because of backroom negotiations. Well, what becomes of that $61 billion? Let's say it does pass and the president does sign it. Is it true that about $40 to $45 billion of it stays right here in the U.S. and goes right to the arms

manufacturers in the U.S.? Yeah, that's where a lot of it will end up going. Well, of course, those weapons will then be sent to Ukraine. And so Ukraine is getting an awful lot of aid. Washington, a lot of our politicians like to pretend it's purely altruistic, right? We're just helping out ourselves here by spending this money on the military industrial complex. Of course, dumping money into the military industrial complex really doesn't help regular Americans. The factory jobs provided to assemble these weapons aren't particularly well-paying. The well-paying jobs are if you're at the corporate level. So, you know, when you're a part of the D.C. swamp, you have the revolving door. And so members of Congress know that if they vote for this, eventually there's going to be a spot for them at one of these big arms making firms so they can make hundreds, if not millions of dollars once they get out of office.

But also, we have to remember that some of these weapons are actually just going to go right back into the American stockpiles because the Biden administration has transferred more weapons to Ukraine than they could afford to replace. I'm going to run a clip for you from Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was the chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who notwithstanding the work that his boss did in those days is very much on our side, on Israel, Gaza, and Ukraine, Russia today. What he says is kind of startling in terms of who he believes the evidence points to as the cause of the attack on the Russian concert hall three weeks ago. This looks a lot like what Nord Stream turned out to be, a U.S. operation. Only the CIA led it. Let's face it. We have done as much to create and to nurture ISIS as anything else on the face of the earth, whether it be Abaab al-Zarqawi or any of the instigators of the so-called

ISIS consulate in the beginning. We've used ISIS, and when I say we, I mean that agency called the CIA, the same agency that does so many nefarious things in our name. And they have worked ISIS and worked operatives from ISIS in order to do other things. And I'm hearing, and it makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm watching the behavior and the signals coming from Moscow, which are usually very indicative of the truth when it's something like this. And I think that's what Putin believes. And I think the intelligence community in Russia, whether it's the GRU, the NKPD, the KSB, the FSB or whatever, they believe it too. And that makes this Ukraine conflict a different conflict as of that killing of that

many Russians that close to Putin and blame lying, at least in part, with the people who orchestrated it being the CIA. So if Joe Biden personally signed off on the Nord Stream destruction, as he's indicated he has, or at least Cy Hirsch said he has, could he have known about this? Could he have authorized it? And isn't it an act of war for the American intelligence community to assault civilians in Moscow, particularly young people that have nothing whatsoever to do with what's going on in Ukraine? Yeah, so I definitely agree with the point that this looks to me a lot like Nord Stream, and that's why I'm concerned here, especially the American response to it, that maybe there was some American role in here. Now, in a way, what I think happened

really doesn't matter. What matters is what Putin and what people in the Kremlin think. And it seems that they very much believe that the Americans had some role in this. And he's absolutely right. The long American history and ties to using jihadist groups, not just the Taliban against the Soviets in Afghanistan initially, but also ISIS against Bashar al-Assad and his allies, Iran and Russia in Syria for years and years and years. And so there's a lot of reasons for the Russians to believe that the U.S. had some hand in this. And you're absolutely right that the Russians believe this. Again, in some ways, it doesn't really matter if it's true or not, that they're going to evaluate this as an act of war, and that's the geopolitical reality. The other geopolitical reality is the

statements made by Victoria Nuland shortly before she left, where she talked about asymmetric war and a nasty surprise for Mr. Putin. Good God. Could U.S. intelligence possibly have planned and plotted this with her involved in the plans and plots? Could they be so cold and indifferent to the lives of innocents that they would do something like this? Could they be so reckless as to precipitate World War III by attacking young people at a concert in Moscow? Yeah. I mean, the part of this that strikes me as unbelievable is that they would include Victoria Nuland in the negotiations. I do think when she made that statement, she was more talking about the battlefield than

this potential attack. If you remember, she was blabbing about the potential bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines or making sure the Nord Stream pipelines wouldn't be able to be used if Russia invaded Ukraine and then it happened. And so I think whoever was behind this probably understood the gravity of the situation and wouldn't have trusted someone so reckless with the information. But then again, the White House has proven themselves to be amateurs in a lot of things regarding geopolitics. And so maybe they were really this careless and even informed Victoria Nuland of this. Tell me about some of the stories at antiwar.com this morning. Russia repels major drone attack on military base.

I didn't see this anywhere in the mainstream media. Yeah, so this happened on Friday, Judge, and the Ukrainians, probably the reason you didn't see it is the Ukrainians claimed that they had destroyed a bunch of Russian fighter jets. And that's how they got the headlines circulating in the U.S. But there was some satellite imagery taken before and after the alleged Ukrainian attack. And there's no evidence of damage to aircraft or the airfield there. So it doesn't seem like those strikes happened. And the Russians say they intercepted the drones. And that does seem to be the case. The other one that caught my attention says

Ukraine and I can't believe what I'm reading. Ukraine embraces neo-Nazi bad guys attacking Russia. What is that all about? Yeah. So this is a really important story. And it was written by Connor Freeman, who I know has been on this program a couple times in the past week, and he co-hosts my podcast with me, Conflicts of Interest. ideologies who are willing to carry out cross-border raids into Ukraine and are essentially just looking to terrorize the local population in order to cause problems within Russia and for Putin, even though it really doesn't have any major impact on the battlefield. Alistair Crook this morning hypothesized that these neo-Nazis were planning to take over a bunch of Russian villages at the same time that the original attack on the Kropos concert hall was to have taken place on March 8th when Russian officials were there and this patriotic singer named Shaman was singing all this

in an attempt to rattle the Russian people before the presidential election. We all know that they delayed the assault on the concert hall because there were too much security there. Apparently, they suspended the effort, or I don't know, do they still do this? Do these Ukrainian and Russian neo-Nazis take over Russian villages and oust the legitimate Russian authorities? Is this happening and not in Western mainstream media? You know, I'm not sure if their goal is actually to try to take over these villages. That does seem to be ambitious, although a lot of what the Ukrainians attempt to do in Russia

has been fairly ambitious as far as attacking bases with strategic bombers, attacking Russian oil facilities, carrying out, you know, attacks on civilian targets within Russia. So I'm not sure if they were really trying to take over any territory or just, you know, generally wreak havoc within Russia. But either way, it has the same effect of terrorizing and killing innocent Russian civilians. Kyle Ancelone, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you, Judge. Thank you very much for joining us we'll

see you again soon sounds good okay uh let me just look at the schedule for uh tomorrow my dear friends eight o'clock in the morning eastern time uh professor jeffrey sacks 11 o'clock in the morning eastern time excuse me eastern time colonel douglas McGregor, 2 o'clock, Matt Ho, 3 o'clock, Karen Kwiatkowski, 4.30, Scott Ritter. This is Murderer's Row tomorrow for those who like to kill on Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!