Judging Freedom - Kyle Anzalone: US Troops to Ukraine?

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Kyle Anzalone: US Troops to Ukraine?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 24-7 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. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024. Kyle Anzalone from antiwar.com joins us now. Kyle, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for the time that you spend with us. to foresee actual harm to Ukraine as a consequence of the vote in the House of Representatives on Saturday morning? Absolutely, Judge, and there's a few reasons behind this. One is it's

just going to keep Ukraine fighting longer. And so just today we had the Ukrainian foreign minister announce that their embassies overseas are no longer going to, for conscription age males, process any documents, essentially meaning that they're all going to have to return to Ukraine to fight in this war. So it's going to cost Ukraine a lot more men, and not really just young men, but men of conscription age, which means all the way up to their 40s and 50s probably, are going to be thrown into the meat grinder. We've seen these videos where the men fighting for Ukraine are very old.

But additionally, the House bill requires the White House to send Ukraine attack on missiles. These have a range of 190 miles. And Russia has made it clear that the longer range weapons that the West sends to Ukraine, the more they're going to do damage to and territory they're going to take in Ukraine. One of the pieces that antiwar.com published this morning is about this very subject, which is, I guess the Pentagon has released, I don't even know if the Congress knew this, the nature and extent of the military equipment and ammunition that's going to be sent to Ukraine. And these ATAKOMs, that's an acronym for, I don't know what it stands for, but the acronym is ATAKOM.

These things go 190 miles. You're talking about invading deep into Russia. Absolutely. And these are the Army tactical missile systems. And that article on antiwar.com was written up by Dave DeCamp, who does really good work day in and day out at antiwar.com, the news section, trying to cover all this alongside myself and a few other people. And what he explains is that these are not the cluster variant. So previously, the U.S. had sent Ukraine that these are not the cluster variant. So previously,

the U.S. had sent Ukraine some attack them that had cluster munitions, which are somewhat effective anti-personnel weapon, even if they have some pretty serious consequences for the civilians after the war ends. But the U.S. is now going to send actual attack them, you know, capable of destroying pretty serious infrastructure targets deep inside Russian territory. Which, of course, will provoke catastrophic responses from Russia. Are these attackams the type of equipment, if you know this, that require Americans to operate them, or at least a period of training of the Ukrainian operators? Well, they're fired from the HIMAR launcher systems that Ukraine has been using throughout

the war. And they've already used the, again, the 100-mile variant of the ATAKOM. So my guess is they probably would be able to fire them. Of course, we know from Politico that up to 60 U.S. military advisors are headed to Ukraine and they say, oh, they're to oversee the weapons transfers and stuff like that. But in reality, they're probably going to be passing intelligence, including targeting and logistical intelligence to help Ukraine operate these weapons, even if there's not Americans on the front lines firing them. Are these American military in uniform and armed or out of uniform and presumably unarmed? So I believe they will be in uniform because they're deployed to the embassy. And the U.S. has military in uniform deployed to embassies all over. They say they're in a non-combat role.

But again, Judge, if we understand how warfare is operated today, very little is done on the front lines. A lot of it is planning the targeting, getting the weapons to where they need to be, and planning all that out. And the U.S. is absolutely helping Ukraine with that. So while we're going to claim they're in a non-combat role because they're not actually firing the weapons, in reality, they're doing absolutely everything but that. They're fair game for the Russian military, are they not? I would guess that Russia is going to try not to escalate the war to that point with the U.S. You know, we've seen Russia be very careful about what kind of things they target in Ukraine, and I think have very carefully escalated this war throughout the

conflict, depending on what the West was giving Ukraine and what Ukraine was targeting inside of Russia. And so I would hope that Russia doesn't do that because who knows what it could lead to in the U.S. demands to declare open war on Russia, nuke Russia, nuke Moscow. And so that would be absolutely terrifying. However, if it came to it, I guess that is an option Russia could pursue because those troops are in Ukraine. the House of Representatives, there was no time for the Peace Brigade to warn the warmongers of exactly their inability to chew everything they're biting off. I mean, this is just crazy. At the same time that these rumors spread, I guess it's not a rumor, Politico's reporting it as fact, the rumors spread that President Macron was sending a thousand French troops to Odessa. I don't know if that's true. I would think that the Russian military would remove them from the earth before they even landed in Odessa.

Yeah, I would hope that France doesn't move forward with that plan. For the same reason I would hope Russia doesn't strike the U.S. embassy. It would be a major escalation. And I'm not sure what France would think these 1,000 troops would do. The border, the front lines between Russia and Ukraine are hundreds, if not 1,000 miles long. And so, you know, 1,000 troops probably aren't going to make a major difference. Just having a select number of troops in Kiev or something like that, like the Americans do, helping with the intelligence logistics is probably more helpful for these Western countries as far as conducting the warfare. Here's Foreign Minister Lavrov

commenting to the Russian press. It's in Russian. We have the translation after the vote in the House of Representatives. Currently, the United States and its NATO allies persist in their fixation on dealing a decisive blow to Russia. They seem prepared to keep opposing our nation, using Ukraine as their last stand, so to speak. Simultaneously, Western nations are precariously teetering towards a direct military confrontation involving nuclear powers, carrying potential catastrophic outcomes.

Western nations are precariously teetering toward a direct military confrontation involving nuclear powers. How dangerous is that? And obviously the Congress doesn't give a damn. Does NATO give a damn? Or let me ask you a backup question. Forgive me, I'm asking you too many questions at once. Do Western leaders in NATO have the same bellicosity as the Congress of the United States? I do think there's a range of views within NATO, say from Washington to Turkey.

It's going to vary quite a bit. But just today, the UK announced third largest ever military aid package for Ukraine. Of course, that's only $620 million when the largest American package is over $3 billion. And we've sent, I think, about a half dozen multi-billion dollar aid packages to Ukraine at this point. So it's really a trivial amount of aid. But the UK defense minister, when they announced that said, this is going to help Ukraine win the war. And so, yeah, they, you know, even in the UK and the rest of Europe, they seem to be just as delusional. We've seen the statements that the French leader has been making recently about potentially sending French troops to Ukraine. I mean,

this is absolutely lunacy and insane, but here we have Western leaders making these statements. Does Washington, has Washington considered the likelihood that Ukraine will lose? I don't know. I think they're really hoping that this $60 billion gets them through the election, and I'm not sure they're thinking too far past that. They still think that this war is an effective way to weaken Russia, even as we have the head of European Command, Christopher Cavoli, a general, testifying to Congress that Russia has actually made their military stronger over the course of this war. Does the State Department still embrace that Victoria Nuland goal of using Ukraine as a battering ram? This really sounds absurd. It was absurd when she articulated it. It's absurd now after she's gone.

Using Ukraine as a battering ram with which to drive President Putin from office? Yeah, unfortunately, I don't think Victoria Nuland was really steering Antony Blinken in a particularly hawkish direction when she was in the State Department. I think Blinken, the Secretary of State, was quite in line with Nuland, and so we really haven't seen a change in policy since she's exited. Unbelievable. Transitioning over to the Middle East and Iran and Israel, do you think that if there's a war, Iran with Israel, any nations besides the United States will help Israel? Because we know that Israel can't defeat Iran on its own. Maybe a few nations. We saw the UK and Jordan both help the US shoot down Iranian drones and

missiles that were attacking Israel about a week ago now. So there may be some assistance there. The UK, France, Germany may be willing to sell weapons. Some other European or Western countries may be willing to give Israel some cover at the United Nations. But overall, no, the bulk of the world seems to support Palestine in this and not the Israeli bellicosity that's been going on. I forgot to ask you this before, but while we're talking about Great Britain, that 600 million or whatever the number was, was that a vote of the parliament or is that a decision by Prime Minister Sunak's administration? How does it work over there? Yeah, this seemed to be just an executive decision by the Prime Minister Sunak. I didn't see anything about the UK legislator debating or approving anything.

Were you, again, staying with that, were you as disenchanted as the rest of us with the absence of any meaningful debate on the floor of the House? There was no meaningful debate on FISA. There was no meaningful debate on Congressman Biggs' motion to amend FISA to require a search warrant. There was no meaningful debate on the $95 billion to Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine. No meaningful debate at all. I guess disappointed but not surprised. Members of Congress don't think a whole lot and don't have a whole lot to say. And so from the debate I saw, it was a lot of members getting up there saying that America's true border isn't on, you know, Texas or Arizona in the Southwest or in the North, but rather their true border is somewhere in Ukraine or somewhere in the Middle East. And we have to defend these borders, most importantly, overall, that would be Israel and Ukraine. And so this is absolutely insane what members of Congress believe in. Even if Thomas Massey was able to give up there and give a rousing speech, no members of Congress are going to change their votes

because they've already sold out to APAC and the military industrial complex. Back to Gaza. Antiwar.com reports this morning that nearly 300 bodies were found in a mass grave at a Gaza hospital and that some of them had their hands and feet tied and appeared to have been murdered execution style. Can you tell us about this? Yes, this was at the Al-Nasr Hospital in Khan Yunis. And this has happened a few times throughout the Israeli invasion of Gaza and their onslaught in the Strip, where they've gone into hospitals, they've killed a lot of people, they've left these people in shallow dug mass graves. And once the Israeli forces leave, the Palestinians come in. They're looking for their relatives and their loved ones they can't find, maybe doctors and medical staff they can't find. And they exhume these mass graves and they find people with their hands tied behind their backs, their legs tied as well, suggesting that they were executed, obviously. And there are some Israeli claims that these mass graves are dug in part, and some of the bodies were buried there by the

Palestinians, which may be the case. But if you look at the satellite evidence, it also appears that some of the mass graves were definitely dug when these buildings were occupied by the Israeli forces. Here's Secretary Blinken when he was asked about the U.S., about the use of U.S. arms for war crimes and whether he takes it seriously. This is an off-the-wall comparison between Israel and Ukraine, but I'll let you listen to a cut number three. We are looking into reports, incidents that are brought to our attention, and we have a process to do that, particularly if there are questions about

whether U.S. arms have been involved, and that is ongoing. And we continue to be focused on that. Every situation, every country is different. For example, the case of Ukraine, where we have made certain determinations, totally different situation than in Gaza. The Ukrainians, first of all, themselves, were not in any way a legitimate target the way, of course, Hamas is in Gaza. They were also not embedding themselves with civilians hiding in and under

apartment buildings, mosques, hospitals, you name it. And in addition, in the case of Ukraine, when Russian forces, for example, withdrew from Bucha, we were able to see – the world was able to see very plainly what had happened, and we were able to get the evidence. So each of these situations is different, and we have to do our best to collect the facts and follow the facts, and that's what we're doing. What a weak, tepid explanation, devoid of any sense of morality whatsoever. Right, and somebody needs to apparently remind our Secretary of State that it's the American taxpayers that sign his paychecks and not the Israelis, because he adds as an Israeli propagandist. What he's referring to here is there is a board within the State Department that exists to evaluate specifically potential claims that Israeli military units have committed war crimes. And Tel Aviv has a lot of say over what this board produces.

And in the past, they haven't churned out any reports that Israel has done anything wrong with American weapons. But in December, they did send a report to Blinken saying that one particular Israeli battalion, an ultra-Orthodox battalion, it's an all-male battalion. They don't let women on the military barracks unless they're married to one of the soldiers. They allow these soldiers to have very religious routines and follow strict religious law and everything like that.

But they are responsible for the death of a 76-year-old Palestinian-American man, Omar Assad, who was handcuffed and let face down in a field where he had a heart attack and paramedics weren't able to get to him until he was already 15 or 20 minutes dead. And so the State Department board found that this was a war crime and that this particular unit shouldn't receive any American weapons and be blacklisted from receiving U.S. training as well. And Blinken has had this report since December and has been sitting on it. And then ProPublica published a report last week that said this report exists and State Department officials are upset that Blinken hasn't acted on it. And then over the weekend,

Adseos reported that those sanctions were going to be applied on Monday. But here we are on Tuesday and the U.S. still hasn't acted yet. I'm sure that Prime Minister Netanyahu has had something to say about this. Could he possibly have defended this behavior? Oh, absolutely. He says it's a moral outrage that the U.S. would do something like this when Israel is fighting such an intense war. Wait a minute. It's not a moral outrage that they murdered a 76-year-old man and let him die in a field,

but it's a moral outrage that the United States wants us to stop by not sending arms to this particular unit? Absolutely. And this sentiment was echoed by the moderate opposition. You know, the good Israelis in the government like Yarlapied and Benny Gantz, they both said the same thing. How dare our good American partners do something like this to us in the middle of a war? Is Israel building military camps in the middle of Gaza in order to bisect Gaza should the war be over and the Palestinians en masse return? Yeah, so I think the plan here, Judge, is Israel is basically looking for excuses to destroy large swaths of the Gaza Strip. And so one kilometer

around the entire border of the Gaza Strip, they've destroyed everything. And then right in the middle, right through Gaza City, they decided they were going to build a military highway, and then they would have military installations on that highway. And then all the buildings within a kilometer would have to be cleared. And this included hospitals, including the main cancer hospital in Gaza. And, you know, they destroyed thousands of structures, a lot of farm fields, water treatment facilities, energy producing facilities, solar panels, things like that have all been taken out and destroyed by the Israelis while their soldiers posted TikTok videos of it and celebrated and sung and danced as they destroyed Gaza.

And actually, Judge, I believe the plan isn't not just to bisect, but create another one of these highways running between Khan Yunus and Rafah so they could destroy large parts of those cities as well. But that's been put on hold because Israel has gotten itself into quite a few confrontations. Has Israel failed to defeat Hamas? Yes, and this was obvious from the very beginning. I think in November or maybe even October, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown, told the Israelis basically the same thing that Stanley McChrystal, our general, learned when he was conducting the war in Afghanistan, that when you kill civilians, you create more insurgents. And so with insurgent math, 10 minus 2 equals 20, where if you killed two insurgents, you end up with 20 actually, because you end up with more people wanting to take up arms against you. And so the large Israeli slaughter in Gaza have certainly drawn more people willing to take up arms against the Israeli state. I'm sure a lot of Palestinians now probably see that as the only solution.

I mean, if Israel is willing to bomb entire homes full of people intentionally, then what other option do you have? I'm sure it's the perspective of a lot of people who are starving right now in Gaza. Here's John Sowers, the former head of MI6, the British intelligence services, making similar arguments. Cut number nine. This general is saying that you have to finish the job in Gaza. I'm not so sure about that, actually. I think Israel succeeded in reducing Gaza to rubble. Is that a success? Well, exactly. That's not exactly a success. They haven't secured the release of the remaining hostages who are still alive.

They haven't killed the Hamas commanders. They've caused an enormous amount of humanitarian suffering. Frankly, I think from the Israeli point of view, they can change the subject. They can switch to Iran and Hezbollah and just call it a day in Gaza. I think that is conceivable. But the alternative, Christian, is if the Israelis do go back in a big way into Rafah to take on the last of the Hamas battalions. Yes, there's a security logic to it. But will they actually achieve any more than they've achieved already? Before you respond, watch this one in which he's convinced that Hamas will reconstitute. Cut number

10. I think Hamas will be able to reconstitute its military forces. There'll be plenty of volunteers for Hamas battalions emerging out of this conflict. And the only real answer to both Gaza and the West Bank is to have an authoritative Palestinian leadership which takes responsibility for those territories in the context of working towards a Palestinian state, which lives alongside a secure and peaceful Israel. I'm quite surprised, given who he is and what he did, that he's speaking so candidly and not always consistent with what his government says. Yeah, well, you know, one of the, he says some very good things there, but of course, the fatal flaw he makes is that Israeli policy doesn't align with what

he's saying Israel should do. They don't want to ever allow the creation of a Palestinian state. And now Israel has created a real problem for itself in Gaza, where he's kind of wrong that they can't just declare victory and leave. They have to have a major policy shift or else the two million Palestinians that live in Gaza are going to languish in famine conditions and the world isn't going to tolerate that for years on end. And so you're going to have to let a significant amount of aid come into Gaza to rebuild the strip.

And of course, if they don't want that done under Hamas, they'll have to allow the Palestinian authority to have control over Gaza. And that would mean that they have to negotiate with the Palestinians, which they can never allow because they can never allow Palestinian state. And so Netanyahu and the Israeli government have found themselves in a real problem here. And I think they think the solution is just killing the Palestinians until they're so willing to go just anywhere else because there's no quality of life in Gaza. What they don't understand is that the Palestinians see their resistance as continuing to exist in their historic homeland. And so they're going to continue to do everything they can to stay there.

Here's the Secretary of State again. Cut number three, Sonia, on whether the United States has a double standard when it comes to Israel. The accusations about IDF's military conduct in Gaza have piled up. They include using food as a weapon, targeting civilian infrastructure, indiscriminate bombing, something even the President has said is taking place. So I'm wondering – we know you've got ongoing processes about this, but could you tell us why is it taking so long to make a definitive assessment about these? And the fact that it's taking so long triggers – like, leads a lot of people suggesting that U.S. has a double standard when it comes to applying the law with Israel.

Does the U.S. have a double standard? Thank you. AMBASSADOR COHEN.S. has a double standard when it comes to applying the law with Israel. Does the U.S. have a double standard? Thank you. SECRETARY KERRY, Great. Thanks, Amira. Let me start with the last part of the question. Do we have a double standard? The answer is no. As this report makes clear, in general, as we're looking at human rights and the condition

of human rights around the world, we apply the same standard to everyone. And that doesn't change whether the country in question is an adversary, a competitor, a friend, or an ally. Who believed him? Hopefully no one, but I'm sure an unfortunate number of reporters in that room did. Of course, there's a double standard and there's a couple of clear ways to look at one. There's the bureaucratic double standard and the Guardian reported on this, that there's a specific board that exists within the State Department to evaluate claims against the Israeli military. And Tel Aviv gets a lot of say and a lot of power over the investigations that they carry out, which is an enormous power. But also, if you look at how the U.S. responded to the Israeli accusations that just happened to come

out at the same time the ICJ found that Israel was plausibly conducting a genocide in Gaza, Israel claimed that Hamas, or UNRWA, the main UN aid agency for Palestinians, was aligned with Hamas and helped Hamas carry out the October 7th attack. Blinken himself called those accusations highly, highly credible. However, Israel never produced any evidence for this. And the former French foreign minister just issued a report that was conducted by the UN saying that Israel provided no evidence for these claims. And so here you have video evidence time and time again, sometimes posted by the Israeli soldiers themselves of them conducting war crimes. And the US always says, oh, we need to investigate this. But whenever any accusation comes out

against the Palestinians, it's immediately accepted by the U.S. government. And so, you know, not only is it a double standard, the State Department has just turned into a complete Israeli propaganda machine. The last question, Kyle, what significance is there of which you're aware to the resignation of the Israeli military intelligence chief, this major general? Is he just a fig leaf for Netanyahu, taking the blame for Netanyahu, or is this the beginning of an unraveling here? I think it may be initially he's meant to be a fig leaf and kind of take the blame. The Israeli people are demanding answers for October 7th, and that this war has been dragging on for months and months and months. You know, the excuse of we're fighting and we can't evaluate it right now is resonating less with people. More resonations are expecting.

I don't expect Netanyahu to take any blame for this whatsoever, though. And he'll put it off as long as he can. And he'll put it off to a point where he'll lose his legacy and probably his freedom. Kyle Anzalone, a pleasure, my friend, as always. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, Judge. Okay, just checking my calendar for tomorrow, my dear friends. At three o'clock in the afternoon, Phil Giraldi and at four o'clock, Aaron Mati, two intellectuals ready to tell you what they think about what the Congress has done with respect to Ukraine and the deepening, deepening problems in Israel, Gaza and with Iran. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. We'll see you next time.