Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson (fmr CIA): Are Neocons Coming to reality?

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

In this episode, Larry Johnson, drawing on his extensive experience within the intelligence community, provides a compelling insider's perspective on the neocons slowly realizing how wrong they have been on Ukraine. #LarryJohnson#Neocons#UkraineInsights#IntelligenceCommunity#PoliticalRealization#GlobalPerspective#ForeignPolicy#SecurityAnalysis#InsidersView#UkraineConflict#Realpolitik#GeopoliticalShifts#ForeignAffairs#PoliticalAnalysis#NeoconservativeReckoning#IsraelEthics#MoralJustifications#ThoughtProvoking#EthicalDebate#IsraelPolitics#HistoricalAnalysis#PoliticalInsights#SocialContext#NuancedExploration#EthicalConsiderations#MoralDilemmas#CriticalThinking#IsraelDebate#globalethics #Israel#Hamas#Gaza#IsraelPalestine#MiddleEastConflict#PeaceInTheMiddleEast#GazaUnderAttack#Ceasefire#Jerusalem#PrayForPeaceSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you for with us. Larry, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. I know you have some very, of course, you have some very interesting analysis to share on Ukraine. But before we get to that, I want to evacuated and destroyed the best hospital in Gaza, insisting that in the basement of a hospital or in tunnels beneath it, they would find Hamas military headquarters and they would arrest and capture Hamas militants. Of course, there were none to be found. Is this a colossal failure of PR? Is it a colossal failure of intel? Or is it just more of an excuse to destroy Gaza? How about it's a combination of all three.

So the Israelis have really proven to be terribly incompetent when it comes to their PR moves to try to portray these tunnels, etc. as Hamas. They got caught smuggling in weapons and equipment that they were going to plant, that they did plant in the basement of the al-Shifa hospital, claiming that it was from Hamas, when in fact, clearly it was Israel bringing it in. They did a couple of other videos where there were inconsistencies or things that they claimed turned out not to be true. So, or they pointed, for example, here's a tunnel and it turns out it was a well, you know, that had been there long before. So the PR side has failed. The intelligence side has failed as well. They keep claiming that they know exactly where the hostages are,

but they don't get them. And their strategy, their military strategy right now, I think, is it's designed to force the Palestinians to flee Palestine, which bring the entire Gaza Strip, force them all out. And the way you do that, destroy, shut down the hospitals. If there is no medical care, it's going to be virtually impossible for large groups of people to remain in that area. And so that's what Israel's ultimate goal is, I think. There certainly are videos out of Israeli soldiers saying that, that they want to expel, expunge the Gaza of all Palestinians, and so that Israelis can come in and occupy it. So it's a really ugly humanitarian situation. So the New York Post, you know, a tabloid owned by my former bosses,

a tabloid in New York City, had front page photos of what appeared to be AK-47s, which they claimed were stored behind an MRI machine in the hospital. You're telling me that that was staged. Oh yeah, in fact, there's video evidence that it was staged. The blonde-haired guy that's

doing the tour, in the first video comes up and points, here, and you can see one ak and you see a box with foam you know the package foam around yellow foam and there's points to it then then the next video they put out shows the same location but all of a sudden that foam around the box is gone and you got two AKs laying there. So they were staging this. It's pure and simple because what they're showing is not even down in the depths of a tunnel. This was like in the basement. And Israel knew about it because they

built it in 1983. So they knew exactly where it was. They knew exactly what was down there. And then in that same video, the guy points to these cameras saying, look, Hamas blocked the cameras. They weren't in functioning. And then the other videos come out showing, in fact, the cameras were working.

So Israel has, they've lied about everything from the beginning. They lied about the beheading of babies. They lied about the rape of women. And they tried to cover up the fact that their own helicopters killed their own citizens, a significant number of them. Would Mossad have said to the military, Hamas is not there. It's not their control and command. So do what you want and say what you want, but don't make us look ridiculous. Well, I don't know what kind of communications are going on.

What we have heard in the reporting is that there's a split, a division within the Israeli cabinet, and some of the ultra-right hardliners are very upset with Bibi and wanting to push him out. So we'll see if that's true or not. Israel is in a tough political situation because while they've tried to use the old meme of, we're David, the Arabs are Goliath, they're killing us, poor innocent Jews, therefore world rally to our side. That message is not working this time. It's the exact opposite.

Israel is being portrayed in the social media as the bully. They're the ones killing babies. They're the ones killing women. And it is horrific images that are every day going out around not just the Arab Muslim world, but the global South. The world is seeing it. And even in America, people are seeing it and then recoiling at what they see. Does the Netanyahu government really believe that the cause of all the deaths in Gaza is Hamas rather than the IDF? No, they know better. They don't care. I posted a video over the weekend of an Israeli professor, a woman. Her daughter was killed in a terrorist bombing, so it's not like she is sympathetic towards Hamas and Hezbollah. But she described in detail that the propaganda that Israeli children are

subjected to from the very, you know, starting in kindergarten is the kind of stuff that the Nazis used about Jews, you know, portraying Jews with particular images that were grotesque and stereotypical. And that Israel is in fact doing the same thing with Palestinians. For example, portraying them as only being camel jockeys, that kind of thing. And she said, you dehumanize people in that way so it's easier to kill them. And she thinks that Israel, again, her testimony, her commentary, I thought was very moving and very insightful. What is the primary goal of this military incursion into Gaza? Is it the safe extrication of the hostages, or is it the degrading, the total degradation of Gaza?

Degrade Gaza, make it unlivable for the Palestinians, force the Palestinians out so Israel can take it over. Ultimately, I think the concern is more about the gas oil deposits offshore that Israel will want to exploit and ensure that the Palestinians are removed, hopefully to Egypt and to the Gaza Peninsula, but away from Israel. That's ultimately what they're trying to achieve. Whether they can do that or not is still up in the air because they are getting enormous diplomatic pushback, and the United States and Israel are finding themselves increasingly isolated on this issue. What are your thoughts on Joe Biden's piece in the Washington Post yesterday, full-throated support for the government of Israel, which means full-throated support for

what the government of Israel is doing in Gaza with American ammunition and weaponry but at the same time a sort of fanciful uh support for a two-state solution which simply is not going to happen while this government is running israel yeah no they're trying they're trying to placate both sides and and they know they're in trouble uh the uh anti-defamation league adl headL head, was caught on audio tape recently stating that there is a serious problem now in the United States as far as Israel's traditional support goes. In the past, you could count on it as maybe it was a right versus left thing. And he says there's no more right versus left. It's not Republican versus Democrat. It's old versus young. He says, the young people are embracing and supporting Hamas, not Israel.

They see Israel as the aggressor, as the bully. And, you know, there's a lot of video evidence out there to show that the, you know, Israeli defense forces, Israeli police, routinely abuse people, not just Palestinian Arabs, also Jews. There's a video that came out over the weekend of Israeli cops attacking Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, just beating the tar out of them with nightsticks. For what? And these people weren't armed. They were protesting.

Before we go to Ukraine, you indicated animosity even in the cabinet and the Knesset toward Prime Minister Netanyahu. Is this animosity from the right that wants him to be more aggressive? Or is this animosity from the left that wants him to be more aggressive, or is this animosity from the left that wants them to be more temperate? Yes, it's both. That's a Larry Johnson answer. That's a CIA answer. It's two mints in one. No, it's, you know, so they're already the ultra-right. He, in order to form a government, he had to make an alliance with the ultra-right, which normally he wouldn't do, but he did it.

And now they are being extremely critical of him for not going far enough, not pressing hard enough, not expanding the war into Lebanon against the Hezbollah. On the other hand, you have a really probably a plurality of Israelis who are on the left side of the political spectrum. Many of them are not religious Jews. They are Israelis, you know, Zionists politically. And they hate Netanyahu. They sort of look at Netanyahu like Democrats look at Donald Trump. So it's that kind of divide, that kind of disgust. But the October 7th phenomena, where Israel feels that their survival was at stake, that brought them all together.

They put all that politics aside for now. But those politics are going to bubble to the surface. We're going to take a break for a commercial announcement. When we come back, Larry, I want to explore your latest observations on Ukraine. Have the neocons finally recognized the inevitable, which we call reality. But first this. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Lear Capital. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital because it's the right thing to do because the government is regulating too much and printing too much money and reducing the value of everything you earn and everything you own. And the best hedge against this is gold

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And when you have this conversation with the Lear representative, you'll find out if you can qualify for a $15,000 gold bonus. So call Lear now, 800-511-4620 or learjudgenap.com. Are some of the neocons slowly coming around, either fully or partially, to the realization that Ukraine has lost its battle against Russia? Yeah, no, they've all hit the panic button. The articles are starting to really flood the regular media, at least print media. So you had this guy, Rumor, put a piece up, I believe it was in the Wall Street Journal. Then you had Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan. Kupchan was a Obama State Department official. Haass has been, boy, he's been in the mix. He was almost, I think, like a Kissinger protege going back to the 1980s. And they've all come out and said, you know,

they lay out the facts that Ukraine is losing and Ukraine has no viable path back to win. And yet in every one of these cases, what they propose as a solution is, I call it the more cowbell strategy from the old Saturday Night Live skit where you had Christopher Walken come out every three minutes and say, hey, more cowbell. That's what this band needs, more cowbell. Well, the more cowbell here is keep doing the thing we've been doing that's not working. Let's send more weapons to Ukraine, but ignore the fact that they don't have enough men to demand them, to fire them, to use them. And even if they did, they wouldn't be properly trained. Let's impose a cease, let's get a ceasefire with Russia, even though Russia knows that any agreement we make with them is not worth the paper it's written on. Let's isolate.

Let's impose more sanctions on Russia, ignoring the fact that the sanctions right now have made Russia one of the strongest economies in the world. They're just a reported 5% growth. And they make all their own weapons. They don't need anything from the West. And so these guys, they're really in a fantasy land, in a delusion. They cannot come to grips with the fact they've lost. Ukraine's lost, NATO's lost, and they're going to have to deal with Russia. And they don't want to deal with Russia. All they want to do is demonize Putin, divide Russia up, and take all the natural resources that the world is lusting after.

Don't they recognize that time is on Putin's side? Yeah. No, they don't. But you're absolutely right. Time is on his, you know, he's in no rush. The Russians are happy to sit there and grind the Ukrainian military into dust because in the process, they're decimating NATO. One of the suggestions that Richard Haass and Kupchan made was, oh, we'll bulk up the air defenses of Ukraine. With what? Every air defense system the United States has sent has been a bust, including the Patriot. And we don't have ample supply of Patriots to send them. I mean,

it's this kind of delusional nonsense. You see these guys write this, and they're not ignorant, uneducated people. They're experienced. They have an education. But good Lord, they write some of the stupidest stuff. As we are speaking, it's morning here on the east coast of the United States. On Monday of Thanksgiving week, the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, is in Kiev. Not very well publicized, but our mutual friend and colleague Ray McGovern reported that this morning. On Friday, the brand new foreign minister of Great Britain, who was the former prime minister, David Cameron, made his first trip abroad as foreign minister, and he went to Kiev. What the heck are they telling President Zelensky?

This is what you call a hospice visit. When you got a patient who's dying and all the friends and family come by to say farewell, that's what's going on. They have no viable option left. That's the reality. The United States isn't sitting here with warehouses that are top to the brim with weapons, ammunition that they can easily just cart off and send to Ukraine. There's a real question up in the air whether or not the United States will even approve funding before the end of the year. And you've already had Penny Pritzker, the special representative appointed by Biden to handle the Ukraine affair. She's gone over there and basically asked them the question, how long can you survive without

our aid? Implying that there was no more aid coming. Isn't the thing that Zelensky needs the most not deliverable? And that's human beings. He needs bodies. He needs troops. He needs... Unless Joe Biden or Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, are going to put troops on the ground, which is unthinkable at this point. How can they help him? Yeah, so far, they've basically left the college age males that are in college that are pursuing careers that will be essential for Ukraine's

success 10, 15 years down the road if Ukraine continues to exist. But there is growing pressure against Zelensky to remove that exemption. Already they've been carting off, you know, bankers and lawyers that are in their 40s and 50s. And the average age of the Ukrainian soldier on the front line is creeping up towards 50. It used to be at 43. So they keep getting all the old guys out there who are not physically capable of sustaining the kind of operation tempo that exists. And the number of reports is increasing that surrenders by Ukrainian troops are accelerating. In fact, yesterday, the report is that an entire company, 150 guys, walked over and surrendered to the Russians like we're done with this. So I think you're going to see that continue to accelerate towards the end of the year.

No pressure on President Putin to end the war. No available youth, unless, as you pointed out, he wants to raid the colleges and universities for President Zelensky. No willingness on the part of the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to send another dime there. Some recognition by the neocons who supported the war, not the loudest, like Victoria Nuland lindsey graham but these other folks right you've been talking about i mean all of this has to tell uh the white house maybe not old joe because he doesn't perceive things the way the rest of us do but certainly the people around him do that this is over or is just about over yeah and don't forget the drone. So what the Russia has stepped up its use of drones,

these relatively small drones that are being flown by drone operators sitting back somewhere in Russia. And unlike an artillery shell, which doesn't have eyes, you can't see where the artillery shell goes from a first person point of view. These drones allow you that. So what Russia is doing is they are attacking Ukrainian positions with great regularity, increased frequency, using these drones, and it's killing lots of Ukrainians. And they don't have an answer to it. They have no air defense to stop it. Their electronic warfare is not working.

And Russia's capability on this front is becoming more sophisticated, not less as time goes on. Is there a hard right, a Nazi-like mentality in Ukrainian politics or in the military, which would want a President Zelensky to be gone or dead if he were to negotiate an end of the war? Yeah, absolutely right. The elements represented by groups like the Azov Battalion are these neo-Nazi elements. I think that has been one of the reasons that Zelensky has been very hesitant to now even attempt to engage in negotiations. But let's remember, a year ago in March, March 2022, March 29th, Russia and Ukraine had actually agreed to a ceasefire, the outlines of a ceasefire that would have then entailed further discussions

on an armistice, a peacefire that would have then entailed further discussions on an armistice, a peace agreement that would have stopped the killing. And it was the United States and NATO with the direct support of the Great Britain that sabotaged that, that forced Zelensky to back out of the deal. And at the time, as a show of good faith, President Putin ordered the military who had surrounded, they were positioned north of Kiev with a massive 24-mile-long column of tanks and trucks to go into Kiev. He ordered them to back off. They backed off. I mean, the story at the time was, oh, the Ukrainians beat them.

That was a lie. They backed off. And he was saying, okay, yeah, we're serious about going forward with this agreement. And then it was sabotaged by the West. So, you know, Ukraine, nor the United States, nor NATO have any credibility left with Russia. They've already seen this is the second time they've lied or interfered. They lied about the Minsk agreements, and now they deliberately sabotaged what was going to be an effective peace negotiation. I think Russia realizes

they've got to fight this to the end. They will destroy Ukraine's military capability, and they will force a political change in Ukraine so that the neighbor that sits on their Western border will not pose a threat to Russia. There is a shot of Secretary Austin this morning. Larry, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thanks very much for joining us. We'll see you on Wednesday for our roundtable. Tried to put the roundtable up, but too many people want to hear you guys. Thanks, Judge. All the best, my friend. Thank you. Bye. Coming up later today, Colonel Douglas McGregor at 3 p.m. Eastern and Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 5.30 Eastern. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.