Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson : NATO Grasping at Straws

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Larry Johnson : NATO Grasping at StrawsSee 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, July 8, 2024. Larry Johnson will be here in just a moment on how dire is the Ukraine military situation as we speak. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23 percent. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. If you have $100 in the bank, it still shows $100,

but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less. Inflation has reduced all of your savings, all of your buying power and mine by 24%. And gold is largely immune from that. If you want to learn how gold will soon hit $3,200 an ounce, call Lear Capital, 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Get your free gold report. Same experts who predicted the 23% rise that I've enjoyed have predicted this $3,200

an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend. I have a lot of questions to ask you about Ukraine, particularly in light of a recent piece that you published arguing that the West is grasping at straws. But before we do some breaking news from The Lancet, the British medical journal, which says that the dead in Gaza, you ready for this number if you haven't seen it? 186,000. Now, that is between 7% and 8% of the entire population. Have you ever seen a massacre like this in such a short period of time against a defenseless people using conventional weapons? We're not talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Well, not in my lifetime. The last time we really saw this level of slaughter was during World War II, when civilians were being killed. You know, let's face it, the United States and Britain were bombing civilian cities in Germany, just killing mass numbers of civilians. Bombs and buildings don't go well together. You know, it's a recipe for disaster. And the human carnage that we're witnessing is just, it's sickening.

And, you know, and this report comes on the heels of the Haaretz report over the weekend. Yes. That they said, hey, you know, the Israelis instituted the Hannibal doctrine. You know, it's been reported on. I know Max Blumenthal has been, and Aaron Maté have been, you know, very important in bringing that story to life. But Haaretz, you know, they got in there and they dug it out. And you know what? Maybe of the 1,200 people that were reported killed on October 7th

and blamed on Hamas, it may be up over 50%, 60% of those were killed actually by the Israelis. You know, they can call it whatever they want, the Hannibal Doctrine. It's murder. Yes. It's government murder of its own civilians so it didn't have the headache of dealing with them as hostages. Yeah.

I mean, it's God awful. But, hey, you know, this is an indictment of what the Zionists have turned Israel into, just a killing machine that's on par with what the Nazis were. I mean, it's, you know, and I'm not making that comparison lightly. It is a complete, once you dehumanize your enemy and that they become nothing more than just some refuse that you need to burn up or bury, then you can do anything to them. And there is no appreciation in embracing the concept that these are actual human beings. Does this affect Prime Minister Netanyahu's tenure in office, the realization of the slaughter, 186,000 Gazans, a thousand of his own people? Netanyahu's in a very difficult political position right now, and it's not going to get any better because you're seeing a widening rift between the military and between the civilian leadership.

And so Netanyahu, he's aligned himself with the more extreme elements in his government, the people like Ben-Gavir and Smotrich that we've talked about in the past. And at the same time, you've got the head of the army and the head of the navy and even the intelligence folks speaking out very publicly to completely contradict what Netanyahu is saying. So, for example, you know, when the head of the army was saying just last week or a couple of weeks ago, you know, we can't defeat Hamas. Hamas is an idea. There's no way to militarily defeat it. And Netanyahu says, oh, yeah, no, we're going to defeat them. But, you know, just look at the calendar.

You know, we're going into the ninth month since this whole war started. And, you know, the mighty Israeli army has not been able to defeat this ragtag group of Hamas fighters. The Hamas group, you know, they weren't an army. They weren't wearing uniforms. They're not in a hierarchy where you've got clear chains of command. And the people, you know, I guess the members of Hamas are not what you would call highly trained. And yet with all of that, they're still alive.

They're still in ambushing and hitting and killing the Israeli military personnel. And Israel hasn't been able to stop them. So Alistair Crook is of the view that Netanyahu is on thin ice and is putting all of his eggs in the basket of July 24. A war criminal, a perpetrator of genocide and slaughter, will stand where American presidents have stood and try to persuade a joint session of Congress to declare war on Iran. And that will be the pitch that he is going to make. He will try and scare everybody in the House chamber into believing that Iran is a danger to the United States. Yeah, and he'll probably succeed. But, you know, the other part of the story, and I don't think his folks or his advisory

are even thinking clearly about it, inserting yourself into the American political process and activities at this time, when the growing voices call in for the removal of Joe Biden, you know, that's only going to increase over the next couple of weeks. Right. And divisions that exist now, open divisions within the Democrat Party and with prominent Jewish members or supporters of the Democrat Party. People like Ari Berman that, you know, his father, I guess, had ties back to the Irgu terrorist group in Israel. When they're coming out talking about getting rid of Joe Biden, it's not exactly going to be helpful for Netanyahu to be seen standing there arm in arm with Joe Biden.

In fact, it would be interesting to see if Netanyahu tries to avoid him, stay away from him. Very interesting. Let's move over to Ukraine. You have an interesting piece out on your Sonar website that the West is grasping at straws. How desperate is the Ukraine military situation vis-a-vis the Russian military as we speak? Well, the situation has only deteriorated again, particularly over the last six months. And it's an accelerating deterioration. aeration, because the Russian strategy now is, as they've stretched out the attacks all along this hundred, this thousand mile front, and they start pushing more troops forward,

it requires the Ukrainians to react. Well, the Ukrainians aren't sitting there on a stockpile of healthy, well-trained, capable soldiers. They're, they're dragruning people. They go out into the streets, grab them, drag them off, put on a uniform, and shove them to the front. And so they're untrained. And the problem is the trained units, once they mass,

they get in any kind of, you know, say a company size normally is like 150 guys. You get 150 guys in the same location, the Russians are hitting it with one of these 3,000-pound bombs. And they're disappearing. So they're seeing the Ukrainians are watching their casualty rates soar to over 2,000, 2,300 a day. And, you know, a year ago it was about 700, which is still a lot. But now they are at a level that is completely unsustainable. And it will exhaust that you think about it. If you're losing 2,000 a day in a month, that's 60,000.

And so all of a sudden, that means you've got to have 60,000 new replacements. Well, where are they going to get those? And then the problem is, let's assume they could even draft and coerce people into signing up. Where do they actually physically train? There's not a secure military base anywhere in Ukraine where you could get a group, a large group of soldiers together where they can march in formation, go to sleep in their barracks at night without having to worry about being blown up with a missile strike. So then you say, well, we've got to take them outside the country. Well, you get these guys outside the country,

yeah, some are going to do the training and some are going to figure out a way to go AWOL, jump the fence and go hide in the local population. So the problem is not equipment. The problem is human beings that know how to use sophisticated equipment. As you wrote, we're not talking about pistols and shotguns. We're talking about very sophisticated equipment. They don't have the manpower to operate the pistols and shotguns, much less the manpower to operate the sophisticated American equipment.

So President Zelensky says all we need are tools and desire. I'm quoting him are tools and desire. I'm quoting him. Tools and desire. He's woefully understating the case, is he not? Well, he's delusional. It shows that he, you know, what do you expect from a comedian who plays the piano with his penis, okay? I mean, he's not exactly Clausewitz. So this is a guy who does not understand that, yeah, I can, hey, judge,

here's your early Christmas present. I'm going to give you a HIMAR. So you've got a HIMAR missile system. Have fun. You know, it's not just a matter of cracking open the instruction book and reading, you know, connect this and do this. It takes, those things take really months to actually become proficient in using. Same thing with the M777, the howitzers, with the attack of missiles, same thing, the Patriot missile batteries, you know, go down the list of equipment and all of it is

requires developing some knowledge. But then the problem is once you get people that know what they're doing, they're getting killed or severely wounded and they can't continue the job. So then you got to get somebody new to come in. And so it's just dumping this. That's what they don't understand. This is not an equipment problem. This is not lack of support. This is that Ukraine is completely overmatched. And on every single level that you would operate militarily, they're deficient with respect to what the Russians have to offer. Well, so does the United States or does the Western media or does the State Department buy Zelensky's propaganda that Russian progress is slow? Or is the Russian progress intentionally slow so as to be methodical, careful, patient,

aimed at military targets, but inexorable. Yeah, it's the latter. I don't know who decided to call it the anaconda strategy, but it's very much like a giant anaconda, this big snake that wraps itself around you and just squeezes the life out of you. The Russians are not mounting these, you know, human wave attacks where they're going to see that without, with no regard for the military personnel out there. They, you know, the West still believes that the Russians are in some old ancient Soviet mentality. They don't care. They'll kill people regardless. And that's not the case.

I think Putin actually understands how sensitive an issue this is politically. And you're not seeing the kinds of casualties among the Russians that you are among the Ukrainians. And people say, oh, how do you know that? And I said, well, it's not just a matter of listening to what the Ministry of Defense says. All you got to do is monitor social media. That's one of the beauties, the beautiful things, you know, the negatives about social media there, but the beautiful thing about it is even the most authoritarian government can't crack down on people who've got a cell phone, who can take a picture of a grave, a freshly dug grave, or a funeral procession, or a cemetery that's filled with fluttering flags, and they're

all blue and yellow. They're all Ukrainian flags. You're not seeing that on the Russian side. I'm not saying that no Russians have died. Russians have died, but not at the scale that they're witnessing and going through in Ukraine. And so you're literally witnessing the extermination of a nation. Paul Jay Viktor Orbán, the President of Hungary, who just finished a trip to Kyiv and a trip to Russia. He's also occupying the rotating president of the EU.

And of course, he was severely criticized by Brussels. According to Alistair Crook, they went apoplectic over his efforts to establish a dialogue and establish a communication. Says that the EU bureaucrats want war with Russia. Stoltenberg says they have 500,000 troops at the ready. Well, where are their 500,000 troops? From what country? Where are they at the ready? Yeah, I got sort of a cranky note from one of my readers

because I'd made a remark about the paltry contribution of the Finns in NATO. And he said, no, it's 900,000 strong. I go, Finland? Yeah, that's true. Finland has reserves on paper of 900,000 guys, but their actual active duty military strength is like 15,000. Okay. Big difference from 900,000 down to 15,000. And so here's NATO pretending that it's this powerful military organization. But if you, you know, if you shoot off the flare and tell everybody, hey, come gather, you know, run together. We need to go get those Russians. It's going to take them a long while to mobilize. Then they've got to figure out how they're going to transport them

from point A to point B. And then we've got the Turkey problem because here's Turkey with the number two, the second largest actual active duty military in NATO. And Turkey's basically not going to be playing with NATO much longer. I fully expected within a year or two, they could break off the relation, say, hey, we're no longer part of NATO. We're moving over.

We're going to play with the Russian side. Here's President Putin saying that i've already laid out peace conditions in my prior addresses and the ukrainians know what they are cut number two russia stands for a complete and final settlement of the conflict the conditions for that are laid forth in my speech in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We are talking about complete withdrawal of Ukraine's troops from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republic, from Zaporozh' and Kherson regions.

There are other conditions as well, but they are all matters for detailed consideration during possible joint work. Is it fanciful to talk about negotiation? Is it not more realistic that there'll be no Ukraine military left and the government will collapse and whoever comes in next will have the good sense to wave a white flag? Well, it's not a negotiation in the sense that each side has some leverage and so that there will have to be some compromise.

I think this will be more along the lines of an unconditional surrender. That's where Russia's headed. You know, what the West needs to understand is the Donbass. When I was in Moscow in February, there's a sort of a National Historical Museum right on Red Square. And up in there, they've got one section that's entirely devoted to what they call Novorossiya, the new Russia. And they go back and it's really looking at the role of what we now call Ukraine as part of Russia. Because you remember Kiev was the birthplace of Christianity in Russia. It was the original sort of capital of Russia. And there is a poster from 1927 of the Donbass. And it says, Donbass in part because of its both industrial capability and its agricultural capability.

But it was seen literally back then as a critical component of Russia's identity. So these people that believe that this is some recent obsession on the part of Putin about the Donbass simply don't understand the history there. And it's one that Russia is not going to let go of it. And when Putin laid out the terms, say, hey, if you want to put an end to this, pull your troops out of Khorasan, pull them out of Zaporizhia, pull them all out of the Donbass. Then we'll talk about how to bring this conflict to an end. But that discussion is going to entail you, Ukraine, are going to stop having annual military exercises with the United States and with NATO. That's going to stop. You're going to stop building up your military so that you can come and attack us at some future date. We're not going to allow that.

And, you know, what's Ukraine going to say? Oh, we're going to hold our breath till we turn blue? Right, right. On his way back to Hungary, President Orban made some very candid comments about President Putin on the plane. Yeah. Very favorable, but very candid this is fascinating uh cut number five he is uh 100 more than 100 percent a rational person

when he negotiates when he starts to explain a point when he makes a proposal saying yes or no Nem tudja megjelenni a pontot, amikor keresztül kérdezi, hogy igen vagy nem, nagyon személyes. Hogy mondja magyarul? Külsős, külsős. Lányos személyes, külsős, nagyon kis, páncsi formájában, disziplínsi. Ez egy igazi kérdés, hogy legyen egy kis kis kérdés, és hogy megképeskedjenek, ha szeretnék a politikai és intellektuális lévőt. So it's a real challenge to have a negotiation and to be prepared if you would like to keep the intellectual and political level of him. Fascinating. That's the Putin that you and I understand him to be. Joe Biden thinks he's a war criminal, but the people up close to him say he's perfectly rational, utterly patient, and utterly trustworthy. When he says he's going to do something, he does it.

I had a conversation with a friend on the 4th of July at a party, and she said, oh, but boy, Putin's killed all these people. I said, okay, give me the list. Well, and it boils down to what the CIA and MI6 have been pushing out this meme that Putin is out assassinating opponents. And the list totals up to about nine people. I said, so you're telling me that these alleged nine people that Putin's killed, that's far worse than the over 400,000 Iraqis that died on the orders of George W. Bush when he started the war in Iraq in 2003.

She goes, well, you know, yeah, I just don't like Putin. That's what it comes down to. She doesn't like him because she's influenced by the mainstream media, which is influenced by CIA and MI6. Switching gears before we finish, Larry, the New York Times reported on the front page top of the fold yesterday that U.S. soldiers of fortune fighting as military units in Ukraine have been executing Russian prisoners of war.

Is that credible? I mean, it would be murder. It would be murder, would it not? Well, absolutely. Look, there's videos of it. And those were coming out two years ago and certainly during last year. So, yeah, look, this New York Times article, this is what's important for your listeners and viewers to understand. That article doesn't appear because some reporter woke up one morning and goes, hey, you know, I haven't had anything to

write about. Maybe let's look into this as a possibility about maybe the Ukrainians are being bad to Russian soldiers. And he goes to his editor, hey, can I do this? And the editor goes, gee, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, let's do that. No, look, this is part of a meme transformation. So the media, the legacy media is now starting to prepare the minds of the American public, the readers of the New York Times, that there's going to be a shift in U.S. policy. So we've gone from glorifying the Ukrainians at everything, they walk on water, they can leave buildings in a single bound, they're like super Ukrainians, and the Russians are super evil. Now we're telling, we're actually starting to report the correct story.

And, you know, we're starting to see even some backtracking on Bucha where, you know, initially it was claimed that the Russians were massacring all these civilians. So this is starting to prepare the minds because a policy change is coming. And Ukraine, you know, I don't know when, whether it will be September, whether it will be November after the election, but they're going to get jettisoned. So the U.S. is going, hey, we got your back. We're with you to the bitter end. They're going to go, guess what?

The bitter end has come. But the point of the Times article is that americans have been complicit in the execution of russian uh pow so a to what end and b will they be prosecuted and c i guess the ukrainians are looking the other way when this happens well they're not looking the other way because they fully embrace what they're doing. I doubt that they will be prosecuted. They probably should be. But look, what you're looking at here are these mercenaries. Most of these guys, a lot of them, are former enlisted in the U.S. military. And you know what? In the military, there's a reason you have a chain of command, because it's

incumbent upon the officers who lead to, in the heat of battle, people can get emotional, and they can get out of control, and you can get some young soldiers who do some very, very stupid stuff because they're reacting emotionally, and that's where you want somebody who's older, more mature, and who can separate themselves from the emotion and say, here's the orders we're going to follow. Well, this one American in particular describing, he was an enlisted guy and he doesn't have anybody in competent leadership above him. And so very much, he's acting, he's a war criminal, he's a sadist. And the idea that they can, you know, murder these prisoners and not treat them in any way in accordance with the Geneva Convention, you know, but in doing so, it's so counterproductive,

because this is where you want to have officers in charge who understand that, you know, if we start doing this, then it's going to, it could potentially cause the Russians to start acting in that way. Now, the Russians aren't doing that because they recognize they're better off as they receive these troops and the word gets around, hey, if you surrender to the Russians, you get the three hot meals you get a place to sleep and you got to hope that you're going to go back and see your family so that and getting that word out alone is subversive to the ukrainians because what the ukrainians are offering their troops are not creature comforts but almost a ticket ticket to death or being severely disabled for life.

Larry Johnson, thanks very much, my dear friend. Much appreciated. We'll look forward to seeing you with Ray for the Intelligence Community Roundtable at the end of the week. I'll be there, Judge. Thank you. Thank you. All the best. Great, great conversation with a man whose knowledge is vast and broad in the military and intelligence fields. Coming up at 2 o'clock this afternoon from Antiwar.com, Kyle Lanzalone on the anti-war rap. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm