Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Putin’s Warning to the US.

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Larry Johnson: Putin’s Warning to the US.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, December 9th, 2024. Larry Johnson is here with us as we continue our examination of the dramatic events over the weekend in Syria. But first this. We're taught to work hard for 35 to 40 years. Save your money, then live off your savings. Unfortunately, there are too many threats undermining the value of our hard-earned dollars. The Fed's massive money printing machine is shrinking your dollar's value. Just the cost of groceries is absurd. Let me be brutally honest. I think the dollar is on its way to being extinct.

Not just here, but globally. The BRICS nations, led by Russia and China, threaten to remove the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Central banks have been shifting away from the dollar and into gold. And if we go to central bank digital currency, that will not only destroy the dollar, but we will lose our freedom. We will lose our privacy. They can track anything we do. You need to take care of yourself and your family. So here's what you need to do. Immerse yourself in knowledge and information. The writing is on the wall. Now is the time to consider shifting some of your dollars into gold and silver as your bedrock financial asset. Call my friends at Lear Capital, the leader in precious metals investing for over 27 years.

They help me diversify into gold and silver. They can help you too. Call Lear today at 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com. Larry, welcome here, my dear friend. We originally were going to talk about President Putin's warning to the U.S. over the use of attackams in Ukraine, and we'll get there. But of course, the hot news this morning is the dramatic developments over the weekend in Syria. What's your handle, big picture on this, as to how it happened and who benefits and who suffers. United States has not learned a damn thing in the last quarter of a century.

If you recall the images of March 2003, Baghdad, pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein, yay, we got rid of Saddam. And, you know, with that one, we overthrew completely and mission accomplished George W Bush waving the flag how'd that all turn out judge did it did it bring peace and security and stability to Iraq no no so now in this case what the United States has done, along with the United Kingdom, in tandem with Turkey, and look, this just didn't start in the last month or two, I think I've commented before, the relationship between the US, the UK, Turkey, in a plot to use Islamic extremists,

the same people ideologically who attacked America on 9-11, the same people that the United States declared a global war on terrorism. That's what the United States started arming, training, and funding more than 10 years ago. And look, this was not just Obama doing it. Let's recall that the United States' hypocrisy in funding and equipping terrorists when it suits our purposes started under Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld when they decided that this group, the Mujahideen al-Khalkh, M-E-K, an Iranian group that had been involved in going back to terrorist attacks against the Shah of Iran, but it was a mixture of Marxist and extremist Islam. They continued those attacks, and Cheney and Rumsfeld said,

hey, let's use them against Iran. So, you know, you jump ahead to 2012 when Barack Obama declares, oh, we're taking them off the terrorist list. They're no longer a terrorist. Now, here is the United States. On the one hand, the State Department and the Bureau of Counterterrorism, my old office where we put together the Terrorism Rewards Program, they put a $10 million bounty on the head of Jelani,

the head of Hayat Aririr al-Sham, HTS. Now, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham came out of, it represents an amalgam of al-Nusra. Al-Nusra, and I'll sound like I'm reading from the Old Testament of the Bible, so-and-so begat so-and-so begat so-and-so. But al-Nusra came out of ISIS. ISIS came out of al-Qaeda. And understand that ISIS was more radical than al-Qaeda. I've written recently and published a letter from Ayman Zawahiri, bin Laden's number two, where he chided the then leader of ISIS, Zarqawi, for being too harsh and you know you got to stop attacking those shia mosques and killing all those shia muslims right

now you can get to them later but it's it's creating a bad image this this guy jalani has been involved with beheading people so larry lar Larry, Larry CNN says he's a changed man. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, he changed his name from Saul to Paul. That's a New Testament reference for those of you where Saul was going out persecuting new Christians and then he had a conversion experience. Yeah, nonsense.

Jelani hasn't changed. What a lot of people in the West struggle with is they don't understand the depth of the religious belief that drives these people. And the folks in ISIS, when they're talking about creating a global caliphate, when they're talking about bringing the world under God's rule, it's not just some cheap political trick. They genuinely believe, they're motivated by their faith, and you need to take that seriously. And that's the

problem that, particularly when you get a lot of CIA case officers who are pretty cynical, and many would not be terribly religious, you know, they dismiss this as nonsense. But so what's going to happen here is that Syria is going to follow, go the way of Libya in terms of breaking up into different constituent parts. There's not going to be anybody with the military power and clout to bring it all together and you're going to have at some point these uh islamic extremists that are represented by uh jalani they're going to be stepping up their war with the kurds uh in the

east and so what you're looking at here is chaos and now all of the celebratory mood in israel and turkey and the united states oh look what we maybe got rid of assad you know the question is always what comes next and the you know where the all of this was being pursued with an eye towards one kind of weak in russia and secondly weak in iran and I think the long-term outcome of this will be just the opposite effect. So how did Russia either look the other way or decide it wasn't worth it? Well, in contrast to the United States, where the United States would go in and deliberately overthrow a government that's not doing what it wants to do and try to undermine it. You know, the Russians had offered a few years back to, hey, Assad, let us let's get your army trained up. Let us get you equipped. Let us help you.

And Assad said, no, no, no. Well, you know, you know mother please I'd rather do it myself okay so the Russians didn't force themselves but the Russians still had interest in the area because what they want to do is prevent the rise of these radical Islamists because the ones that comprise the ranks of hts are not syrians a lot of them include chechens out of and uzbekistan uzbekis out of you know former russian uh republics uh so this is this really is sort of the the global threat it's not that large but it's it's significant in terms of their belief and their their their ferocity. So, you know, Russia wasn't going to force its hand. And once I think once it became clear that Assad wasn't going to listen, Russia wasn't about to go in and break the China and have to take responsibility for it. Unlike Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, least the russians understood that if you break it you

buy it and they weren't interested in breaking it so jelani now the head of what passes for the government in uh syria or at least the head of the principal terrorist group that toppled Assad, still has a bounty on his head offered by the State Department. I've asked this of all of our colleagues. They're also your friends this morning. So the same government that's offering a bounty to capture this guy is funding his fighters. Right. Yeah, that's it. And not only funding funding as fighters we're funding the people that uh we claim carried out the attack on us on 9 11. okay and and it's just they are ideologically not only in sync more extreme than the the the crowd that surrounded bin laden and college college sheikh muhammad so yeah, we play this double game

and we think we're really cute about it. Well, how has it turned out in Libya? You know, Libya hasn't become an island of peace and stability. And so what we're doing is we're increasingly destabilizing different areas of the world. And I think that message is starting to resonate in Moscow and in Tehran in a way that they recognize you no longer can deal with the United States

in normal diplomatic measures. You have to do other things. There are people sitting in American federal prisons who are convicted of providing material assistance to terrorist organizations. Right. And the government itself does that. Yeah. No, absolutely. And look, we haven't just done it with HTS.

And this just didn't start this year or last year. Remember, that was one of the purposes and then processing them, getting them cleaned up, prepped, shipping them on to Turkey, at which point the Turks would then take them and give them to, you know, we said they're giving to the Syrian Free Army. But the reality was they were going to these Islamic extremists, Sunnis, which, you know, the Turks are Sunni in their outlook. And so, you know, from the standpoint of Recep Erdogan, this is just a way to maybe try to recapture some of the glory of the Ottoman Empire. Help me to understand the neocon mentality, Larry,

that mentality that pervades the deep state, the State Department, no matter who's in the Oval Office. In their minds, why are they celebrating? How does this advance American national security? What moral basis is there for Joe Biden to be applauding the overthrow of Assad and his replacement with a guy that cuts people's heads off. It doesn't do a thing for U.S. national security. What it does in their mind is it helps ensure Israel's security because eliminating Syria is going to make it more difficult for Iran to

provide support to Hezbollah. All of this is on the assumption that Hezbollah's existence and capabilities are entirely dependent upon Iran. I don't believe that's the case. But, you know, look, this is not the first time from the neocons perspective and frankly, the Israeli, you know, I call it the Zionist perspective, that they'll climb into bed with terrorists. It was right shortly after the formation of Hamas in 1987, Mossad started funneling money to Hamas via Qatar in order to strengthen Hamas, make them a player, put them in a position where they could even carry out terrorist attacks. All of this was in order to provide a counterweight to Fatah and the PLO.

And so it was a very cynical use where they would get in bed with the terrorists. And frankly, go back to 1980, 81, when Israel was arming Iran after the Ayatollah Khomeini came in. So it is, you know, if people are looking, thinking that this is a black and white issue where the good guys with the white hats are always standing firm against terrorism and all those evil people supporting terrorists. Well, it's blackish gray when it comes to both Israel and the United States.

They've got more of a track record of supporting terrorists and engaging in terrorism than they do opposing terrorism that's the sad fact how is iran harmed by the overthrow of assad well assad it it nothing else it contributes to this image that okay iran's increasingly isolated which they're not uh because of their growing role in BRICS, and they're calculating how to respond to the last Israeli attack. They've held off so far. Candidly, I listened to Scott earlier, and I disagree with him with respect to what Iran's going to do with nuclear weapons. I think Iran will have now drawn the conclusion, based upon what has happened to Syria, that Iran has no alternative but to obtain nuclear weapons. I think Iran will have now drawn the conclusion based upon what has happened to Syria that Iran has no alternative but to obtain nuclear weapons. That's the only

guarantee a country has that it will not be attacked by the United States. Every country that doesn't have nuclear weapons has been attacked. It doesn't matter if you've got chemical weapons, but if you've got a nuclear weapon, the United States backs away because they don't want to run that risk. I would not be surprised to see Iran make that decision now. They've held off on it because they sort of harbored in the back of their mind, hey, maybe we can cut a deal with the West. Maybe we can make the West like us. no, that's not going to happen. They don't understand. The West has fixed itself, the United States, the American

people have fixed themselves on this notion that Iran is the number one sponsor of terrorism. And here's the irony, Judge. I can take you back to the State Department Bureau of Counterterrorism. Look at their statistics. They start reporting for the year 2017. That's the year Hayat Tahrir al-Shem came out HTS HTS has been listed in the top 10

terrorist groups in the world since 2017 how about Iran not on the list not a single group that's on that list is sponsored by Iran yet the United States persists with this lie and and the lie is based upon Iranian support to Hezbollah and Hamas and frankly what Hezbollah has been doing they're fighting it to recover territory that they believe is theirs. What does Hezbollah do now? Well, they're waiting. They're going to see how long, you know, the ceasefire is really not holding. But I do not think Hezbollah is in a situation where they're going to curl up in a fetal position and go away. They like to pretend that there's this great control now over Syria. The smuggling that goes on there goes back centuries. So they're going to be able to get weapons and resupply.

They're going to be somewhat isolated initially, but I don't think Iran's going to cut them loose. And at the same time, you've had the Saudis continue to express support for Hezbollah and the people of Palestine in terms of what they're fighting against, in terms of the genocide, the Israeli genocide. So that's why I say this is not going to be a neat, clean wrap-up where, oh, Hezbollah's going to give up, Hamas is going to surrender, Israel's going to be at peace clean wrap up where all hezbollah is going to give up hamas is going to surrender israel is going to be at peace and you know the angels will be singing birds will be chirping not not going to happen let's um switch gears to vladimir putin out of the mouth

of uh sergey lavrov uh warning the., stop sending missiles into the Russian territory. Was this such a warning given? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And what's the U.S. going to do about it? Well, what happened was, and we didn't know this at the time, you know, Putin gave that speech, and then apparently we've now learned that General Gerasimov, the head of the Russian military, called Charlie Brown, not the cartoon character, but the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on November 27th. We don't know what was said in that conversation.

All we can do is surmise. So they had the conversation on November 27th after that date Ukraine stopped launching attackums storm Shadows and scalps into Russia hmm why did they do that why well what that that tells me that on that phone call grass them off till Charlie Brown in no uncertain terms, if there's one more missile, we're going to attack NATO bases and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

And I think Charlie Brown is not a, he's an educated man and he's not a person of limited intelligence. And I think he said, okay. and the word went forth from there to both cia and to all the other nato allies basically cut this out this stops right now ukraine you can launch drones that's fine but no more no more missile launches that require u.s intelligence inputs um and so that that's so that's held since, you know, we're coming now, you know, three weeks later after that.

Why isn't this on the front pages of the Washington Post? Because U.S. blinked. You know, you got Russia and the U.S. in a stare-down contest, and the U.S. blinked. That's it. And the U.S. doesn't want to admit that but So that I said this Unfortunately so much of our

Our understanding of foreign policy is driven by these media memes and it was like as you noted earlier in our conversation That when CNN Interviewed Jelani the head of the HTS, everyone's going, oh, look at that. Isn't that nice? He's a, look at that nice, clean-shaven young man. Oh, man, he shaved off his beard. And then this was entirely a staged event. So those staged events are designed to manipulate public opinion. But you can manipulate public opinion all day long.

It doesn't change certain realities. And the reality right now with Russia is Russia is winning militarily. Russia is under no pressure whatsoever to change its strategy in Ukraine. It's not going to negotiate with Donald Trump. Although Trump can bellow and holler and threaten all he wants, it's not going to move Russia. And I think, frankly, some of Trump's statements over the weekend were downright foolish. Instead of trying to open actual doors for true diplomacy, I think he ended up closing them with his bombast and his claims that Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia weakened. You know, grow up, grow up. his bombast and his claims that russia russia russia russia weakened you know right right grow

up grow up one of the one of the things he said over the weekend larry was assad collapsed because his benefactor deserted him that would be vladimir putin yeah that's that enhanced diplomacy with russia yeah even if that was true you're correct. That doesn't help, but that's not what happened. But again, that's how the U.S. wants to believe it. The narrative, we come to indulge ourselves with that kind of fantasy and ignore, coming back to the real central issue of, we claim to oppose Islamic terrorism, yet we're now aiding, funding, and abetting it.

Okay? And the rest of the world sees our hypocrisy, and they take that into account in figuring out, okay, how are we going to deal with these Americans? And we're an untrustworthy lot. And frankly, when you look at all the different countries we've been involved with trying to overthrow and currently the efforts to cause unrest in Georgia and then overturning the election in Romania, you know, we're really, it's a level of thuggery that uh your former colleagues and i know you were on the analysis side not the operations side are having a field day yeah yeah but but they again they never think

through the consequences well you know what comes next i mean not all of it i i guarantee you not all of the case officers that are involved with this or like are you know blind to the the prospects i mean i have a really good friend who was at one point in charge of the iran task force and when this was pressure under the bush administration to to invade iran and he kept said okay we do that then what's next? And it was like, oh, it'll work out. And he said, OK, I'm getting out of this because he knew that it was not going to end well because nobody nobody is wanting to sit down and think through. OK, if we do this, then what's the consequence? Look at what happened.

We got rid of Saddam Hussein. We brought in a group initially that had been selected to help run the government. And then in short order, Rumsfeld got rid of them and put in Jerry Bremer, and the whole thing went to hell. Well, we don't even have that now in Syria. What we've got in Syria is a guy that we think somebody controls, but the reality is nobody controls Jelani. Jelani controls Jelani.

Wow. Larry Johnson, thank you, my dear man. I appreciate very much everything you said, especially if and when you disagree with others on the show, because there's so many facts we all still need to know about what happened we all know that what happened happened very quickly and was a surprise to all uh i think we will soon learn what factors were involved but but from you uh and ray uh and scott and alistair and soon uh from peppy and from jeff sacks i think we all know us was behind all of

us mi6 was behind all this probably in cahoots with their buddies in masad as well yeah and and and never had any uh i don't think they they had any notion whatsoever that it would actually come this quick and turn out this this way they're not prepared for it and you know look I offer what I call my informed opinion I could be wrong and it wouldn't be the first time but the one thing I don't think I'm wrong on is this is going to unleash a new level of chaos in the Middle East and you know when people are sitting comfortably in Washington, D.C., they're not paying for this with their blood. They're not seeing their children being shot or starving or fleeing in fear.

I mean, there is a human aspect to this that we just ignore, a great human suffering. And Alistair told us about hangings in the streets. Yeah. Yeah. And there's been violence of hanging former officials of the Assad government and hanging his relatives from lampposts in the streets. Yeah. There's a video.

They've got a child, a 12, 13-year-old boy in the back of the truck. They behead him. The HCS behead the kid kid they call him an enemy uh so you know this is this is not a game this is this is not some you know sterile war game that you get to play on computers these are actual living breathing human beings and You know within this mix again. We tend to only look at it in one dimension the Syria for a long time was was a really a key place in Christianity a Lot of the events that take place in the New Testament occurred in Syria

and yet The Christians are likely to be murdered now by HTS. They'll be forced to convert. The HTS, they're not of the ideological mindset. Within Sunni and even Shia Islam, they will live side by side with Christians. They'll live with Jews and call them people of the book. Not these guys. These guys are uncompromising. And so when you're killing Christians, when you're killing Alouettes, it's going to be a purge and a new genocide. And I don't see, frankly, how it's avoided. Wow. Thank you, Larry. Much appreciated. I think we'll know more by the time you and ray are back at the end of the week i look forward to it already all the best all right my friend thank

you thank you coming up at noon eastern i think he's in paris i inadvertently said moscow but he still has that uh finger on the pulse of pulse of Moscow because that's his home. Pepe Escobar and at two o'clock this afternoon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.