Judging Freedom - Phil Giraldi: US Wants to Starve Palestinians

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Phil Giraldi: US Wants to Starve PalestiniansSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. Thanks for watching! Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, February 7th, 2024. Our dear friend Phil Giraldi joins us now. Phil, thank you very much for your time. It's always a pleasure, of course, to chat with you. I want to spend a fair amount of time on Israel, Gaza, Prime Minister Netanyahu's latest AIPAC statement from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia earlier today. today, but before we get there, do you think that the neocons who are pressuring Republicans in the House in behalf of President Biden recognize that Ukraine is a failure, or do they actually, their war in Ukraine is a failure, or do they actually think that another $60 billion can somehow miraculously pull the Ukrainian military's feet out of the fire. Well, you know, it's hard to imagine that they really believe that. But that said, if you go to their websites like the American Enterprise Institute

or the FDD people and everything like that, they make these arguments over and over and over again that there's sort of a point where this can be turned around by applying enough money and manpower and super weapons to the mixture. And people who actually have a lot more insight due to their own experiences, like people that you have on, like Larry Johnson and Colonel McGregor, you know, they see this in a whole different way. They see this as, sure, a corner has been turned, but the corner was turned quite a long time ago. And basically the momentum is all on

the side of Russia. And anyone who is thinking that this can actually be turned around is delusional. I have to go along with that, although my own experience coming out of the intelligence world doesn't give me the same insights into actual combat veterans. But, you know, that's the way I would look at it, that this is kind of a con to keep this going and keep this going and keep this going. The money goes to defense industries who kick it back to the neocons. The money goes to friendly congressmen who do all kinds of favors in turn for the neocons. I mean, and the neocons are running the foreign policies of much of both parties right now. What is the relationship between MI6 and Ukraine Intel and CIA and Ukraine intel? Is the Ukrainian intelligence community

subject to the whims and wishes of MI6 and CIA, or do they operate independently? And are they funded by CIA? Yeah, they're definitely funded by, I would put it broader which they are reporting to those eight other agencies in a capacity of telling them what they want to hear, I rather think they're playing an independent role. We seem to be hearing or getting some glimpses of the generals and the intelligence people in Ukraine rebelling from the political leadership of Zelensky. And this is telling me that perhaps these people aren't in a way nationalists who are waking up to the reality. And so the conversations between them and CIA and MI6

must be rather interesting. And I would be very interested in seeing how exactly they're written up, because I bet they say they probably conceal more than they tell you. Right. Well, that's that business. I mean, the reason I ask that, Phil, is because the general that President Zelensky has suggested he might put in charge of the military after he fires General Zeluzhny, something he's been talking about publicly for a week, literally. Today's the seventh day because he mentioned it last Thursday, and it hasn't happened yet. But that general is a 36-year-old

intelligence agent in charge of the Ukrainian intelligence. So I'm wondering if he becomes the commander of the military, will he still be doing MI6's bidding, which probably means offensive missiles into Russian territory? Yeah, I would suspect that if he gets that assignment and survives beyond the first week, he would definitely be towing the line that's coming out of NATO and that is coming out of Zelensky. Now, what he actually believes might be something quite different. And if he does indeed believe that the war is lost, he'll be looking at ways to salvage what remains for him and his colleagues and also for the country. As I say, many people that I would trust, whose judgments I would trust, are essentially saying that this war is not turn-aroundable. And yet there are other people who are trapped in the middle on this and will have to make some serious decisions probably in the very near future. Does the president still receive an intelligence briefing daily? And is it still

based on information gathered in the field in Ukraine? And is it still twisted and turned and tormented and spun by masters in Langley? I realize this is a long-winded question, my apology, but you see where I'm going. So that they tell Joe Biden what they think he wants to hear. Is that still going on? Well, you know, a lot of that depends on the actual person who is the one who goes over to the White House, presumably every day, and briefs the president and his staff. And you get a guy like Ray McGovern, and I'm sure when he was doing it, he was a straight talker. I've heard, certainly when I was in the agency through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, that there were a lot of people that would go over the White House,

particularly in the George Bush years and thereafter, and would tell them what they wanted to hear. So, you know, it kind of depends on the person. It kind of depends on the politics. We have now a CIA director, of course, who is not an experienced intelligence officer, and who essentially was appointed to become what seems to be Joe Biden's point man to go to places to kind of do the, shall we say, clandestine negotiating with foreign heads of state and foreign secretaries of state and that sort of thing. So that's kind of an unusual situation that Biden obviously is, maybe recognizes the fact that he's not capable of absorbing what he needs to absorb and responding in a good way. And he's turned some of the handles of the government over to other people. All right. Switching gears, I have to ask this. Is the United States in Israel's pocket on what's going on there and are doing everything they can to assist Israel, including these two ridiculous plans that have been floated lately to give Israel a ton more money, $14 billion or $17 billion. So it's kind of, you know, the United States has become a war criminal

by its complicity in what the international court recently ruled as genocidal moves on the part of Israel and the United States by its own argument about, you know, people giving, Iranians giving weapons and support to Shiite militias, by which they become themselves terrorists, by that same measure which came out of the Secretary of Defense, we are war criminals and are complicit in what is certainly a developing genocide. I want you to hear one of the more absurd statements Joe Biden has ever made. Now, there's a lot of them, but this is one of the most recent, talking about Israel, Gaza, people suffering desperately in need of help, and of course forgetting that all of this is being done with American military equipment and forgetting that he could stop it with a phone call. But here he is making a pitch for this aid, which apparently includes money to slaughter the Gazans and money to

feed the Gazans. Cut 16. This bipartisan agreement also provides Israel with what it needs to protect its people and defend itself against Hamas terrorists. And it will provide the necessary life-saving humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people. By opposing this bill, they're denying aid to the people who are really suffering and desperately need help. You know, there's more work to get this done over the finish line, and I want to be clear. Doing nothing is not an option. Republicans have to decide.

For years, they said they want to secure the border. Now they have the strongest border bill this country has ever seen. All right, we'll save the border argument for another time. But how intellectually and morally depraved can a man be who says, give me the money to give to the Israelis, to slaughter the Gazans, to destroy their homeland, to engage in genocide? And by the way, those few Gazans that managed to survive, we got to feed them. Well, it's totally depraved. And I would have observed, it seemed to me that the president

had his lapel plan, an Israeli flag next to the American flag. I think that's what I saw. But he's lying about everything. As part of his bill, which has not been voted on yet, it might come up tomorrow, $10 billion would be committed for humanitarian relief. But of that, only $1.4 billion was allocated, if you read the bill, was allocated for Gaza. And the bill specifically states that the United Nations Agency, which provides all of the relief to gaza uh cannot be allowed to have any support from u.s money or from u.s activities and the israelis are are basically blocking all the aid that's going in right now

apparently according to the u.n 95 of it so he's allowing these people to die he's providing the instruments for the israelis to kill them and and then he's lying about it i think this is a disgrace it's uh it's utterly utterly depraved and i don't know how anybody could accept what he's saying with a straight face uh phil um hasn't the war in Gaza actually escalated the genocide since the finding by the International Court of Justice that there is plausible evidence to believe that a genocide is going on? And to that extent, we're ordering them to stop it. And by the way, we're ordering a report in 30 days, which is due next week, by the way. Hasn't it gotten worse? We saw pictures of torture that an IDF soldier took of himself torturing a young man stripped to his underwear and shackled to a chair. We've seen pictures of the IDF chanting and dancing at the utter demise and destruction of Gaza. We've seen all this behavior indicative of genocide. We've heard Prime Minister Netanyahu saying we're going to achieve all of our goals.

It's going to take a few months. He really means a few years because he knows what he has to do to stay in office. But we're going to achieve all of our goals. So long-winded question again, for which I again apologized. Has anything gotten better for humanity since the ruling by the court no i would i would think from the evidence i've seen that it's uh it's basically been the same as when the ruling came out uh demanding that a lot of these practices be stopped they've been shooting civilians they've been uh blowing up

houses just gratuitously for growing blowing them up the new york times even had an article on it today how they're destroying houses they're humiliating the the the gaza civilians that they encounter that they don't kill um and uh and they are making videos for themselves to send home showing them laughing and shooting these people. And I tell you, this is incredible. There was one video that was online that showed the last few sheep that were in Gaza that people actually would have been able to eat to keep from starving. They were shooting and killing the sheep. I mean, these people, I'm sorry, this is disgusting. It's an indication of the lack of decent leadership within the Israeli military and within the Israeli government and within the United States government.

Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu. This is very recent. This is only a few hours old, I think, saying that all objectives of war will be won in a few months. Before we go to that, we looked at the pin on Joe's lapel. We also have a clip of him talking about the pin. It's a Ukraine flag. It's not the Israeli flag. We can playi flag we can play that clip but in in

that clip he's saying i'm uh i'm wearing my ukraine tie i'm wearing my ukraine pin i've been wearing it because they're in dire straits right now but but i don't want to get back to ukraine just yet i want your comments on what prime minister netanyahu said just a few hours ago, number 18, Chris. I came here this evening to say we are on our way to that decisive victory. It is in our hands. It's not a matter of perhaps weeks, but it is in a matter of months. The IDF are working systematically and they will achieve all the objectives of the war. They're going to release all the hostages, eliminate Hamas, and Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel. I'll say this before you comment. Worse than making a promise and not keeping it is making a promise that cannot be kept. How could anybody, how could he expect anybody in Israel, in the West, in the world,

anywhere to believe what he just said? I don't think even the Israeli public is buying into it, although they support him for reasons of revenge. The fact is that if he's going to liberate the hostages, the first thing he could do to save the hostages is to stop bombing Gaza. Again, the New York Times today was reporting that 50 of the remaining alleged hostages have probably been killed by bombardment by the Israeli forces, not by Hamas. So this is just a bowl full of lies, any kind of lie he can pull out to support himself. And many, many experts, many military experts are very dubious about that Israel is even winning in Gaza or about to obtain its objectives which was to wipe out Hamas and presumably also to remove the entire population

so that rich Israelis can build beach villas on what used to be Gaza, which is being advertised by real estate agents in Israel already. So, you know, this is just incredible. This is a bizarre, ridiculous, odious turn of events in which the United States could have played a good role and could have forestalled this, could have played a good role and could have could have forestalled this could have prevented this from happening just like it could have prevented what happened is is happening in Ukraine and this is perhaps for us for we Americans this is the real tragedy you are um a veteran not only of the army and the intelligence aspect of it, but a veteran of the CIA.

You have a good handle on government. You have a PhD from the University of Chicago. You're one of the smartest people I know in understanding and explaining government. Why do Western governments seek validation by war, by killing people, by killing innocents, by killing people that can't fight back? Well, I'm afraid that the answer to that is something that's unpleasant, which is essentially that governments that essentially don't behave up to the highest standards always need some other kind of excuse to explain why they do what they do.

And the best excuse is, hey, we're being threatened by country A and we have to do something about it. And gee, if we, by golly, as the British used to say, by jingo, if we have to go to war uh that's what we'll do and um this is uh this is kind of the mindset we saw it with uh in particular uh those of us who remember george bush george w bush uh this was the kind of whole argument that was trotted out and produced wars that were both unnecessary and illegal and certainly now in spades with the Biden administration. So this is a tragedy for us. So somebody killed three reservists from Georgia who were stuck in a dump called Tower 22 at the

border of Syria and Jordan for reasons that we don't understand, and they probably were never told. The same person or group of people killed or injured 37 other Americans. We now know that this was not thought to be a returning American drone. It just wasn't caught by American defenses. It was obviously a drone intended to kill. In response, the American government fired 85 separate attacks on sheds, warehouses, tribesmen, herdsmen. So as a follow-up to my question about why do Western governments seek validation by killing, what is to be gained by this kind of killing, this kind of, as you would say, I think you'll agree with this phrase, collective punishment of the innocent

for what somebody that they'll probably never lay a glove on actually did. Yeah, that's the tragedy. And you know what makes it worse? The fact that Biden and the Secretary of Defense were both saying that this was retaliation and it was not intended to escalate because we're not attacking, not yet attacking Iran. So anyway, they kill a bunch of people, they shoot off a bunch of missiles that cost $3 million each. And what did they do? They escalated, and exactly contrary to what they promised to do.

And there has already been a reaction. Some of the tribes or some of the militiamen that they attacked and tribesmen that they attacked retaliated against the Kurdish allies, which are one of the alleged reasons why the United States is illegally maintaining bases in Syria. I mean, this is like a whole cycle of ridiculous premises to create a situation which is unlawful, unreasonable, and basically the chickens are going to come home someday to the United States and the people that are doing this sort of thing,

I am afraid. I want to play this clip of Admiral Kirby only because he issues an apology, and we have been very rough on him, and I've got to give him credit for the apology. So he told the White House press corps that the United States warned Iraq and told Iraq what we were going to attack and where and when we were going to attack. He now says that that did not happen and it was erroneous information and he was apologizing. So this is not a video. This is a still of him. This is the way government apologizes. You don't actually see the person. We hear his voice and we see a still of him.

But this is number 17, Chris. I'm sure many of you saw the statement that I issued yesterday, correcting what I had said Friday night about pre-notification to Iraqi officials on Friday night before the strikes that we took on facilities related to the Iran-backed militia groups. And I deeply apologize for the error, and I regret any confusion that it caused. It was based on information we had, or that it was provided to me in those early hours after the strikes. Turns out that information was incorrect. It was one of our viewers writes in, how does he sleep at night? Okay, he did make an apology.

I commend him for that. He's still Baghdad Bob and everything else that he's been saying. We still don't even know what conceivable justification there is for the collective punishment of the innocent because somebody sent the drone that killed these three young people at Tower 22. And of course, the government will never say what they were doing there, why they were there. Kirby himself argued that the president did not need an authorization for use of military force to fire off these 85 attacks because what he was doing was defending American troops. And under the law, he can defend American troops. Well, that presumes that American troops are in a position where they're lawfully entitled to be when you're defending them. And of course, they're not lawfully entitled to be there.

All right, I'm getting carried away. Take it from there, Phil. Yeah yeah no that that's exactly precisely the point i mean all of these things going on are avoidable and uh they should have been avoided if we had a decent foreign policy that really cared about anything uh we would avoid them and uh there's no reason apart from stealing oil why uh american soldiers should be at three or four bases in in syria or in iraq as far as that goes because uh the iraqi parliament has twice asked the united states to remove its troops and uh also the president just recently did the same. And I love the shoes. Yeah. For those of you that are experiencing Judging Freedom audio only,

we just ran a clip of a very famous, you've seen it, of a journalist throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush while he's standing next to the president of Iraq. And in typical Bush fashion, he goes, bring it on. All right, Phil, back to you. Yeah, well, this is where we're at. We're at a bring it on point, I guess. Yeah. No, but the concept of collective punishment, which is condemned in international law, which is condemned by the Geneva Conventions, which is condemned in international law which is condemned by the geneva conventions which is condemned by american federal law the president is engaged in it uh to

the nth degree here i almost don't care what he told or what he warned iraq about the point is he killed dozens and dozens of innocents why Why? To satisfy Lindsey Graham? Yeah, well, you have to ask yourself who's in charge here. And it's opaque. Yes. All right, Phil, thank you very much, my dear friend. A lot of people commenting about Rupert. They love you, but they love you even more when Rupert's in the background.

Yeah, he's my prop. Right. My prop is crawled up at my feet, sound asleep. He wants to go O-U-T. I can't say the word out loud because he'll hear it and he'll be jumping all over me. A man's best friend. Thank you, Phil. All the best. We'll see you again soon. Well, thank you. Of course. A great human being, savvy, savvy intellect. Two more savvy intellects coming up at four o'clock, Aaron Maté, Eastern Times, and at five o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judson and Politano for judging freedom. Altyazı M.K.