Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern : The Role of Intel in Attacking Iraq

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Ray McGovern : The Role of Intel in Attacking IraqSee 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, February 5th, 2024. Ray McGovern joins us now. Always a pleasure, my dear friend. Ray, I want to talk to you about what's going on in the Middle East, the United States attacking a few dozen sites in Iraq, the country we supposedly liberated from Saddam Hussein because he supposedly had weapons of mass destruction, supposedly, supposedly. The only thing that's not supposed about this is that people died and we wasted $2 trillion. We can talk about that another time. Does the U.S. intentionally put troops into

harm's way as sitting ducks, knowing they're going to be attacked as a pretense for war? Well, those troops in Syria and Iraq are both under dubious circumstances, Syria being completely illegal, they're not invited, Iraq well being bludgeoned into accepting them. Those are in harm's way. They're known to be in harm's way. The New York Times two weeks ago said, now if one American serviceman gets killed, that'll change the equation and Biden will have to react. Well, they were left there. Three. Now, are these fallen soldiers? No, they're not fallen soldiers.

They're pushed. They're pushed down and killed. Okay. They all happen to be African American, and they'll be defended by our African American representative at the United Nations. I just have to say that this is a cynical use of this kind of approach, okay? So they were left there. Everyone knew what would happen to them, and indeed, not one but three were killed. So, yeah, of course, they were left there. Biden didn't put them in there to begin with, but they've been there for a decade or more.

And everyone knew what would happen if they got killed. And then, Lord be, they got killed. I wonder if any Americans have been killed in Ukraine, and we don't know about it. I wonder if any Americans have been killed in Israel slash Gaza, and we don't know about it. We know that there are American military advising the IDF. They're probably in Tel Aviv, but who knows?

We know that there are some NATO advising General Zelensky and President Zelensky. We don't know if any of them are Americans. Is it conceivable that Americans could have been killed in Ukraine, Americans in uniform, and we don't know about it? It's entirely conceivable. I would just amend the in-uniform business. They're probably out of uniform or have some sort of fake Ukrainian uniform on. It's well known that Russian intelligence is good enough to identify these hotels or these restaurants where these volunteers or these foreign fighters or foreign guiders dying and live. So we know that a whole bunch of French advisors were killed just two weeks ago. It's clear that Americans must have

been killed. It's just hushed up. They don't get transfer cases and ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base. Transfer cases. You know, we used to call them coffins. My God. Sorry. Is that the government's terminology for a coffin? A transfer case? Yeah, they're transferred. And Joe Biden frowns and seems very, very sad. Joe kind of books him up there. But, my God, how – I mean, talk about cynicism or hypocrisy. He could call – he could get on the phone, and that thing would end in a day because the Israelis can't keep doing this stuff, and if they don't keep doing this stuff. And if they don't keep doing this stuff,

there will be no reaction from people who feel very strongly about the Palestinians, like the Houthis, and it would be over. There'll be no more transfer cases, not Americans, not Palestinians that have to clean up the mess, but it'll be over. Back to Ukraine. What's your take on what's happening there as we speak? When President Zelensky says, I'm going to fire General Zeluzhny and then doesn't fire him, and he says it again and then doesn't fire him, and then General Zeluzhny writes a feisty op-ed that CNN publishes, an op-ed that may make sense militarily. I don't know. Is this the sign of the very end? Our friend Alistair Crook says the war is over in all but name, that the Ukrainians have no fighting human beings left,

or such a small number as to be insignificant. It's easy, Judge, to agree with Alistair, who knows a hell of a lot more about the situation than I do. When I see the events of last week, Zelensky to Zelensky, you're fired. Zelensky to Zelensky, you're delusional. No, you're delusional, Zelensky to Zelensky, you're fired. Zelensky to Zelensky, you're delusional. No, you're delusional, Zelensky. I mean, I wish you were funny, okay?

Enter Eminence Grise, Victoria Nuland, Wednesday. All right, little boy, sit down. I'm going to tell you what to do. Zelensky, you're the president still. Zelensky, you have to obey what the president does. Now, he wants to fire you, okay? You got that? He gets on a plane and goes home. What happens? Oh, as of this morning, Zelensky is still commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine. So not even Victoria Nuland could clean this mess up. It's really delusional to think that the Ukrainian government, such as it is, can persist in these circumstances. The more so, since the path is pretty clear for Russian forces

to advance now, how quickly and whether they'll do that is another question, but they're ready to do it if need be. I wonder if she made any threats or promises. I wonder what her goal was. Was it just to make peace between the president and the general? It doesn't appear she did that, although the general still has his job. You know, Judge, the way I see it is there's division within Washington about who's the best bet here. And Nuland has always been Zelensky's patron. Zelensky has always been her protege, okay?

Now, my view is, and who knows for sure, but she went to say, look, Zelensky's still our guy. And if you expect to get any more money from Congress, we've got to keep it. We've got to have a semblance of stability here. So Zoloshny, mind your place. Now, in the past, Zoloshny would have minded his place, but this time, no. So not even Nuland could make her will be carried out. Now, today, Zolinski may resign or be fired. But as this thing percolates day after day, it's very delusional and illusory. But Zolinski and Zolinski, it's all illusory and delusional.

Sorry about that. As a linguist, you can have such fun with their names and the phonics that come out of your mouth as you slip from delusional to delusional. How about zelusional? That's a new word for you. Just a little aside here, you know, Nikolai Gogol, the Russian writer, did a wonderful play called Revisor, the Inspector General, okay? And they had Dobchinsky

and Bobchinsky, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, just like Zaluzhny and Zolensky, okay? Now, Danny Kaye, you'll remember Danny Kaye, my favorite comedian, he did a movie on this. It's called The Inspector General. It's a hoosh. For those of you who have access to this kind of thing, look up Danny Kaye and The Inspector General. You have Dobchinsky and Dobchinsky and Zelensky and you'll have the whole schmear and you'll be able to laugh for a change. Do these neocons ever laugh? Do they understand? Do they ever laugh at themselves? Do they understand the catastrophic uh consequences of their bloodthirsty behavior i mean stated differently will they admit that you that

the war in ukraine was a disaster that we shouldn't have fought or don't they reason the way we do they have a lot of personal stake in this uh judge i think my bet would be that they will continue the war. They'll use the European money. They'll seize Russian assets, and they'll try to keep this thing going up to and including the election in November. Whether they'll succeed in that is really, really, really dubious, the more so since the Russians can move toward the Dnieper River anytime they so choose now. They've conquered Adyivka, which was the main stumbling block on the way to the Dnieper. How close do you think our involvement in Ukraine brings us to World War III. Now, here's a scenario which occurred to me in some of my reading over the weekend. When that Russian plane carrying about 65 or 66

Ukraine POWs from Russia to Ukraine was shot down, it was shot down over Russia. We now know that it was shot down over Russia using U.S. Patriot equipment. This is the first time that American military equipment has been used to down a Russian plane in Russian airspace. I am sure the Kremlin took note of this. Well, that's right. And Putin himself has identified that missile as a patriot missile. Now, Putin and the people advising him are amazingly resilient and circumspect. This was a provocation, pure and simple. It blackens the Ukrainians much more than the Russians. It gives them more reason to move forward. But, you know, as long as the attrition, the attrit, the attrit, the attrit continues, and Shoigu, the defense minister, has indicated that's exactly what they're going to do. They're going to have some offensive attrition, but they don't have to do anything big to justify a cuss of spelling,

to justify NATO intervening in a bigger way. They could just sit there and say, look, are you prepared to deal now? Or you want to wait a couple of months when we're several kilometers more to the west? We're going to need a cordon sanitaire. We're going to need a demilitarized zone, okay? And that's going to be to the west of us, okay? You want us to keep going now, or are you ready to settle? Now, there's no indication that Blinken and Sullivan and Newland are sensible enough to say, oh, we'll settle.

Rather, in answer to your question, Judge, nuclear weapons? Oh, my God. They've used everything else. Depleted uranium, these scattered munitions for the 155 howitzers and tanks. What's to prevent these guys who have a personal stake in not losing in Ukraine, not losing the election and not losing their freedom if that other guy comes in and prosecutes them, okay? What's to prevent them from saying, hey, Joe, I mean, Mr. President, open that top cabinet there we have, where the lock is, we've got the combination to that.

Those are the mini nukes. Now we're going to show Russia that we mean business. These things are real small, just like one-tenth the power of Hiroshima. Let's use one of those, and that will take us to the election. And we'll show the American people and the Congress that we mean business. And you'll win, Joe, and you won't go to jail. Do I rule that out? I don't. Does the hair stand on the back of jail. Do I rule that out? I don't.

Does the hair stand on the back of my neck when I say that? Yes, it does. But I've been around a long time, and I think we're closer to that now than ever before. Why would or what is to be gained by the British prime minister proposing over the weekend that NATO send an expeditionary force to Ukraine. And what is an expeditionary force? It's got to be a euphemism for troops in uniform there to kill. You know, Judge, it's delusional. I mean, here the adjective is apt. Not only I, but Scott Ritter and Larry Johnson and Colonel McGregor, they all recognize that NATO very large NATO exercise that's going on now,

and they're going to put one of their two aircraft carriers in there. Oh, but somebody shafted the shaft, okay? They have to repair the shaft. That's going to take several months. The other one's in Drydack. So, you know, it's laughable that Rishi Sunak or whatever his name is will be saying, oh, yeah, we're so strong. We're going to turn this thing around by committing troops. Now, the worrying thing is you have the President of the United States saying three weeks ago, look, this could come to American troops fighting Russian troops in Ukraine. Now, what's the pretext for that? If Russia hits a NATO country, okay. Now, Russia, in my view, has no intention of hitting a NATO country.

Could there be a false flag by some hothead in the Baltics or in Poland and made to be a Russian attack on a NATO country? Of course, it could be. So Biden, again, is in a box. When I play basketball, we had a box in one. We have boxed four players around the high scorer. The other one would be free. That's what Biden has found himself boxed in, in Ukraine and Gaza. And actually, the Chinese have boxed him in as well. So I have three fronts. Sunak has also suggested a no-fly zone over Kiev, enforced by NATO and British jets. I'm wondering if his approval ratings are very low and he's confronting a probable difficult re-election campaign. Very soon, I say probable, I don't think he has to run

for re-election until 26, but it'll probably be before that. Do Western countries seek validation by fighting wars? Well, let's put it a different way. They can't be seen to be tucking tail and running, okay? Now, that leads them to do very delusional things. An air safety thing over Kiev? I mean, what would that mean? You know what the real sorrow here, Judge, is there's nobody in the British press or media that would ask Sunak, what do you mean by what you're proposing for over Kiev? I mean, what are you going to do with that? And what will you do when fire erupts and when somebody

shoots at you, you know? This would be war. It's the same thing over Libya, you know? We know what happened there. These things are never learned from history, and Sunak is just one of these politicians that's put up there by the banks and by the military-industrial complex. You know, he doesn't make any sense at all. I don't know what he means by this kind of air-free zone. When the American government decides to target places in Iraq, the country that doesn't want us there, the country we supposedly liberated from Saddam Hussein because Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction. Do they just learn about these targets from satellites in the sky, or do they have human intel on the ground saying, well, there's a terrorist across the street, and there's the head of the militia around the corner. So if your bomb can go off a little bit, you'll kill two

birds with one stone. How does it work? They have both, Judge, and it's mostly military intelligence, CENTCOM, which is the authority here. They have call on the most sophisticated satellite photography. And, of course, a lot of Iraqi officials have been suborned over the years. They tell them things as well. The sorrowful thing is that with respect to satellite photography, when it comes down onto the ground, who assesses it? Who evaluates it? The Pentagon, not the CIA as it used to be Pentagon in 1996. And so you get people finding things as James Clapper, head of imagery analysis before the Iraq war, as he admitted in his book, oh, we had such pressure

from Dick Cheney that, quote, we found things that weren't really there, end quote, period. So they find things that aren't really there if their commanders want to find things. And so, as Larry Johnson would say, this shed looks like it could be harboring some terrorists, and so we're going to hit this shed and this shed over here, and we'll hit 95 of them. And if we kill people, well, the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said over the weekend, when we do these things, we are mindful that there will be civilian casualties. We know that. We take that into account. Oh, wow. I mean, you would think that he would say, or at least profess to think, that we should do everything we can to make sure these are real terrorists or real Iran, whatever they are.

You know, so we bragged about, you know, we take into account that these civilians will be killed. The Iraqi government, which, of course, wants us out of there, says that 25 civilians have been killed. I'm sure that Joe Biden and company couldn't care less. How dangerous, you can take us back to one of your historical examples in the LBJ, awful LBJ years, how dangerous is this tit for tat? Oh, they killed three of ours, we're going to kill 25 of theirs, and they killed another 10 of ours, and we're going to kill 300 of theirs. Well, Judge, it helps to have this color hair

because you've been around a while, okay? Now, this is a really historic week. You're a pet, Ray. Well, your hair is going to get like mine, Judge. My hair is like yours, but somebody takes care of it once every two or three weeks. Could I have that number, please? She's very good. Well, listen, you know, I was involved back in the early 60s. I was watching Vietnam from a Soviet foreign policy point of view. People would ask me, how do the Soviets look at this? And I would say, well, the Soviets don't have any influence in North Vietnam. Why? Well, because they sold them down

the river at Geneva in 1954. The Vietnamese know that. the Russians will give rhetorical support. But back to the point here, on February 7th, so almost exactly, what, 60 years ago, February 7th, 1965, our base in Pleiku in the central highlands was attacked because the perimeter defense was left to the South Vietnamese, okay? Seven U.S. soldiers were killed, about 100 wounded, okay? So what happened? LBJ consulted within 12 hours, fighter bombers off to do damage and retaliate. We'll show those Vietnamese. The Viet Cong, three days later, struck again on a seaside resort, which was then a Viet Cong strongpoint, and killed maybe, I forget,

they killed lots of U.S. soldiers. And so that's what we did. That's how we taught the lesson to the Vietnamese. Now, you know how this went down tit for tat. That was 60 years ago. 40 years ago, Ronald Reagan, in contrast, was asked to bomb the hell out of the Middle East and get involved in the Lebanese and all those wars. And 241 U.S. soldiers, Marines, were killed in the barracks in Beirut. That was in October 1983. He paused. He thought for several months, and then finally he said,

I'm not going to. I'm not going to do this. This is stupid. This will get us involved with no end plan. And look, and on February 7th, 1984, he said, look, we're pulling out of there. Get those Marines the hell out of there. We'll put them on nearby aircraft carriers. But then, of course, three weeks later, they were taken home. So what's the point? What's the point here? That was exactly 40 years ago. Ronald Reagan did not rise to the bait from the neocons or the people like them and get involved in an endless war with no end in sight, okay, with no real motive. LBJ did. Now, LBJ, you know how that came out, right? Well, there has to be a certain amount of modesty and a certain amount of courage to face down people like Lindsey Graham, which, ah, you're

tucking tail, you're getting out of there. Reagan says, yeah, we're getting out there. We're redeploying. We're redeploying onto these ships. And then they came home. So what we need is a measure of that kind of sang-froid, that kind of courage, and that kind of good sense to avoid getting involved in these things. The situation now, of course, is a good example of how much that is needed. Chris put up the quote from the Wall Street Journal. I think it's on one of our clips. I think it's a full screen. It basically says, if you're too stupid to get out of the way, it's your fault. And Lindsey Graham pretty much mouthed the same thing.

Do we tell these people when we're going to strike their empty sheds and storage warehouses? No, but we know where the equities are, and we know that China depends on Iran for all manner of oil. We know that Russia has signed a new treaty, a strategic cooperation treaty, which includes lots of economic benefits, but also strategic help. So those are the equities here. And Sullivan had at least the measure of good sense in trotting off to Thailand to meet with his opposite number, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister. And what he said, this is 11 days ago, okay? What he said was, look, we can't talk

to the Iranians, but you can, and you have influence on the Iranians. Could you please tell them to stop? And Wang Yi said, I won't tell you what Wang Yi said, because my Chinese is not very good, but I think it had expletives deleted. Here's what the Wall Street Journal says. Militia leaders can't say they weren't warned. And if any of them are still around the target areas, they are the world's dumbest terrorists. So I guess if you warn people, even people that didn't harm your troops, that you're going to destroy their assets and they don't get out of the way. They're stupid. They deserve to die and you can destroy whatever you want. That's the Wall Street Journal argument. Well, here's the direct quote from the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

quote, targets were chosen with an idea there would likely be casualties associated with people inside those facilities. There would likely be casualties associated with people. I mean, so we recognize we would be killing people inside those facilities. And those targets were chosen with full awareness that we would do that. What are you going to do about it? We're the United States of America. We'll end on that, my dear friend. Thank you for your analysis. Always appreciated by the audience, the regular viewers, and by me. And we'll look forward to seeing you with Larry on Friday for our intelligence roundup. You're welcome, Judge.

Thank you, Ray. All the best. Larry Johnson coming up later this morning and this afternoon. We'll post the time as soon as we get it, very shortly. Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. freedom. We'll see you next time. seven 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.