Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern: Ukraine Collapsing.

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Ray McGovern: Ukraine Collapsing.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, May 13th, 2024. Ray McGovern is with us now. Ray, a pleasure, my dear friend. I want to spend a fair amount of time asking you about some of the absurd statements made over the weekend by Senator Lindsey Graham, particularly his applauding the slaughter in Japan when Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and calling for a similar slaughter in Gaza. But before we get there, let's talk a little bit about Ukraine. How bad are things in Ukraine today? And how close, from your understanding, is the Ukraine military to a collapse? The answer to the latter one is very close. Things are going very badly for Ukraine.

The Russians have moved even farther west, and it's just a matter of time before they proceed all the way to the Dnieper River, if they so wish. Now, the reason I say if is because the Russians are in charge here. They would just as soon sit down and talk about this. Putin made that very clear in his inaugural address. Look, we're ready to talk, but not with those who always talk from a position of strength. We're willing to talk, but not with Zelensky. So what I'm hearing is that the Russians are willing to talk about stopping before going all the way to the Dnieper, working out some kind of a deal. And they're meeting 10 ears on the part of the Blinken administration. And so things

look very, very bad for the Ukrainians who cannot hold on, mostly because they have no weapons, and most even more because they have no men. They've run out of men as well as shells. When I was in Italy last week reading the English translation of one of the Italian newspapers quoted Ukrainian soldiers, Ukrainian soldiers as saying some of the villages that the Russians have taken, they've just walked in. We, the Ukrainian soldiers, didn't put up any resistance at all. Are things that bad for the Ukrainian military that they refuse to resist the Russian military?

Well, it's not universally so, but there are large units that have given up. And, you know, there's no language problem. They can talk to these Russians. All right. Okay. You win. Please just take us prisoner. Don't kill us anymore. You know know what really is sorrowful, Judge, is you have people like Ben Hodges, who used to command U.S. Army, U.S. forces in Europe, saying, okay, now we have all that money, now we need a strategy to use all these weapons. Hello? That's the title of this little article here. A strategy is needed now before it's too late for Ukraine. Well, hello, even if they got the weapons on time, they don't have the manpower to man them, and it is too late. So there's Ben Hodges, who has been having these illusions

of capturing Crimea by the end of last year. I mean, they're still getting CNN people's attention. And that's what's really mischievous here. Seems that General Hodges is sometimes being used by the military to gin up members of Congress like Lindsey Graham. We'll talk about Graham in a little bit because of the absurd statements he made about Gaza over the weekend. But it seems like the mainstream media is using Hodges and people like the general to gin up members of Congress. How will NATO cope with the inevitable failure of its strategy in Ukraine? Well, I think you give it too much credit when you say strategy.

There is no strategy. The idea was to weaken Russia and to do whatever is necessary in Ukraine to give the Russians a black eye. Now, that has boomeranged. It's just the opposite. The Russians are giving the US and NATO and the poor Ukrainians a very black eye. So strategy, I think NATO will fall apart sooner or later. I mean, the US is not going to be able to honor its long stated aim of staying with Ukraine, supporting it for as long as it takes.

Now it's as long as we can. And even though they've sent this 61 billion more, Judge, it's not going to make a bit of difference to the outcome. The trajectory is what the Russians, the only question is, whether somebody in the White House will listen to what the Russians have said in every other speech. Look, we're ready to negotiate, but not on the basis of what Zelensky insists. I would think that, and now I prevail upon your years of experience in the intelligence community,

although on the good side of the intelligence community, and the audience knows what I'm talking about, there would have to be regime change in Ukraine before there could be material negotiations, don't you think? There would. And, you know, that can happen very peacefully, in a sense. Zelensky is still president until the 20th of this month. That's a week from today. Yeah, at which time he becomes completely illegal because he postponed elections. That's when a new president is supposed to take over. And the Russians, you know, they've made this point,

and so have others. So if Zelensky wants to step down and go to that villa he has in Italy or somewhere else, this is a golden opportunity for him to do that. Whether the US and Western intelligence services are prepared to do this and make it stick, well I don't know. But this is the opportunity for them to do that. And I don't know what the Russians will feel capable of doing once it's sort of ipso facto clear that Zelensky in international and national law in Ukraine is an imposter, having stayed on as president and canceled elections. Here's Admiral Kirby late last week being questioned about threats from the Russians to target NATO troops should they show up in Ukraine. Cut number one. There's been threats from Moscow in the last couple of days of striking British military

facilities and also simulating nuclear drills as it sharply rises tensions because of weapons manufactured in the UK being used in the conflict that says it could potentially apply to other allied countries as well, theoretically the United States. Do you have a response to that? Well, what I'd say, number one, is it's just reckless and irresponsible for the leader of a major nuclear-armed power to be saber-rattling the way that he is with respect to potential use for nuclear weapons. Obviously, we monitor this and have continued to monitor this very closely. I can tell you we've seen nothing, even despite the reckless rhetoric that would cause us to change our strategic deterrent posture. And look, lastly, if Mr. Putin and Russian officials are worried

about their troops in Ukraine getting hit with weapons from other countries, then the easiest thing to do is just take your troops and leave. That is really, really absurd and preposterous, particularly from somebody that spent his career in the military. If you're worried about getting hit, take your troops and leave. Come on. Well, I'll let you respond. I'm just the questioner here, but I'm outraged at what he said. This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them?

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No insurance? No problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code Space80 at Talkspace.com. What more needs to be said? He's living in an illusion. And unfortunately, the media, look at them. They take down notes and they put that on CNN, MSNBC, and so forth. So that's what the American people drink in. And that's why it's so important for your show and others to tell the truth here. There's a big story here, and it happened just as you were leaving

last week, and that is that the Russians, in an unprecedented move, said, we're going to rehearse the use of tactical nuclear weapons, both from sea and from air. That's big. That could not be bigger. Now, that did scare the French and the British, but what's that saying? My God, this is the first time that I've seen that the Russians said, look, we feel so strongly about you getting involved with troops in Ukraine, that we're rehearsing what we might do, what we might do with tactical nuclear weapons. Now, I don't think any decisions have been made. It's a threat. It's a threat that is of a different nature than all other such threats before. And what I'm waiting for is for Putin to go to Beijing, which he's supposed to do before

the end of May, okay? Compare notes with Xi Jinping and say, okay, this is what we intend to do in Ukraine. Are you on board like you were on board in February 2022 before we went into Ukraine? Xi Jinping is going to say, well, what's the plan? Putin will tell him, and he'll be on board. Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, the Chinese are driving away, to use their words, U.S. destroyers that are infringing upon what the Chinese consider to be their territorial waters. A little footnote here, a major study has been made on original documents going back centuries, which indicate that China is quite within its rights, quite within international law, to claim those islands, and that the Philippines and the other people stirring up trouble at U.S. behest don't have a legal lake to stand on. That's

new to me, but it comes through in a very, very thoughtful essay prepared by a professor in Hawaii and none other than Chas Freeman, who's the best on China, attests to its significance and to its credibility. I want to ask one or two more questions about Ukraine, and then we'll segue over to Israel and Gaza. And again, I rely on your experience. This is right in your wheelhouse being a briefer to the White House. Here we are two and a half years into the Ukraine conflict. We ran all those clips mocking Joe Biden and Tony Blinken, where they say Russia's lost, Russia's lost, Russia's lost. Do you think that accurate, truthful intel about the status of affairs on the ground,

the military status of affairs on the ground, is finally making its way to Joe Biden, or is it still being spun by Bill Burns and the management level directly below him so that they tell Joe Biden what they think he wants to hear? Well, Judge, the predecessors of Bill Burns let the military analysis that CIA used to do, and which was right on Vietnam, by the way, let that be siphoned off to the Defense Department. So it's Austin who's in charge of this intelligence, so to speak. And Austin is a second offender. What do I mean? In 2015, no fewer than 50 intelligence analysts at CENTCOM, where he was commander, and at DIA filed a formal complaint with the IG of the Pentagon saying he was distorting the intelligence analysis that he was giving.

He was trying to make it look like they were winning in what they were doing. Syria, it was not the case. You think he's doing the same now, Ray? I think he is, yeah. And, you know, he's telling the president what the president wants to hear. And the president, that's not smart enough to tune into what we're saying here,

and neither are his lieutenants. So, yeah, I don't see any real, unless Biden decides that politically, with respect to the election coming up this year, that he's got to do something different in Ukraine. There's not going to be any change unless Putin comes back from Beijing later this month. It starts to go real fast to the deeper, which he has demonstrated now he surely can do with Ukrainian defenses just falling apart. Okay, we're going to take a break for a commercial announcement. When we come back, we will talk about how solid or how unstable is the ground on which Prime Minister Netanyahu stands. But first this.

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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. Ray, Alistair Crook has argued that there is in the Middle East an axis consist formally of the governments of the countries in those areas, but it consists overwhelmingly in the people governed by those governments, in their commentators, their academics, and the molders of opinion, and it's only a matter of time before that reaches the level of state resistance.

Do you accept this theory that the behavior of the Netanyahu government has effectively done more harm than good to Israel in the long run? In the long run, for sure. What has happened here is the Houthis down south, Hezbollah, other non-governmental entities are facing Israel down. Now, what's been missing, and I hope that Alistair is right in saying that the governments themselves will come around. We're talking about Syria. We're talking about Jordan. we're talking about Jordan, we're talking about Egypt, we're talking about Saudi Arabia, who have great big minorities of Palestinians. Will they come around? Well, they haven't yet, and what's it, 222 days or so? So, you know, one needs to be a little skeptical of this. One good sign is that

Egypt over the weekend joined the International Court of Justice suit by South Africa against genocide, against Israeli genocide in Gaza. Now, that's a good move, whether it be speaks a more strong attitude on the part of Sisi. I don't know. I mean, he's beholden to the United States for so much, and so are the Saudis, and so are the Jordanians, that that's a problem. So I hope that Alistair is right. But, you know, I'll look for some action on their part.

Unless the Palestinians that live in those countries rise up in anger and force change, I don't know. I didn't catch this over the weekend. And of course, I wasn't here. And yesterday, I was traveling all day. But Alistair says that Prime Minister Netanyahu was asked a question about how long he thinks the war in Gaza could go on. And he said it could go on for 10 years. I mean, is that, let's assume that he did say that for the sake of this question. Is that based upon his understanding

that he stays in power for as long as the war goes on? Well, I think that those are the things that really matter here. If the war stops or if Israel is fought to a draw, Netanyahu goes to jail. There are three very competent suits against him in Israeli courts. None other than Ehud Olmert,

who was a previous prime minister, made the point in Haaretz over the weekend saying, look, what's really operative here is Benjamin Netanyahu's personal freedom, his personal stake in this. He's going to keep it going no matter what, because otherwise he and his wife are going to occupy that bridal suite and the Israeli prison that's ready for them. And that's a yeah, that's really important. Personal stake here. Here's the previous prime minister owning up to, that's what's driving Netanyahu. That's why he talks about 10 years, 10 years more out of prison, not a bad deal. What happens if the International Criminal Court, not the ICJ, not the International Court of Justice, the one that found that there is

ample evidence from which one could conclude that the Israelis are engaged in genocide in Gaza, but the other court, the criminal court, the one that actually prosecutes people, what happens if they indict Netanyahu and issue an arrest warrant for him? I've looked into that, Judge, since last we discussed it. They can't try him in absentia. So they'd have to pluck him out or he would have to travel to some other country and be plucked out by the legal authorities there. So in terms of indicting him and blackening him, of course the ICC could do that, even though it's largely susceptible of pressure from the United States not to do that kind of thing. But whether they

could ever get him, well, if he traveled to Geneva or Paris or something like that, they could get him like they almost got George W. Bush in Geneva 15 years ago when he abruptly canceled his flight to Geneva to give a big speech to their accolades of AIPAC. He changed his plans as soon as he realized that the people in Europe had warrants for his arrest. That's part of the story. It happened to Rumsfeld as well a year before in Paris. He ran off to the airport and got home before the procurator in the city of Paris could file papers and nab him. So that's what was at stake for Netanyahu.

As long as he stays in Israel, no one can pluck him out of there unless the U.S. Special Forces are given a very unusual role here to go get Netanyahu and bring him to justice. Right, right, right. Team change. Right, right, right. Bill Burns, whom you know, who is the head of the CIA, not an experienced CIA officer, but he's the head of the CIA, former United States ambassador to Russia, famously wrote that famous email or memo or cable, whatever you call it, when the Russians say no, they mean no, and nobody listened to him. How unusual is it, in your view, for the head of the CIA himself to be the American negotiator at international negotiations intended to produce a ceasefire,

like the ones going on in Cairo, Egypt, as we speak? Let me say first, from an intelligence point of view, you cannot have the director of the CIA pursuing policy that he's personally involved in and have him retain any credibility within the councils of government. That's lesson number one. Now, with respect to Bill Burns, he's done this before successfully on Iran, helped to create that arrangement where they had that, they go and where Iran had force foreign using, getting a nuclear weapon and other things. So he's been used successfully. He's very smart, very adroit.

He hasn't been able to close a deal on Hamas and Israel. But, you know, when you look around, you say, well, what's the alternative? Lincoln is not taken seriously anywhere. Young Sullivan, neither. And so, you know, there's a price to be paid and credibility, but I say all for it. The interesting thing, Judge, is that over the weekend, a prominent Russian has said, yeah, we'd be willing to talk to Bill Barron. Yeah, what the hell? Yeah, we'll talk to him. So they're ready. The Russians really want to negotiate. And it's a ten-year treatment they're getting in Washington. And, you know, it's not like the Russians are

begging for this. They're quite prepared to go ahead. And with Chinese full support and Chinese threats against U.S. vessels now in the South China Sea, going in the other, in other words, there'd be a two-front war. They need to talk about this and the US needs to own up to this before it's too late. How significant is Joe Biden's now public statement that we're not going to send you 2,000 and 2,500 pound bombs, Mr. Netanyahu, unless you agree not to go into Rafah or go into Rafah surgically rather than destroying the place and killing civilians. How significant is that statement by the president? Is it a fig leaf because we're still sending a lot of other things there? Is it a slow walk of equipment that's eventually going to get there or is it some sort of a threat to netanyahu the us is continuing to fund the israeli

war effort tooth and nail the fact that they have suspended one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs is not really very significant. It's significant only in the sense that those students, those courageous students on U.S. campuses and on campuses abroad have made that possible, that Biden had a back office. Okay, well, I'm not going to give them the 2,000-pound bombs that can destroy a whole city block. I'll only give them the 1,000 pound bombs that only destroy half of a city block. It's all just smoke and mirrors, Judge. The aid continues. And as you know, Congress has already appropriated about 16 billion more to Israel over the 3.8 billion we give them every year. So it's not going to stop, especially, well, Meir Scheimer puts it this way. He says, look, the Israel lobby will succeed here.

Biden's not going to be able to do anything in the face of the Israel lobby in an election year. End of story. Well, here's Senator Lindsey Graham, who either because he believes this or maybe thinks it'll help him get the votes. I don't know. I can't get into his heart and into his head, but really lost his cool over the weekend on one of the interview shows. They're asking him about slaughtering innocents. It doesn't seem to faze him because in the midst of numerous questions, we'll play the most incendiary one first. He is defending the American use of nuclear weapons on Japan and Hiroshima and Nagasaki as somehow moral, licit, and militarily indicated, even though we now know that wasn't the case in any respect. But anyway, cut number nine, Senator Graham on slaughter in Gaza is justified.

Historians would say, why is it OK for Reagan to do it and not President Biden? But let me ask you about the big deal. Well, why is it OK? Well, can I say this? Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay. To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Senator, again, military officials say the technology has changed. But let me ask you about how all of this could impact- Yeah, these military officials that you're talking about are full of crap.

All right, I guess he didn't like the question, or he's got this distorted view of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I'll let you take it from there. He's from South Carolina, but go ahead. Well, I think that has something to do with it. I think there may be something in the water down there. Look, most people, I would say 70, 75 percent of the American people have been taught, as I was, that the dropping of those two bombs was necessary to make the Japanese surrender. And it saved thousands of U.S. Marines and U.S. soldiers. Wrong, historically inaccurate.

Those bombs were meant to intimidate the Russians because they were coming into Japan at the same time. They were to demonstrate that we were so exceptional, like that word, okay, that we had this weapon that we could use, and we did. Now, what's the business about South Carolina? I'm glad you mentioned that, you know. When Truman was deciding to do this, he asked MacArthur, he asked Eisenhower, he asked Admiral Leahy, they all said, this is crazy, please don't do that. We know from Japanese codes that they're ready to surrender. All you have to do is say, okay, keep your damn emperor, okay? We're not going to kill them. We're going to string them up, and they're ready to surrender. Don't do it. Who's telling them to do it? Well, there was a Secretary of State named Jimmy Burns,

and he was from a great state of North Carolina. He was the only one that persuaded Truman, yeah, we've got to show these people, we've got to show them we mean it. We mean it, okay? And besides, Mr. President, they don't look like us. And we know that Truman was a racist, that he always referred to African Americans by the N-word. And so it was fertile ears. Now, Jimmy Burns is not the only guy. Look at General Westmoreland, who led the fight in Vietnam.

He was also from South Carolina. And he said, after it was over, he said, you know, the Oriental, the Oriental, that doesn't put the same price on life. Life is cheap in the Orient. And so that explains why they're willing to sacrifice so many people, why we killed millions of them and we didn't prevail. So you have this racism. I just like to say this is really America's cardinal sin. And I'd like to refer finally to James Baldwin, who wrote this wonderful letter to

Angela Davis way back in 1970. It's very brief. I'll read two paragraphs from it. Let me put it this way, Angela. As long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness, they will allow millions of other people to be slaughtered. So long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between our own experience and the experience of others, they will never feel themselves sufficiently worthwhile to become responsible for themselves. Lastly, my dear sister Angela, some of us, white and black, know how great a price has been already paid to bring this new consciousness. If we know that, then we must fight for your life, she had just been imprisoned, as though it were our own, which it is. We must render impassable by our own bodies the corridor to the gas chamber.

For Sister Angela, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night. Now, that was James Baldwin writing from Paris in 1970. Not much has changed. It's much easier to wage war against people who don't look like us than other people who do look like us. And that has to be attacked. And Lindsey Graham needs to be put in his place by somebody who has some ounce of moral probity. So I'm seeing your argument by analogy, was easy to slaughter innocent Japanese civilians because their skin color and their facial features

were so different from ours. And it's easier for the Israelis to slaughter Palestinians because their skin color is substantially different from that of the Israelis. Is that the analogy you're making? It is. And it's easier for us Americans to support that. This is all maybe subliminal. It may be all unconscious, but it's real and it's there. And every time you see somebody from South Carolina, like Senator Lindsey Graham, talking about all this stuff, you know, let's nuke them, man. You know, why can you dispassionately, as you said before, Judge, how can you look at killing innocent human beings in this cavalier way? Well, it cries out for some kind of explanation.

Racism is mine. Thank you, Ray McGovern. Tough stuff to talk about. Some of it popular in the American consciousness. Others, other of it suppressed in the American consciousness. But you are never one for suppressing what you truthfully believe and what you know to be so. Thank you, my dear friend. We'll see you at the end of the week in the Intelligence Community Roundtable with our buddy, Larry Johnson. Most welcome. All the best. And the four-stated Larry

Johnson here at 11 o'clock a.m. Eastern today and at three o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.