Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter:

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, March 4th, 2024. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, my dear friend, thank you very much for coming on the show, as always. What is your take on the revelation over the weekend, I believe leaked by Russian intelligence, of a conversation between two or more high-ranking German generals talking about sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine, the need for German personnel, I'm not clear if it's soldiers, intelligence, or civilians to operate them, and the sort of offhanded

reference to, well, we all know that the British are there. Well, first and foremost, understand that this is, they're planning an act of aggression, an act of war. And the last time I checked, Germany wasn't at war with Russia. But this conversation isn't hypothetical. I was a targeting officer for a while in my former career in the Marine Corps. And I helped put together the targeting appendix for our war plan against Iran. And I know what it means to look at a bridge and determine what we want to have happen to that bridge and what kind of munitions would be required to achieve the desired effect of dropping the bridge, delaying, you know, things of that nature. The Germans were talking about using Taurus missiles, which is a German-made cruise missile, to strike a strategic Russian civilian

piece of infrastructure, the Crimea Bridge, to destroy it. They would need 10 to 20 of these missiles. That means that they've looked at aiming points. They've looked at, you know, the kinetic results, you know, what would happen when you hit it. Do you have to put more than one system on a pylon? Things of that nature. This is detailed planning that has taken place. It's not hypothetical stuff. These aren't four German officers sitting there drinking beer, eating schnitzel, and just, you know, shooting the breeze. These guys, this is a result of concerted planning. And it's not just planning in a vacuum. They know that this kind of planning has been taking place by the British and the French to strike the same target. We know that the Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles, which are the cruise missiles provided by both Great Britain and France, have been used to target the Kerch Bridge and other targets. It's an act of war. And here's the most important part, though. When we speak of democracies, NATO members, you know, Germany is supposed to be a

democracy. Civil-military relations is the most important thing. That means that there has to be absolute civilian control of the military. The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a few days prior to this conversation taking place, went public saying he will not allow Taurus missiles to be transferred. The German parliament has not once but twice overwhelmingly voted against sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine. And this is before this conversation took place. These officers say that the defense minister, Pistorius, is cognizant of what they're speaking of. This means that civil military authority in Germany has broken down completely. This is why the state of Saxony is talking about opening Article 13 proceedings against these officers for planning a war of aggression, which is a crime

in Germany. Is this the $2 billion bridge to Crimea, which looks like it's one of the wonders of the world? Yes, I've been across it three times. I think it actually costs more than $2 billion, but yeah, it's a very big bridge. But it's a civilian target. They're not talking about bombing a military base. This would be an act of war, would it not? Well, it's going to be an act of war, whether it's a civilian target or a military target, it's an act of war. If it's a purely civilian target, it becomes an act of terrorism. One can make the argument that this bridge, because military trucks cross the bridge, military equipment on trains crosses the bridge, that it could be a military target. But you're

missing the point here. Because people are saying, if Russia's bombing Ukraine, then Ukraine has every right to strike Russia. But they're missing the big picture. This is not a war between Ukraine and Russia. This is a war between Russia and the collective West. Ukraine, all of its logistics, its planning, its intelligence,. It's a civilian bridge. But if you want to play that game, then what you're saying is this war has changed. Now Russia gets to strike all the targets in Europe that will level that playing field. This is very much an uneven playing field right now. Russia is actually fighting this war with a hand tied behind its back because all the things that it would normally be able to do to disrupt logistics, which is one of the most important aspects of the war, it can't do because all the logistics is taking place on protected soil. Poland, Germany, France, Netherlands, that's places that Russia can't touch. Ukraine has a safe haven. In the Vietnam

War, we talked about how the North Vietnamese could go back to safe havens and how this, you know, made it very difficult for the United States to, you know, to prevail in this conflict. Russia's facing a similar problem right now. And if Germany's, if the logic is, no, you can bomb that bridge because Russia gets to bomb targets in Ukraine, you're missing the bigger picture. Understood. Is there any question that NATO, the United States, France, Russia, Great Britain are waging war against Russia? First of all, I would have to say that NATO isn't at this juncture. What I would say is that there are nations who are NATO members who are active participants in this conflict. And I would list Poland, I would list Great Britain, I would list France, I would list Germany, and I would list the United States at a minimum, because we have troops on the ground

who are actively involved in things, whether it be targeting or logistics or command and control that are legitimate targets from a military perspective. So we have people on the ground in Ukraine doing things that makes them a legitimate target, but we're doing it unilaterally. We're not doing it part of a NATO collective. This is a unilateral effort. And so far we've kept a large conventional units out of the mix. That would sort of be a red line. We have advisors, however we define them, whether they be active duty or sheep dip, that's where you take an active duty person and you sign some paperwork and they become a CIA contractor, things of that nature. We have people work in air defense. We have people work

in the sensitive systems, HIMARS targeting, et cetera. We know that the British special air service is there, the special boat service is there, the French have sent commando units there. We have our own special forces on the ground in Ukraine. So we already have military forces deployed to Ukraine, but we haven't gone in as a NATO entity saying, here is NATO forces, a brigade, a division, a corps coming in. That would prompt a direct military conflict. But you began the conversation quite profoundly and quite accurately, I think, by saying that what the German generals were talking about is an act of war. It is no less an act of war, I would argue, for the United States to show Ukrainians how to pick a target inside Russia. It is no less an act of war for the British special forces to plan and plot how to blow up that bridge.

And the same thing for the Poles and the French. 100%. And again, we need to understand the following. If it weren't for the intelligence support provided by the United States, Great Britain, France and others, Ukraine wouldn't be able to accomplish any of the impressive results that they have sinking Russian ships, damaging Russian ships, striking Russian air bases. to take, it's not just about slapping a scalp missile or storm shadow under a SU-24 and going off and launching it. There's downlinks taking place. We're running reconnaissance missions with drones, with satellites, et cetera, picking up the Russian air defense radars that creates an overlay showing the weak, the links, the gaps that can be shot. That's shot down, downlinked to the airplane that the Ukrainian pilot's flying. And he's able then to load this into a targeting profile for the missile that he fires with the most up-to-date stuff that allows that missile

to work its way through. This is why they're succeeding. If the Ukrainians didn't have this, they wouldn't have any of these successes. So it is an active war. We are active participants in the processes that allow the Ukrainians to strike Russian targets. And no general government legislative body in any of these countries, United States, France, Germany, Great Britain, I don't know about Poland, but I'm going to ask you, has authorized those countries to deploy military assets against Russia? Well, what I would say is that no legislative body has done it overtly. I know that the United States, for instance, we have presidential findings. So the president can sign the finding authorizing certain things to take

place. You report these to the gang of eight, which are the eight most powerful members of the- That's the Congress within the Congress that meets in secret and can't repeat to other members of Congress what they're told. Right. So that's not really democracy taking place. The British, the prime minister has the ability to do things with the special air service that avoids parliamentary scrutiny. And I believe the French have similar things. system, which are undemocratic in principle and reality, and use it to bypass the kind of scrutiny that normally would take place before you send a nation to war. And I just want to remind people, if Germany ever did facilitate the use of Taurus missiles to take down the Kerch Bridge, that's an act of war that Russia would retaliate. That retaliation would more than likely lead to

a direct conflict between NATO and the United States, which would lead to a general nuclear war, and then we all die. That's the stakes here. This isn't a game. We've allowed Germany and France, the Germans with the Taurus missile, France talking about sending troops over to hijack the national security of the United States. We are on a path towards a war that will be global ending. And we don't have Congress talking about it. We don't have the president being honest with the American people. We're pretending that it isn't happening, but it is happening. Listen to, you talk about Congress not talking about it. Listen to Congressman Mike Turner, who's the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, just talking matter of factly about how badly the Ukrainians need the $61 billion and how we're going to get it to them

and how without it they lose and with it they win. Cut number six. Speaker Johnson now has the leeway and the flexibility to work through Congress and the Appropriations Committee. I think it's going to be moving quickly. We're going to get our appropriations. They're not out of ammunition in April. They're not completely out of ammunition. I've been to, I was in Kiev last month and met with Zelensky also at the Munich Security Conference and certainly spoke to our military. And they are rationing, but they are not out. This is critical. We have to support them now or they will lose. And I think the speaker sees that

emergency. Hakeem Jeffrey sees that emergency. And I think we're going to see bills hit the floor. Is this the first two questions or a question and a comment? Is this the first time that you have heard, who knows if it's true or not, the guys's a political hack, that the Ukrainians are rationing ammunition. And secondly, when I played that to our good friend Colonel McGregor earlier today, he said, well, Congressman Turner is happy to recount about his trip to Kiev. The next time he goes to Kiev, he'll be met by Russian military or Russian security forces. Well, no, we've known that the Ukrainians are rationing artillery ammunition. I mean, they knew since last fall that they were running out of ammunition, that they didn't have it.

And unless the West can miraculously make it appear, they would run out. So what they've done is what any military planner does, is that you drop the amount of ammunition that you do. And it's cost them. At Vyivka, look, the Russians said straight up, I've listened to the interviews with the Russian commanders, all these people are saying that Ukrainians ran out of ammunition. He said, they didn't run out of ammunition. We were getting shelled every second of the day by these guys. The problem is that they run out of the allocation that they

have. So they hit the Russians, hit the Russians, hit the Russians, then they're out. And now the Russians can maneuver without being, and they can push them back. But it's not as though the Ukrainians don't have any ammunition. They just don't have enough. It's what happened to the Germans in World War II. At the end of the day, the Germans didn't have sufficient artillery ammunition to apply artillery firepower on the battlefield in a way that had a meaningful impact against the Soviets. So it's not as though the Germans ever ran out of ammunition. They just didn't have enough to accomplish what needs to be done. And that's the case with Ukraine. They've rationed it. And what's going to happen, it's like starvation. You don't go from having the big five-course meal to having nothing. Everybody knows that you basically start

cutting back. And in the end, you're still eating a little bit of bread here and there to go through the motions before you run out of everything. The Ukrainians right now, instead of having a five-course meal, they have a one-course meal. They have enough ammunition to, you know, to do certain things, to make the Russians pay a little bit of a price, but then they can't continue. That's what they were able to do before. That's why the battlefield was relatively static. Now they don't have it. You see the Russians making these advances. And I, you know, I don't know when Turner's going to plan his next, you know, visit to Kiev, But if he waits too long, yeah, I think Colonel McGregor's warning will be quite right. I think he'll see guys wearing a different kind of uniform

reporting to a different boss than the ones who agreed to him. Does Ukraine have any substantial defenses? Remember concrete uh lines of three uh defenses that the Russians built that actually absolutely stopped the so-called spring offensive spring offensive there's an old phrase and we haven't talked about that in a year uh do the ukraines have anything like that well remember the Russian defenses weren't just the suravikin line, which you're talking about, the dragon's teeth, you know, the rows of concrete teeth, the deep trenches. It was this defensive that was planned for flexible defense, meaning that you have multiple layers and you have the troops there to pull this off. You have troops on the front line who are trained and have the ability to interdict with artillery, with aircraft, with helicopters to break up the attack. And then if the attack presses forward to pull back to pre-prepared

positions where you continue a pre-planned defensive operation, this is why the Ukrainians didn't get anywhere. Ukrainians are digging trenches. In some places, they're putting down barbed wire. In some places, they're putting down this. They don't have any men and they don't have any men trained to do this operation anymore. Zelensky just came out and admitted that there's a 700,000-man deficit. We were talking about 500,000 dead. Zelensky's pretty much said 700,000 are gone. They're not on the books anymore. We got two to 300,000 here. And if we don't get 500,000 right now, it's over. It doesn't matter how much ammunition they get, how much money they get. They don't have any men. And that's what's costing right now because the Russians are able to just

to push through. The Russians are killing thousands of Ukrainians a day right now. The death count is just piling up, piling up, piling up because the Ukrainians don't have the ability to employ the tactics which require fire support to break up the Russian attack, to hold the Russians back while they consolidate, while they defend. Right now, the Russians are able to impose their will on the battlefield and it's costing Ukraine dearly. They're out of men and that's what's going to lose them the war more than anything else. In light of what you just said, listen to Secretary of Defense Austin. This is nothing more than the Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken domino theory, which of course is senseless. But here he is, cut number eight. We know that if Putin is successful here,

he will not stop. He will continue to take more aggressive action in the region, and other leaders around the world, other autocrats around the world will look at this, and they'll be encouraged by the fact that this happened, and we failed to support a democracy. And so if you're a Baltic state, you're really worried about whether or not you're next. And so they know Putin. They know what he's capable of. And quite frankly, if Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia. It does sound like that one Joe Biden speech, if Putin takes Ukraine, I don't know why they think that that's going to happen. I don't think they believe it for a minute.

This is all an effort to talk the Republicans into spraying loose another $61 billion. I'm going to ask you in a minute what the hell they would do with the $61 billion if they don't have manpower. But before we get to that, your comments on General, excuse me, Secretary Austin. Yeah, I just wish for once I was a member of Congress, I would love to to say, excuse me, Secretary Austin, did you say you know what Russia is going to do? How do you know? And if we need to go and do a private little meeting back here, so you have to reveal top secret information, that's fine. But this is an important word. Words matter. You say you know. So either you're lying to us right now about issues of war and peace, or you know something

we need to know. I can't sit here and say, only you get to know it. We need to know it. What do you know, Mr. Secretary? And the answer is he knows nothing. He just made that crap up. Excuse my language. And it's the same thing when he talks about the Baltic states fearing. The truth came out in the end where he said that NATO believes. Well, that's different than knowing. That's just a belief system that could be fantasy-based belief system, which most American policy is based upon, or fact-based, in which case I'd want to know the facts. Russia's not going to attack Poland.

Russia's not going to attack the Baltic states. Russia's not going to attack NATO. That is just a straight-up fact. And everybody who knows anything about Russia knows this to be the truth. Now, if Poland attacks Russia, then Russia will attack Poland. If the Baltic states attack Russia, then Russia will attack them. But left to their own devices, this is a conflict that begins and ends in Ukraine. That's it.

As we speak, Prime Minister Netanyahu's domestic political adversary, though they agree on the slaughter in Gaza, is in the United States, supposedly to the chagrin of Netanyahu. What is Benny Gantz doing here? Do you know? Well, he went in violation of the orders. The Israelis, you know, the mainstream media has done a good job of promoting the Israeli point of view, the posture, et cetera. And so I think some people might be sitting back going, Israel is doing pretty good. But if you dig deep, you'll find the videos of the Israeli officers breaking down about how the losses are far more than what's been reported, that Israel is broken, that their military spirit is broken. You know, and they've also, Israel's looking around the world,

realizing that they, you know, Gantz is somebody who believes in the day after. What that means is the day after the war ends, how's Israel going to live in this world? The world is turned against Israel. And he's worried about that too. So he's coming to the United States to say, we need to talk about a post Netanyahu reality here. How do we get to that? Because as long as Netanyahu is here, we can't do anything. If you want this ceasefire, if you want that, we have to figure out how to make this problem go away. And I think that's what Gantz is talking about.

Have the Israelis begun to engage with Hezbollah, and are they taking casualties? Israel's been taking casualties from Hezbollah from the very beginning of this conflict. Hezbollah has shown its ability to impose its will on the Israelis. They strike targets repeatedly. They've cost Israel billions of dollars. They've taken out dozens of armored pieces. They've killed scores of Israeli troops, but it hasn't become a full-scale conflict yet. And I don't think either side wants it to become a full-scale conflict because that takes this,

there's hope on the horizon. The Russians are doing some pretty interesting things. They brought Hamas and the PLO to Russia and Russia sat down with Hamas and said, look, we can't call you Hamas anymore. We're going to have to take a page out of the American book. You're going to have to be renamed. We're not saying you go away. You can't go away. You're here. You're winning this fight, but you have to operate within the structure of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. You guys have to come together and make peace and redefine yourself as a singularity that can be imposed over Gaza and the West Bank with one voice. And if you can do that, we just checkmated Israel. And so that's, you know, these are

things that are happening right now. You say that this is being done at the behest of the Russians. Yes, Russia called them in. This is why the Israeli ambassador at the UN went crazy the other day, condemning Russia and we're going to send weapons to Ukraine and we hate you, Russia, blah, blah, blah. It's because Russia actually knows how to solve this problem and they're working actively to come up with a solution. Is Israel in danger of the Russian military helping Hezbollah?

No, not at all. First of all, Russia is not America. They don't lead with the military, they lead diplomatically. That's why they have a guy named Sergey Lavrov who's respected around the world in ways that Tony Blinken isn't. Russia's looking for a peaceful resolution with long-lasting, peaceful potential. They're not looking to create the conditions for conflict. Scott Ritter, I feel like you've been on a treadmill. It's almost exhausting listening to you because you come forth with such extraordinary factual information and gifted analysis. Thank you very much, my dear friend. Thank you.

Very much, deeply appreciate it. I know this is not your usual day, but thank you very much for accommodating my schedule today. All my best to you. Thanks, and best to you too. Thank you, Scott. Coming up in this long but happy day at 515 Eastern, Aaron Maté, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.