Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Russia and the Middle East.

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Scott Ritter: Russia and the Middle East.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 Tuesday, January 30th, 2024. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, it's always a pleasure, my dear friend. Welcome back. Thank you for coming back on the show as always. What is the current status of affairs militarily between Russia and Ukraine as Republicans continue to negotiate with each other and with Joe Biden to send another $61 billion in cash and military hardware there? Well, I mean, let's put American politics aside and let's just assume for a second that this money was released. There's no ammunition to buy. NATO has admitted that they have failed in the ammunition war with Russia, that, you know, their goal was to, you know, produce a million rounds of ammunition a year. And they aren't anywhere near close to that. They're 200,000 rounds and they can't produce any more.

And there's no ammunition to buy. So it's like having all the money. If you save up all your money to buy a Rolls Royce, but there's no Rolls Royce dealers anymore. It's not there. So this is the reality. There's no tanks left to give them. They're doing pathetic things like going to Greece and getting Greece to send to Ukraine their old, retired, you know, mothballed Russian military equipment. You know, the Russians will receive it. It won't work. You can't maintain it. It's not ready for operation. It'll go to the field and it'll be destroyed.

There's nothing that NATO can do to change what's happening to the Ukrainian military on the ground, which is they are suffering strategic defeat at the hands of the Russians. We're seeing the Russians have taken over the strategic initiative, the operational of the Russians. We're seeing the Russians have taken over the strategic initiative, the operational initiative, and the tactical initiative. Russia is advancing across the lines. These aren't dramatic big arrow advances. These are small, going 500 meters this day, two kilometers here, three kilometers, but the Ukrainians are being pushed back, and they're being forced to, you know, because standardly if you're attacked and you're pushed out of your position, the first thing is to counterattack. The counterattack

requires the deployment of reserves. They don't have any reserves left to deploy. Nobody trained, no equipment. And so they're being stretched thin, thin, thin, and eventually you're going to stretch them so thin they're going to break all across the front and the Russians are moving forward. So this is the reality right now. We're looking at the lack of combat cohesion on the part of the Ukrainian forces. The Russians are only getting stronger. The Ukrainians are only getting weaker. I don't want to get into Israel just yet, but it's one of the reasons that there's nothing left for us to supply them because we're sending everything to the IDF. Well, I just have to laugh because, and I apologize for laughing because this is war

and it's a serious business. But you remember Joe Biden. Why did we give Ukraine cluster munitions? Because we didn't have any other 155 millimeter ammunition to give them. There's nothing left to give. So we gave them the cluster munitions because we had nothing left, except for all the 155 millimeter ammunition we just gave Israel. Well, what we've done and what the American people are being told is we are reaching deep into our war stocks. You know, the reason why we cut off the Ukrainians is because we didn't want to reach into our war stocks, but we're now giving the Israelis our material. So if we ever have to have that big shooting war that nobody wants, but

Lindsey Graham and everybody else is articulating in favor of, we won't have any ammunition for that because we're giving it to the Israelis. It's amazing how when it's Israel, we suddenly find things. We bring the rules. Hell, Biden stopped even going to Congress, even though he's constitutionally required to go to Congress. He just said, screw it, and Congress said, go for it, dude. We don't go for it, dude. We don't care because it's Israel. Special set of worlds, special set of circumstances. I mean, I don't like the Ukrainian government, but in a way, I feel sort of sorry for them because they're sitting there going, hey, you got us into this mess.

We lost a half a million guys. Our army's getting slaughtered, and you say there's nothing left to give, but you're giving it away to the Israelis. Why don't you send some of that our way? That's not how the game works. Is there some saber rattling or animosity going on between NATO and Russia as we speak? I mean, you see NATO making noises, but the bottom line is NATO is a paper tiger. There's nothing in NATO. They've got nothing. Listen to the words. You had the head of NATO's military, I guess, committee, Admiral Bauer say, you know, NATO has to prepare for war with Russia in 20 years. Well, good God, you have that kind of crystal ball, pal. You have other people saying if Ukraine is defeated, Russia will then attack NATO, and we have to be prepared for war. It's just stupid. Ukraine will be defeated. They are being

defeated, but the Russia's not going on to attack Poland or anybody who knows anything about the military. First of all, where's Russia going to get the forces to do that? Now, if NATO attacks Russia, Russia will mobilize, etc. But to move in from Ukraine, where Russia has sufficient forces to accomplish this task, and then transition immediately into an offensive into Romania or Poland is going to require, you know, hundreds of thousands of more troops that the Russians don't have. They haven't, you know, equipped, trained, prepared for this action. Logistics, you win war by logistics. The Russians aren't logistically prepared and the Russians don't want to do it. It's not their

doctrine. So NATO lives in a fantasy world that's designed to articulate a scenario that gives them continued relevance. And that's all this is about. What do you do when you are a failed military alliance that's breaking apart at the seams, that has been exposed as a paper tiger, where every one of their militaries is a joke, can't fight, and you put everything on the line in Ukraine, hoping that the Ukrainians could somehow accomplish that, which you could not. And now the Ukrainians have lost and you have nothing to give. How do you continue to articulate your relevance?

By projecting a threat that doesn't exist. Russia is not going to invade NATO. They have no desire to invade NATO. And yet NATO is going to sell this so that they can somehow scare their populations into continuing to set aside money for this ridiculous, outdated military alliance that has no viable reason to exist today. That, of course, will depend upon who's elected president at the end of this year, since Trump has animosity towards and no sympathy towards NATO whatsoever, and Joe Biden seems to be in love with it. Why are American troops in Syria? American troops are in Syria, ostensibly, because we were carrying out this anti-ISIS campaign. ISIS, the Islamic State, of course, emerged from the Syrian desert into Iraq in 2014, sweeping aside Iraqi army, American-trained and equipped Iraqi army in western Iraq and Mosul,

and then driving down towards Baghdad. The United States reintroduced American military forces into Iraq as part of a coalition that included, by the way, the Iranians led by Qasem Soleimani. We don't like to talk about that, but we fought side by side with Qasem Soleimani against the Islamic State. And we pushed them out of Iraq and then we pushed them into Syria. Soleimani is the general that Trump assassinated. That Trump assassinated, right. Probably the greatest Iranian warrior and Iranian diplomat.

He was assassinated while he was on a peace mission, trying to actually negotiate the reduction of tensions in the region, the elimination of the potential of conflict, but we killed them because we're dumber than dirt. But anyways, we move into Syria and we're carrying out this anti-ISIS mission. But at the same time, we are making an alliance with Syrian Kurds that give us access, control of one third of Syria, including the major oil production. And so we decided that rather than, you know, once we liberated this area from ISIS and we denied ISIS the access to the income derived from this oil production, that we would take control of it and turn it over to our new Kurdish allies, who, by the way, are terrorists affiliated with the Kurdish People's Party of Turkey, the PKK.

We just renamed them. That's the way we operate. We knew that legally we couldn't deal with them. So we renamed them to the Kurdish Democratic Forces. And we now work with these terrorists, giving them money, arms, and equipment to destabilize Bashar al-Assad. And that is what this is about. Not just in the northeastern part of Syria, but out of western Iraq, we took a strategic border crossing area that Al-Tanf, and we created what we call Area 55. And we have a presence there. Ironically, for this anti-ISIS mission, the purpose of the Al-Tanf mission is to work with local Syrian tribes who were loyal to ISIS. And all we've done is say, become loyal to us now. We use them to undermine

Bashar al-Assad's regime. It's a regime change operation. It's in violation of international law. We're illegally present there. And we're carrying out war crimes on a daily basis because to still the mineral resources of a sovereign state through an illegal occupation is, of course, a war crime. But that's what's going on. Why are we trying to destabilize Syria as a favor to Israel? Well, as part of our overall objective, you remember General Clark, Wesley Clark, spoke about at the end of the 9-11 attacks, he had a meeting in the Pentagon, where in the fall of 2001, he was told that the United States had a master plan to carry out regime change in seven Middle Eastern nations.

Syria was one of them. If you take a look at the 4th Infantry Division's plan of action during the invasion of Iraq, it included going up to the Al-Qa'im area and projecting itself into Syria if necessary to generate the destabilization of the Al-Assad regime. We view the Al-Assad regime not only as a problem for Israel, but a problem for us because they aren't responsive to us. So it's part of our overall regime change plan in the area. If Joe Biden attacks Iran, because as he said outside the White House a few hours ago, Iran paid for the attack on U.S. troops at the border of Syria and Jordan. Jordan, I think, says they're not in Jordan. The U.S. government wants us to believe that they are. I would think Jordan would know that they're not there. Another story for another time. No surprise, the feds are lying. But if he attacks Iran because Iran paid for, in his view, whatever happened to these three

soldiers who were killed and 34 who were injured, what is likely to be the response, the military response? Well, first of all, understand this, the hypocrisy of the United States. We say that Iran has provided a Shaheed drone to these militias and the militias use the Shaheed drone to attack an American position, killing three Americans, wounding up to 40 others. The United States has no problem with giving the Ukrainians billions of dollars of equipment that are used by the Ukrainians to attack Russians, killing tens of thousands of Russians. Let's keep this in perspective here. So the hypocrisy of Joe Biden is just beyond belief. A, we're illegally in Syria. We have no legal jurisdiction. That's a problem. These forces have every right to strike us because we're there illegally.

We have no legitimate right of self-defense. That's another reason why Biden doesn't want to talk about the American troops being in Syria, because you can't claim self-defense when you're illegally occupying the territory of another state. But if we do attack Iran, or we attack in a way that Iran feels threatened, this response of Biden is supposed to be designed to de-escalate through establishing deterrence. We're not going to establish any deterrence. We're going to carry out probably an operation that unfolds over the course of several days. We're going to strike a number of targets, and we're going to kill a number of Iranians. And all we're going to do is guarantee the Iranians are going to say, well, then we will continue to strike you.

And if we want to play the escalation game, the Iranians win. Already international commerce has been brought to a standstill because of what the Houthi have done in the Red Sea. And my dog's reacting up. But Iran will shut down the Strait of Hormuz. So then that's the end of international commerce. Iran will destroy the Al-Ubaid air base in Qatar, where the F-22s and F-35s are. Iran will destroy the fifth fleet in Bahrain. Iran will destroy Saudi oil production. This is the result, and there's nothing America can do to stop it. So Joe Biden needs to hit the brakes on this one, but he's not going to. Can the United States sustain a war against Iran on the ground from the sea in the air? No, we have no capability. We have aircraft carriers that can launch aircraft. We can drop

bombs. We can fire cruise missiles, but we don't have enough of these to have a meaningful impact. And like I said, the price will pay. While they may not get the carrier, they will definitely get the bases that we operate in the Middle East. The Iranians have thousands of high precision ballistic missiles that will hit the target they're aimed at. And if Joe Biden thinks he's saving American lives by retaliating for the three troops that are illegally on the ground in Syria, he's wrong. What he's doing is condemning scores, hundreds, perhaps thousands of Americans to death. That's what he's doing. And America needs to wake up. We do not have the capacity to wage full-scale armed conflict against Iran today.

You know, it took a lot of effort to get 750,000 Americans deployed into the region in 1990, 1991 to fight Operation Desert Storm. It took a lot of effort to get 110,000, 130,000 Americans deployed in the region to fight Operation Iraqi Freedom. Today, we don't have the capacity to generate that kind of troop movement. At best, we can get 30,000, 40,000 to take on a nation that has 40 million people with a huge army, a military that spent two decades training to fight us. So hopefully somebody in the Pentagon is whispering in the president's ear, don't do this because you're just going to get more Americans killed. If the U.S. can strike Iran for providing support to whomever struck the U.S. troops in Syria because they provided support. It's not

the United States fair game for providing support to Netanyahu's genocide in Gaza. Absolutely. Again, the hypocrisy of the American position. Of course, we are the exceptional nation. The rules don't apply to us. We operate under the rules-based international order that says that, you know, you have to do as we say, not as we do. America's above the law, literally. At least that's how we posture ourselves. But, you know, there's people that aren't playing that game. The Houthi are saying, we don't play that game. You're a fair target. The Iranians will do the same thing. And once we cross that red line, you know, once we start attacking Iran proper, all bets are off. Iran's not going to sit there and just absorb American missiles.

They will counter strike and they have a plan in action. We don't. Understand everything we're doing right now is reactive in nature. Because if we really had a plan, the moment they hit Al-Tanf and they killed those three Americans, we would have immediately retaliated with pre-planned missions. Boom, boom, boom, boom. That's how you get deterrence. You know, the enemy strikes, bam, they get knocked out. Well, where'd that come from? But they strike and then we spend days talking about it. They're going, you guys really don't know what you're doing, do you? And the answer is we don't know what we're doing.

Where is, well, first of all, what is Tower 22 and where is it? Tower 22 is a facility inside Jordan. It's a place that has been used as a logistics base, engineering base, communications base for the larger Area 55, which extends into Syria, the Al-Tanf base. So it's literally right across the border in Jordan. So that's why we're saying that these guys were with Tower 22. I've never been there, so I don't know. I've seen the photographs, but I've read a bunch of postings by people who have been there. Hundreds, thousands of Americans have rotated through over the years, and they're saying that there's no way these guys were at Tower 22. They were all in Tumf.

They were all in Syria. Correct. The U.S. is there unlawfully, and these guys were sitting ducks. Larry Johnson says that the amount of damage done, which killed the three and wounded the 34, likely was done by something stronger than a drone. Do you agree with that? You know, it depends. I don't know what, you know, where these guys were. Were they in a tent? Were they in a bunker? Were they all packed together? I do know that a Shaheed drone, especially the, you know, the more up-to-date versions can pack a serious punch. And if you have enough people in a confined space,

it doesn't take a large explosive device to kill and wound people. Most of the people are suffering from traumatic brain injury, which is, you know, concussion. It's amazing how we've elevated this. You know, if we didn't used to care about it, if a mortar round went off, you know, I suffered from numerous traumatic brain injuries during my time in the Marine Corps. People probably say, yeah, it shows. But, you know, it's just the nature of the beast. You know, it's the nature of the beast. But today they've elevated it now in this politically correct world. And it's now a traumatic brain injury. You know, there are legitimate TBIs. The IEDs that go off can cause serious problems. Concussions should always be paid attention to, but we need to be

careful. You know, if this had happened 30 years ago, half the people that were counted as wounded wouldn't be classified as wounded. They're just guys who have a headache. Have you ever heard of an assassination of patients in a hospital done by a state actor where the hospital is located in an area not at war with the state actor, where the state actor's intelligence community came into the hospital dressed as locals, dressed as healthcare providers, and murdered three patients in their bed? Have you ever heard of this in the history of warfare? Well, just what the Israelis just did. I mean, this was outrageous what they did. This is literally a war crime. They murdered patients, people who were getting treatment in a hospital.

It's a war crime, a literal war crime. It doesn't matter who these people are. They are not combatants. They are in a hospital receiving care. They're not armed. And the Israelis went in and assassinated and murdered them. And the world is just being silent about it because Israel can literally do anything Israel wants to do and not be held accountable. Hell, they're committing genocide, Judge. And a court has agreed that there's a good reason to pursue this genocide charge. But the world's, I mean, look at this. They're dressed as women. They're dressed as medical

staff. And they just go in. They knew they were going in and they plug these guys in the head. Hopefully there'll be justice for them, but I don't know when and I don't know how. The foreign minister of Israel has indicated that the IDF is preparing to go into Lebanon. Is this crazy? It's insane. The Hezbollah in Lebanon has been preparing since 2006, which they fought a short war with the Israelis in August of 2006, and they beat the Israelis. Hezbollah is actually 2-0 against Israel because they evicted Israel from southern Lebanon back in the early 2000s. So they're 2-0. One of the things that happened in 2006 is that Israel spent a lot of time bombing Beirut and

bombing the villages of southern Lebanon, taking the fight to southern Lebanon. And Hezbollah said that if there's going to be another war with Israel, we ain't going to let you fight on Lebanese territory. We're taking the fight to you. And Hezbollah will seize northern Israel. They will seize the Galilee. And there's nothing Israel can do to stop them from doing this. Hezbollah is better than the Israelis. They don't have the jet airplanes, but Israel won't have many of them either. Because if this war starts, then Hezbollah will take their Iranian provided precision guided munitions, and they'll take out the Israeli air bases. They'll take out the F-16s, the F-15s, the F-22s, the F-35s. And then you're going to have these fat Israeli reserves who just got their butts kicked by Hamas, by the way. And Hamas is pretty good,

but Hezbollah is even better. Combat hardened, years of experience in Syria, relevant experience, and they've been training for this fight since 2006. The Israelis won't know what hit them. And here's the interesting thing, Judge. The Israelis know this. Read Israeli media. They all say, we can't beat Hezbollah. We're not going to win. We'll lose the Galilee. So, and then the military acknowledges this, but why are they doing it? Because of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has put his political future, his fortunes ahead of the Israeli nation, out of being the subject of the most scrutinizing Israeli investigation of government failures in the history of Israel. He's put all of that, avoidance of all of that, ahead of the innocent Israeli, I shouldn't say innocent, the Israeli soldiers who will be slaughtered. Does Joe Biden and the crowd around him

want a larger conflagration, or is this an American domestic political issue? Does Lindsey Graham and the neocons attack Tehran? Do they not know what the response will be and how large that conflagration the response will cause? Israeli lobby. Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing for an Israeli conflict with Iran for decades now, but it's not an Israeli-Iranian conflict. He wants an American-Iranian conflict where Israel rides on the coattails of America. He's been pushing for this forever. And so whenever you see an American politician articulating in favor of a war with Iran, they're not doing it because they're saying this will make America stronger. They're doing it because they are beholden to their Israeli masters, their Israeli paymasters. And that's what's going on here. We will not win a war against Iran. It's physically impossible. I mean, we'd have to nuke them to win. It's too big of a nation. Geographically, it's huge. The Iranian military

is strong, stronger than we are in many respects. They'll be fighting on interior lines of communications. They'll be using pre-planned operations in their own home turf. We have to project power. They simply have to defend. The technology that they enjoy, these ballistic missiles, some of them are hypersonic. We can't shoot them down. They will strike what they aim at. These are precision missiles. Remember the attack on the Al-Asad base after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. The Iraqi missiles or the Iranian missiles hit every position they were aiming at. Precision strikes center mass every single time. And those were not their best missiles. So any military professional would be telling the president, as they did, remember when Donald Trump, when we lost the Global Hawk drone over the Strait of Hormuz, Trump wanted to bomb Iran. He wanted to strike

Iranian air defense. And everybody in the Pentagon went, oh, time out, boss. If we do that, we initiate a military exchange that will escalate to general war that we can't win right now. We don't have the resources. It would take us years to build up the resources to project them. And even if we project them into the region, there's no guarantee that we'd be successfully able to do that because we don't have friendly ports that can't be struck by the Iranians. We don't have airfields to land troops that will sink our ships as we approach the shore. So that's what we told Trump. And he went, oh, okay, I guess we shouldn't bomb Iran. Hopefully people are telling this to Joe Biden right now. Joe Biden, go ahead.

Has the IDF, with this focus on Iran, Hezbollah, has the IDF given up its goal of degrading Hamas and saving the hostages? We know that Netanyahu has not given up his goal on what he calls greater Israel, but have they given up their goal of degrading Hamas and getting the hostages back? Look, Israel's withdrawing military from Gaza. On their own admission, they say that they've only accounted for 20% of Hamas's tunnels. I say that that's a BS number, too high. Why? Because if you can say 20%, that means you know what 100% is, which means you know where the rest of the tunnels are, but somehow they still exist. Israel has no clue what the Hamas tunnel network is. Hamas has used that tunnel network effectively to inflict a thousand cuts on the Israelis. They've had to

pull two of their top brigades, the Golani Brigade and the Gavadi Brigade out of Gaza because they took prohibitive levels of casualties. They've pulled out of areas now. They never won Khan Yunus. They're pulling out in northern Gaza, which they said, we won that battle. Hamas is pulling back in, reoccupying. The Israelis cannot continue this fight. So they're pulling out. It's a humiliation. Hamas has beat Israel. Now, I saw some of the comments, you know, how did Hamas win? They won by not losing. You see, all Hamas has to do to win this fight is survive. Not only have they survived, but they've inflicted prohibitive casualties on the Israelis. They made this war too expensive for Israel. And then politically speaking, the idea was to destroy Hamas politically so that they would never again be represented by the Palestinian people. Right now, Mahmoud Ab speaking, the idea was to destroy Hamas politically so that they would never again be represented by the Palestinian people.

Right now, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, is saying that once this is all done, he's going to have an election where he is going to respect the will. And they anticipate that Hamas will win everything, the presidency, the legislation. You can't ignore Hamas now. They're the most politically relevant Palestinian political organization in the world today. And the world is rallying behind the cause of a Palestinian state. So Israel has lost. They have lost politically, and they've lost militarily, and they've lost economically. Thanks to Hezbollah's actions, the actions of Hamas, and the actions of the Houthi, the economy of Israel is being strangled. The port of Elliot has no ships in it, none.

It's one of the major ports of Israel. No ships at all. Israel still has to deal with 70,000 people, or I think it's 70,000 out of the north, another 20,000 or 30,000 from the south, who are displaced, homeless. They have to be settled in hotels. That costs money. The economy of northern Israel isn't functioning. Neither is the economy of southern Israel because of these conflicts. So Israel has lost economically. This is the strategic defeat of Israel. And at some point in time, the only thing that keeps Israel on this suicidal path

is Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of right-wing fanatics, and their days are numbered. The Israeli press speaks about it. Opposition speaks about it. Whispers from the military say that Netanyahu's got to go because he's destroying Israel. He's not helping Israel. Here's a photo of Benjamin Netanyahu before the UN holding what he says is a map of Israel. Do you see the Gaza Strip or the West Bank in that map of Israel? No, not at all. This was two weeks before October 7th. This was September 23rd, 2023. Benjamin Netanyahu intentionally or inadvertently acknowledging to the world that in his mind, in the mind of his government, Israel is from the river to the sea. It's been the motto of the Likud party since the 1970s.

And you hear the Israelis, including Benjamin Netanyahu today, saying the same thing, from the river to the sea. That's Israel. In reference to the Palestinians, you're called anti-Semitic, you're kicked off of YouTube, you're banned from Twitter. But if you're an Israeli saying it, you're applauded as the greatest people on the face of the earth.

If you chant that on the Columbia University campus and carry a Palestinian flag with you, they kick you off the campus, even if you are a student. Here's a report from Al Jazeera. This is the two fanatics in the Netanyahu cabinet, Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, rallying up a crowd, addressing Netanyahu directly, even though there's the crowd, you'll heariling up a crowd, addressing Netanyahu directly, even though there's the crowd, you'll hear them in a minute with English translations, addressing Netanyahu directly.

It turns out almost all the war cabinet was there, except for the prime minister. Mr. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I'm addressing you from this stage. It's a shame to wait another 19 years to understand that Gush Katith and northern Samaria must be returned. The responsibility of brave leadership is to make courageous decisions. We are settling our land from width to length, controlling it and fighting terror always and bringing with God's help security to all of Israel. You know what the answer is. Without settlement, there is no security. There's no question what these fanatics want and there's no question that they have control of the Netanyahu government. Look, Israel, when I was in Israel, I traveled Israel frequently in the 1990s as a UN weapons inspector, working with Israeli intelligence at the highest levels about the problem of Iraqi

weapons of mass destruction. And in doing so, I got involved with the people that do the assessments, the national security assessments, et cetera. And in 1998, when I had a discussion with the man who wrote it, we were talking about Iraq and how Iraq went from the number one threat when I started to work in 1994, and they had dropped down to like number eight, showing the significance of the work that we had done to mollify Israel's concerns about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Iran was, you know, I said, well, who's number one today? Iran. He said, no, no, Iran's number two. I said, well, who's number one? And he said, the radical right-wing Jews. The greatest threat to Israeli security is radical right-wing Jews.

And at that time, they were bringing in hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Russia that was dramatically changing the demographics and the, you know, the constituencies, the political constituency of Israel, you know, and moving it in a way that, away from people willing to embrace a Yitzhak Rabin type reconciliation with the Palestinians to a people who bought into the Benjamin Netanyahu, one Israel, greater Israel, no Palestinian, promoting settlement. 1998, it was identified as the greatest threat, and it is the greatest threat. Those people that you saw up there, if Israel ceases to exist as a nation state in the coming years, it's because of them, not because of Hamas, not because of Hezbollah, because of them.

They destroyed Israel. Scott Ritter, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for your passion, your analysis, and your emotion. It's always a pleasure, my dear friend. We'll see you next week. Thanks. Okay. Wow. Coming up later this week, your regulars, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Colonel Larry Wilkerson. And of course, as we get to the end of the week, the Intelligence Community Roundtable. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out.