Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Ukraine Collapsing In Plain Sight.

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Scott Ritter: Ukraine Collapsing In Plain Sight.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, April 22nd, 2024. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much. What do you make of the back and forth between Iran and Israel, which started out with Israel demolishing the Iranian consulate adjacent to the embassy in Damascus, murdering two generals and 15 other people. And then Iran showed that it can pierce Israel's most fortified defenses. Then Israel seems to have done something that was almost like a kabuki dance. Well, first of all, we have to back up. This didn't begin when Israel attacked the Iranian consulate. This has been going on since, I think realistically we should speak of 2001, when Israel uncovered what it believed to be an Iranian nuclear weapons program, COVRT, and began the process of turning the world against Iran, getting the IAEA inspectors involved, getting the United States to issue sanctions. Iran was, after over a decade and a half, able to

convince the world that it didn't have a nuclear weapons program. We had the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama signed, and it looked like we might be moving forward. But then Israel doubled down Iran has responded by, you know, forming up what's called the axis of resistance, arming Hezbollah, arming the Houthi, arming militias in Iraq and in Syria. And so these two countries have been at war now for two decades. And it's a serious war with many deaths, lots of destruction. What happened was Israel thought that it was continuing that low-grade hybrid war by blowing up this consulate, but they crossed the line. And Iran said, we can't allow this to happen. We have to reestablish the rules of the game, the deterrence policy. And so Iran responded. And the key to deterrence is to let the other side know that there will be overwhelming power applied,

that you will suffer far greater damage by doing something through our retaliation than you ever hoped to gain from doing it to begin with. So don't do it. And Iran had to send that message to Israel. And they did so by basically penetrating a missile defense shield that's priced in hundreds of billions of dollars and showing that they can reach out and touch any place in Israel anytime they want with whatever weapons they want. Israel had to save face. And so they did something that didn't really save face. But anybody who thinks this is over doesn't understand Israel. Israel will be undertaking covert action against Iran, continuing policy.

Look, I'll tell you how dangerous it got. Today, a head of the Iranian parliament's national security committee has said that if we get the permission from the supreme leader, we can test a nuclear bomb in less than a week. That's how dangerous the situation has just become. So Iran has nuclear weapons or does not? It does not have a nuclear weapon, but what Iran has been doing is gradually increasing the enrichment. Originally they were doing 3.5 to 5% enrichment for their nuclear fuel rods. They upped it to 20% to produce fuel for a test reactor that the United States was not allowing them to gain fuel for. And then when the United States backed out of the Iran nuclear deal, they enriched a bunch of uranium up to 60%, which could be useful in different kinds of reactors, including potential

military reactors. And basically now they have enough 60% uranium that if they run it through specially configured centrifuge cascades, they can produce enough fissile material for a nuclear device. That's where we're at today. And the Iranians are some of the smartest people on the planet. They mastered the nuclear fuel cycle. There's no doubt in my mind that they know how to make a nuclear bomb if they want to. The Iranian leadership has said that nuclear weapons are haram against Islam. They've issued fatwas saying we don't want it. But the thing about a fatwa is, especially in the Shia faith as practiced by the Iranians, it can be modified based upon current events. And if Israel is

threatening Iran with nuclear weapons, Iran is basically saying, we're not going to sit here and take that. I mean, this is how dangerous this situation has become. Israel literally pushed the world to the edge of a nuclear conflict in the Middle East. And I guess who paid for that multi-billion dollar defensive system that the Israelis have? You did. I did. All your listeners did from the United States. U.S. taxpayer money paid for this almost exclusively. The Americans were involved in every aspect of this. This incorporates a lot of America's best technologies, modified for the Israeli circumstances. But this is American-bought and paid for,

and we also supplemented it. I mean, this isn't just an Israeli-owned thing happening here to repel the Iranian attack. We plugged in the best we have. We plugged in, you know, this X-band ANTPY-2 radar that's attached to the FAD missile system, which we deployed to Israel, at least two batteries. We brought in two of our Aegis-equipped destroyers and plugged their radars and their missile system into this overarching ballistic missile defense architecture. We basically replicated the same missile defense architecture that we use to protect Europe and Asia. And what Iran showed is that any nation equipped with modern hypersonic missiles or maneuvering warheads can defeat this system. That means China can defeat it. North Korea can defeat it. Russia can defeat it. There is no such

thing as ballistic missile defense. This is what we learned back in the 60s and 70s. That's why we signed the ABM Treaty, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 72. But the United States pulled out of it in 2002. Russia has been warning them ever since that there is no such thing as a missile defense. Russia has built missiles to defeat it. Now the entire world has missiles to defeat it. The concept of missile defense is just an expensive joke. The Israelis were of the view that their existence in the footprint where they are and expanded where they want to go was based on everybody else fearing them. Are the Israelis now shocked with fear at the nature and extent of the Iran offensive weaponry that was visited upon them?

If Israel's not afraid, it should be. I will say this, that politicians sometimes get so caught up in their politicized world that they start to believe the nonsense that they put out there. So I'm sure there's many right-wing politicians now who think the Iranians are bluffing, that think Israel is supreme. I worked with Israeli intelligence for four straight years in the 1990s, and I worked with their technical intelligence department, the guys who do the ballistic missile analysis. These guys are really good. They're on top of their game. And therefore, they know what Iran can do. They know what Iran did. And they're very scared. This is one of the reasons why Israel didn't massively retaliate, because they understood what would happen if they did. They were desperate to find a way out of this

problem, which they did by throwing out some sort of face-saving nonsense that accomplished nothing. But the problem is they've pushed it too far. And the Iranians now have said, look, you know, if you want to play this game, we will produce a nuclear weapon in a week. And if we can produce it in a week, that means we can have three weapons by a month, three weapons all you need to take Israel off the face of the earth. So now what? Israel preemptively nuclear strikes Iran? We're into the realm of apocalyptic insanity at this point in time. Have you been able to confirm reports that the Saudi Emiratis and a few others have told the United States they cannot use their land or air space for an attack on Iran, meaning if the U.S. backs up Israel, the U.S. is almost neutralized in terms of where it can go. I haven't been able to independently confirm that.

What I can say is that I believe these reports are consistent with the political postures of these nations, which is to avoid confrontation with Iran. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates are members of BRICS. They've signed on to BRICS, which is an economic forum that has increasing geopolitical weight. The Chinese negotiated a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, meaning that they're pointing away from confrontation. And all nations in the region understand how destabilizing the American military presence is, especially when it's attached to aggressive Israeli behavior. And so it makes perfect sense to me that they would have told this to the United States, but I cannot independently confirm that. So what does Netanyahu do now? Invade Rafah, pick a fight with Hezbollah,

pick a fight with Iran and hope that Joe Biden backs him up? Well, he's in a very difficult situation. I think he's back to square one, which is to refocus his effort on Gaza, on Rafah. There's now talk about the Israelis doubling down on clearing out the population. I don't know if you saw the news, Judge, but the Palestinians are uncovering mass graves in the Khan Yunis area outside a hospital where over 400 civilians, many of whom have their hands tied behind their backs, their bodies were buried by the Israelis, clearly executions in violation of international law. I mean, the Israelis have gone insane. This is literally a nation out of control. It's lost all sense of responsibility. It's a very dangerous nation. It's a nuclear armed nation. And the more Israel gets backed into a corner,

the more dangerous it's going to get. Did the Israelis attempt to detonate a nuclear facility over Iran until the Russians stepped in? Is there any truth to that? Well, I know Pepe Escobar is a very well-known journalist who has published a post. He says he's getting ready to write a more in-depth article about this um i i will say this you know pepe has his sources and he he stands by those sources um sometimes sources say things that uh that journalists uh muddle in the interpretation um there's no aspect of peppy's story that stands up to technical scrutiny, meaning that the story he defined in F-35, a nuclear EMP weapon shot down over Jordan or Syria or someplace in that area by Russians,

none of that passes the smell test. You pick an F-35 for its stealth properties. It's not the ideal delivery system. If you were looking for a better delivery system, it would be the F-15E, which Israel has. But you pick the F-35 for stealth, which means you're limited to the weapons that you can put into an internal weapons bay to maintain your stealth configuration. That weapons bay is not big enough to hold a weapon that Israel doesn't have, which is basically an anti-satellite weapon, a rocket that could be fired by the F-35 as it goes up. You fire the rocket in the air, this one will be nuclear armed, and it'll have a nuclear detonation in the atmosphere, which then creates the EMP. But again, the size of the

warhead on that translates into a very small area in Iran that would be affected by this, meaning that it has no strategic utility. It makes no sense. And plus Russia shooting it down. How does a Russian airplane get through America's air defenses,

through our AWACS, through our coverage to shoot down an F-35 in stealth mode. And there's no debris, there's nothing. I would say that Pepe's been taken to the cleaners on this one, but he has his sources. He's going to write something. Maybe he can prove it. We'll see what he comes up with. If what he said is true, what became of the nuclear device? Where is it? In a desert somewhere? Well, that's the insanity of it because, again, the scenario he depicts means that the device would have had to have been made viable at launch. Now, there will be avionics and stuff in there that'll set off certain safety aspects of it, so the weapon will be safe, but the actual nuclear material is in the weapon.

In the old days, when we flew hydrogen bombs around, the crew would actually have to insert the pit into the weapon so that if the plane crashed on takeoff or something, you didn't have a actual hydrogen bomb around there assembled. This one, you know, it would be there. So if they lost an F-35, A, that's huge. B, they lost a nuclear weapon. C, fissile material now sitting in the desert, where D, there's terrorists out there who, if they got their hands on this, could wreak havoc, whether or not they can actually detonate it, but they could use it to create a dirty bomb. It didn't happen. That's what I'm saying. It didn't happen. I'll bet a paycheck on that. Where is the United States on Israel's clash with Iran?

The United States does not want a larger conflict. But now, again, Israel, because of their stupidity, you know, what you don't want is a nation like Iran. After the United States, Israel and the world has said, we will never allow you to have nuclear weapons. And you don't want Iran to now have declaratory policy that says, we got it within a week. You know, we've had people out there speculating about this, that, and the other thing, but Iran's never committed to it. And that creates an environment of diplomatic uncertainty, so that when you sit down with the Iranians, you don't have to bring this

up. It's unspoken. Now it's there on the table. The Iranians have put it in our face. This causes huge problems for us in terms of nuclear nonproliferation, in terms of our policy. We do not, and the Iranians did this because they believe that the United States is in a very precarious situation. We lack military power in the region to assist Israel with a meaningful strike. And so that was proven because Israel, once they were told the United States isn't going to participate, Israel stood down because Israel couldn't go it alone. It doesn't have the capacity to go it alone. Iran is taking advantage of this. They feel backed into a corner because they know what Israel is getting ready to do, which is to launch a full-scale covert war against their nuclear facilities. And Iran is basically putting

Israel on notice saying, we won't tolerate that anymore either. If you start blowing up our facilities, we may make the decision to produce a nuclear bomb. And now what? The Israelis have promised to attack Iran if that's the case. So has the United States. Iran may have just called America's bluff. What does Vladimir Putin think about all this? Well, he didn't call me today and he wouldn't take my call. But I would imagine, given the fact that Russian policy is fairly consistent, that the past statements that the Russian government has made regarding Iran and nuclear weapons stand, that Russia will not support Iran getting nuclear weapons, that that is against the ally in this ongoing struggle against American hegemony.

And so I think the Russians will be articulating restraint on the part of Iran, hopefully getting some sort of formal statement from the Ayatollah that he hasn't issued a fatwa authorizing it that this was irresponsible speculation by a member of parliament, nothing more. We're going to take a break for a commercial announcement. When we come back, Scott and I will be talking about the travesty on the floor of the House of Representatives over the weekend and what that means for Ukraine. But first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now, today? Stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially.

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Don't be caught off guard. Experts predict the markets may tank again. You'll be happy if you have protection in place. So call Lear at 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. What difference will it make for the war in Ukraine that the United States Congress has now authorized another $61 billion, two-thirds of which stays here in the U.S.? It doesn't change the outcome whatsoever. It may

have bought the Ukrainians 10, 20 days, but it's going to cost them 100,000 lives. It changes nothing. I mean, you know, just to put this in perspective, we gave the Ukrainians $23 billion in 2022, at the end of 2022, in early 2023, to create this army for this vaunted counteroffensive. It failed miserably. At that time, Ukraine had a military that had combat cohesion. They had an air defense system in place. They had artillery with ammunition, and the Russians beat them. Right now, as we speak, Ukraine, the line is collapsing. There's no manpower to back it up. I don't care how much money you give the Ukrainians, that doesn't give them manpower.

And even if they are to, you know, they have this new mobilization law, et cetera, they have to train them. To train a combat effective person is going to be three months. They don't have three months. How are they going to equip them? And then how are they going to get all this stuff to the front line? The Ukrainians have lost any notion of air superiority that can be put in place by air defense. They have no air defense. That means the Russians are imposing their will on the battlefield. It's a completely different environment right now than it was in 2023.

The Ukrainians just can't move around. They're being killed as they speak. All we've done is increase the target opportunities for the Russians. And the Russians, notice, they're not panicking. The Russians aren't saying anything. They have their plan. Their plan is going forward. And from what I understand, the Russians, they're disappointed because they were hoping that if the Congress continued to deny the funds that the Ukrainians would see the writing on the wall and find a way to end this war without more people dying. Now Congress has breathed vain hope into the Ukrainians.

They will continue this fight, which means they will continue to die. And the terms of surrender that the Russians will eventually be imposing will be much harsher. The longer this war goes on, the harsher the Russian terms will be. Here's President Zelensky yesterday. This is cut number one, Chris, on Meet the Press. If Ukraine really gets the weapons system, which we need so much, Україна дійсно отримує військовий систем, який ми потребуємо так багато, тисячі солдат потребуємо так багато. І ця допомога не має бути просто розпадом і тілою, але вона має вийти в танківі військові системи. some really crucial weapon system which are hard to get, the long-range artillery. And I really appreciate that it mentions ATAKAMS, long-range weapons, and it's important, because we need long-range weapons to not lose people on the front line because we have casualties, because we cannot reach that far.

Our weapons are not that long range. So we need it and air defense. This is crucial. Does he know what he's talking about? What he's doing is he's fudging talking points put out by people like Ben Hodges and people in the, you know, Lloyd Austin and others in the Pentagon. Look, if you have long range strike capability, you can disrupt Russian logistics, Russian command and control. You can disrupt, you know, Russian troop concentrations. That's that's a truism. Without these, the Russians are able to accomplish more closer to the front line,

creates, you know, better cohesion, better ability to mass power. So Zelensky's right. Give them attack them and he can disrupt things. All the Russians will do is adapt. It doesn't change the outcome. Just like when we gave them HIMARS, the Russians will do is adapt. It doesn't change the outcome. Just like when we gave them HIMARS, the Russians changed the way they did business. Now they're shooting down the HIMARS. HIMARS wasn't the game winning thing. It was game changing for a moment, but then the Russians adapted. You give the Ukrainians ATAKOMs, it will be a game changer for a moment. Then the Russians will adapt and all the realities we just talked about come back to haunt. Air defense, I mean, there's not enough air defense systems in Europe to help the Ukrainians out right now. First of all, how do you get them? They've been denuded. So now, as you bring in air defense, there's no existing air defense umbrella that's going to protect them

while they position. There's nothing there. So as you bring it in, the air defense is going to be picked off. Look, Zelensky needs to come to the understanding that he has lost this war, and there is no magic weapon. There's no series of weapons that can change this. If NATO sent its military into Ukraine right now, Russia would prevail. It would be a much more difficult fight, but Russia would prevail. That's because Russia has the superiority of arms, the concentration of firepower, the experience, et cetera. Ukraine has lost all of this. This is literally the fourth army that NATO's rebuilding right now, and this is not going to be an effective army. They're dying on the battlefield. The second line of defense has been breached outside of Avika. There's nothing behind that second line. We're looking at the beginning of the collapse. So Zelensky is just living in a fantasy world. Here he is talking about a planned Russian offensive of 300,000

troops. If this is true, I can't imagine that he could resist it uh cut number five Russia wants to mobilize 300 000 people by June 1st we are getting ready for this by May 9th Russia expects that in the east of Ukraine they will take chassiv Yar City I visited the region recently I I talked to the soldiers. The soldiers say that they lack equipment. They need to fight Russian reconnaissance drones, which essentially guide artillery. And we need artillery shells. I hope we'll be able to stay, and weapons will come on time and we will repel the enemy and then we'll break the plans of the Russian Federation with regards to this

full-scale offensive. I mean, the man lives in the fantasy world. First of all, Russia doesn't operate on the calendar. If we haven't figured that out yet, we have. Russia is, they are performance driven. They are objective driven. Denazification, demilitarization. You have yet to see a Russian commander. You've never seen Vladimir Putin say, take this city by this date or a Russian general take it by this date. they say, take this city, take this objective, take that objective. And the Russians move forward. And when they take it, they go, okay, now move on to this objective, this objective, this objective. The Russians don't sit there and say, we have to do something by a calendar. This is the fiction of Zelensky. May 9th, of course, is Victory Day. So he's trying to imply that Russia needs to take Chesavyar by Victory Day. Russia doesn't need to take Chesavyar by Victory Day. They just need to take Chesavyar when they take it. This 300,000 mobilization, it's already happening, Zelensky. Are you high?

Well, sorry, I didn't want to go that route. The fact of the matter is the Russians have announced that they have built two new combined arms armies and the Dnieper River Flotilla. That's a multidivisional force. The purpose of the combined arms army is to give them the ability, in addition to the 650, 700,000 troops that they have there, we're talking about another 200, 300,000, potentially a million soldiers that will surround Kharkov, will secure the rest of the Donbas, Zaporizhia, Kherson, secure the Dnieper River, meaning you'll have a flotilla in place on both sides of the river securing it, and have the potential to thrust down to Odessa. And this

is something that they say they're going to be ready to do by June, July, they'll have accomplished this. So, you know, I don't know where Zelensky thinks, how he thinks he's going to stop this. Does he think some attack him, some artillery ammunition will allow him to stop it? I understand what you want to do with this money. You want to pay back your political donors, but don't expect this to change the outcome. $61 billion now wasted because these Republicans and Democrats, it's both of them, want to pay back the military-industrial complex. Do they actually think it will change the outcome? Congress doesn't think. First of all, Mike Johnson doesn't know anything about the military, and with all due respect to even those veterans in Congress, they have so politicized whatever common sense they want to have. Look, when Mike Johnson talks about the biblical need to release

this money, he lost me. I mean, I respect people's religion. I respect people's faith. But when you're an American, when you're Speaker of the House, your religion belongs nowhere in the United States Congress. You're there to do the people's business. The Constitution separates church from state. So keep your Bible out of my business. But that tells you where he's at. He's not thinking militarily. He wouldn't understand anything we're talking about here today. He doesn't know what an attack comes does. He doesn't know what an F-16 does. He just is told that that's what we want to do. We want to do a certain amount of money. We're playing political games. All of Congress is like that. They don't understand anything that we just said.

And Graham basically is the only one that has simplified it down. He knows what he wants, to fight to the last Ukrainian. He wants to squeeze Ukraine dry to hurt the Russians. That's all he wants to accomplish. His bloodlust, at least, is honest. I hate him for it, but at least he's honest. Have you ever seen members of Congress waving a foreign flag on the floor of the House of Representatives? Well, not like that. No, this is disgusting. And, you know, they need to remember,

they're not just waving the flag, but they're saying Slavukina and glory to the heroes. These are Bandera slogans that are the same as see how for Nazi Germany. These are the slogans that Bandera shouted as they burned Jews to death, as they slaughtered people to death. They are celebrating a Nazi ideology that my grandparents, your grandparents, our relatives

fought against, fought to defeat, and yet has been resurrected thanks to U.S. taxpayer money in Ukraine today. And waving that flag is like waving the Nazi flag. And these guys are so ignorant, they don't realize it. The other thing is, if you claim that you support the Ukrainians, why don't you at least have the integrity to say that while you're waving that flag, that you're going to need to produce 100,000 of those flags to put over the coffins of the Ukrainians that are going into the ground because of your stupidity. We don't like the Ukrainians. We don't support the Ukrainians. Everybody who waved that flag, you hate the Ukrainians because you just condemn them to massive death, massive suffering, massive destruction. This is really despairing as an American. Watch this. Watch the

flag waving. I missed it, but thank you. Okay. The house will be in order. The house will be in order. The chair would remind my colleagues to observe proper decorum. Flag waving on the floor is not appropriate. The House will be in order. Without objection, a motion to reconsider is laid on the table. For what purpose does the gentleman from Floridaora rise I said look the general woman from Florida the gentleman is not recognized the house will be in order these are the people that just voted to allow the intelligence community to spy on us without warrants

and to send between $21 and $26 billion to Benjamin Netanyahu and $61 billion in the name of the Ukrainians, though we know two-thirds of it will stay here. What a disgrace. And now you tell me that this is emblematic of Nazi sloganisms, the use of sloganeering, the use of that flag? Judge, I'll make something to make it even worse for you. Many of the Democrats and some of the Republicans, I don't know if any Republicans were waving flags, but the Democrats were waving flags there back in September of 2023, invited Azov Battalion Nazis to come into the United States Congress,

speak to members of Congress, sell their Nazi memorabilia, sell their Nazi memorabilia in the Congress to raise money for their Nazi cause. And they all said, no, it's just helping the Ukrainians. These are Ukrainian nationalists, not Nazis. The Nazi memorabilia had the Nazi symbology being sold in the United States Congress. I don't know why the American people tolerate this, why we put up with this, the disgraceful behavior of these people who claim to support Ukraine, but they don't know what they're supporting. Or if they do know what they're supporting, then they should be condemned even more. Last question. Over the weekend, there was a rumor that came from a couple of sources, so I need to run it past you.

Did France activate 1,000 troops and send them to Odessa? Not that I know of. France did send some advisors and some technical people in with some artillery pieces, which were immediately destroyed by the Russians killing these French people. Macron, from what I hear, is extremely upset that the Russians dared kill these French people who were simply providing technical advice, except they were close to the front lines with an artillery piece that's designed to fire 155 millimeter rounds towards the Russians. But if France sent a thousand people to Odessa, there'd be a thousand coffins coming home right now. Russia's not playing around. They sent the

signal to the French and they made it clear. Those guys came in and within a week they were dead. And that's the future of any Frenchman that steps foot, any Pole that steps foot, any German that steps foot, any American that steps foot on the soil of Ukraine with the intent of doing harm to Russia. Scott Ritter, thank you, my dear friend. Thank you for the time and thank you for the depth of your analysis. Always, always, listening to Major Ritter long enough is the moral equivalent of a PhD in military science. I would disagree, but thank you. Thank you, Scott. We'll see you again soon, my friend. All the best. Thank you. Of course. Let me just look at my calendar for tomorrow, dear friends. A long and fruitful day today from our perspective.

Matt Ho at 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Karen Kwiatkowski at 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Kyle Anzalone at 4 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, all times Eastern. Judge Napolitano and all the rest of your favorites on this show before the week is out. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.