Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: US to Attack Russia

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, September 11th, September 11th, 2024. Scott Ritter joins us today. Scott, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. I do want to talk to you at some length on the rumors we are all hearing that as we speak, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and his British counterpart are informing former, because he's no longer president, President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine, the conditions under which Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Joe Biden will allow the Ukraine military to use long-range missiles into Russia. But before we get there, because I think we're going to go there into some depth, I want to talk to you about the latest with respect to Israel and Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu has announced for the third time that he has instructed the IDF to be ready to invade Hezbollah. What does this tell you either about his thinking or about whatever the Americans

have agreed to do? Well, again, I believe that the Americans, the Biden administration has not altered course. The head of the U.S. Central Command was in Israel having high-level discussions with the Israeli military. And I believe that the message he was sending was that the United States will stand by Israel and defend Israel, but that the United States will not participate in Israeli aggression against either Iran or Hezbollah, unprovoked Israeli aggression. When I mean unprovoked, I'm not talking about, for instance, with Hezbollah, continuation of this war of attrition that's taking place. That is the new normal. What I'm talking about is Israel launching a massive attack against Hezbollah, ground and air attack. The United States will not participate in that, that Israel will bear the consequences of that action alone. I think that's the message the United States has sent,

and I continue to believe that's the message. Netanyahu continues to push back. And, you know, he, this is, like you said, the third time he's threatened to send the Israeli military into Lebanon. Each time he backs down for a number of reasons. One, his military can't do it. And they remind him of this fact every single time, that once you initiate a massive large-scale attack against Hezbollah, there will be consequences. And the consequences will be Hezbollah unleashing the totality of its military capability against Israel, capabilities Israel has no response to, no ability to deter or to defeat, that the war will be brought into Israel, not just Israel trying to bring the war into

southern Lebanon, but the war will enter Israel. Hezbollah will enter Israel. Israel bogged down in Gaza, bogged down in the West Bank, lacks the military forces to adequately respond to this. It could lead to the strategic defeat of Israel this is the reality their military has told him this over and over and over again but Netanyahu has to appease his conservative um Coalition uh he has to he can't acknowledge that Israel is powerless in the face of Hezbollah so he continues to threaten this conflict to make his uh his coalition uh happy um and to keep up the impression that he is a man willing to use military power um and he's shown this he goes into gaza repeatedly he continues to commit acts of

genocide against gaza slaughtering uh palestinian children and innocent civilians in the name of hunting down terrorists. He went into Jenin in the West Bank, again, killing, you know, random civilians. You know, so it's not as though he's, you know, a pacifist being compelled into violence. This is a man who has chosen violence, but he chose wrong. Hamas is not defeated. Hezbollah will not be cowed. And there's always Iran looming in the background. Is there any country or group of countries that will use force to stop the slaughter in Gaza? The slaughter is unmitigated and it continues.

Is there any country that will enter? So far, the answer is no. The Palestinians are tragically a commodity that's being expended in support of the cause of a Palestinian state. Again, I just want to remind people that on October 6th, nobody, nobody was talking realistically about a Palestinian state. The United States had given up on this. Israel believed it was never going to happen. Saudi Arabia was ready to do business with Israel. Nobody was promoting this. Because of October 7th, today, the world is talking about a Palestinian state. This is the reality. And the only reason why the world is talking about it is because of Israel's actions in Gaza. Israel slaughtering the Palestinian civilians.

So tragically, the Palestinian civilians have become a commodity that is expended to keep the cause of a Palestinian statehood front and center. So even those people who are inclined to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and others, they understand that there's a bigger objective, that is a Palestinian statehood and the strategic defeat of Israel. And so they're not going to get in the way of Israel continuing to bring harm to Israel by pursuing its objectives in Gaza. For the Arab states, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and others, they never were willing to die for the Palestinian cause, and they're politically, been speaking for the last several weeks about how bad the Palestinian people are, why this isn't their cause, that they're sympathetic for Israel, although they won't say that outright. So the Palestinians have been betrayed by much of the Arab world, and the Arab world isn't going to rally around the Palestinian cause. Those who support Palestine understand that in order to keep Palestine on the front burner internationally, you're going to have

to continue to let Israel be Israel in Gaza, which means more Palestinians or civilians are going to die. Turkish President Erdogan from time to time roars, and then nothing happens. I mean, he could have stopped this with a phone call, couldn't he, if he stopped all the oil going to Israel? The problem is then there'd be phone calls made to him. You know, Turkey's in a very difficult position. They're straddling, you know, the west and the east. Turkey wants to be, in fact, as Erdogan apparently has agreed to go to Kazan in October to attend the BRICS conference, which appears to be a stepping stone to Turkey to attend the BRICS conference, which appears to be a stepping

stone to Turkey being invited into BRICS. The last thing Turkey needs to do is get caught up in a geopolitical controversy that hampers this strategic posturing on its part. So he will make the right statements. President Sisi of Egypt, one of the ultimate betrayers of the Palestinians, just traveled to Ankara. Erdogan had gone there earlier this year, I think in January or February, and they're normalizing relations. They spend a lot of time talking about Palestine, about a united front against Israel, but it's just talk. Turkey's not going to do anything that is you know, demonstrably harmful to Israel. Switching to Ukraine, I would like to play two clips for you. This is the, in my view,

bizarre and historically unprecedented public meeting of the head of MI6, Sir Peter Moore, and the head of the CIA, William Burns, in public together, sponsored by the Financial Times, answering questions. But these comments that they will make, forgive me, Scott, I love you, will raise your blood pressure. Chris, run, cut 9, and then immediately cut 10. Typically audacious and bold on the part of the Ukrainians to try and change the game in a way. And I think they have, to a degree, changed the narrative around this. The Kursk offensive is a significant tactical achievement. It's not only been a, you know,

boost in Ukrainian morale, it has exposed some of the vulnerabilities of Putin's Russia and of his military. And it's important to remember how this started. It started in this phase with Putin mounting a war of aggression in February 2022. And two and a half years later, that failed. It continues to fail. The Ukrainians will continue to fight. We will continue to help them to fight uh and it's difficult they can't believe a word they've said can they no first of all understand that uh the Ukrainian incursion into cursed was probably planned with um significant British help led by the mi6 the CIA's special mission personnel, special mission center, special activity center was involved in the planning and implementation of an earlier

Ukrainian incursion in the Belgorod region this past spring. So these, William Burns and Mr. Moore are both people who have been promoting violence against Russia for some time now. They're sitting there now talking as if this is a Ukrainian initiative. It's not. Ukraine is purely a tool, a proxy. The other thing I need to point out is both the CIA and MI6 possess some of the largest black propaganda capabilities in the world. I've worked with both of them. I've worked with the CIA to make a documentary film designed to deceive the American people about the reality of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iraq's role in deceiving the inspectors. And I worked with the British as they sought to insert demonstrably false stories into international media to deceive the public. This is what they do. They don't tell the truth. They're liars, and they're lying now. What we're seeing taking place in Kursk is a disinformation operation run by the CIA, run by MI6, that's costing Ukraine tens of thousands

of lives. But they don't care. Their hands are drenched in the blood of Ukrainians, and they'll just continue to tell these lies. This is the tragedy of it all. This is an intelligence operation gone bad. Was the attack, the Russian attack on the Ukrainian military academy that killed over 720 people, a response to the incursion into Kursk? I don't think so. I think that this is a target that the Russians have been following for some time now. It's a target that has strategic importance, a target that, if the stories are true, involves not only the electronic warfare and communication specialists needed to bring two Swedish early warning aircraft, airborne warning aircraft, into operational status, but also this was a new class of UAV operators, the unmanned aerial vehicles, the

drones, who were being taught the latest techniques on how to employ drones in combat. These people were going to graduate and go out and populate frontline drone units. Russia has been following this, and they waited until, I think it was graduation day, or close to it, and they waited until I think it was graduation day or close to it, and they hit them all at the same time. The casualties are unknown. I think there were 700 people there. I don't know if all 700 die. That would be, to be honest, would be a tragedy from a humanity standpoint, but significant casualties were inflicted. And if the reporting out of Sweden could be true, that could include some very senior Swedish military and civilian persons involved in the training of the Ukrainian officials. But this was a devastating blow

against Ukraine. But it's a legitimate military target that I believe would have been struck regardless. It had to be struck because you can't allow those resources to be released into the wild because that could have, it wouldn't be a game changer, but it would result in dead Russians. So kill the Ukrainians now so you don't have to hunt them down and kill them later. You mentioned drones. Over the weekend, the Russians, excuse me, the Ukrainians unleashed 140 drones at Moscow. Reports seem to be consistent that 139 were intercepted. One hit a residential facility, which killed a woman, an innocent female civilian in a suburb of Moscow. How significant is that? Propaganda exercise. I mean, it's tragic for the woman who died. It's tragic for the people who

were caught up in this, but it's a big nothing burger. It doesn't change the strategic reality of anything. I mean, people in the United States and Europe need to understand that just because it appears on X or it's on your Telegram channel and you have various pro-Ukrainian accounts repeating it over and over again, doesn't make it of strategic significance. It didn't change anything. Right now, as we speak in the aftermath of this attack, the Russians are on the counteroffensive and curse slaughtering the Ukrainians, mowing them down. The Russians continue to attack in the Donbass, advancing, putting the Ukrainians at a strategic risk. The drone attacks didn't alter the fact that Ukraine

has run out of men, run out of equipment, and is running out of time. Earlier today, the speaker of the Russian Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, forgive me for looking down, I want to quote him exactly, said, quote, Washington and other European states are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine. Now, paraphrasing, the United States, Germany, France, and Britain are becoming parties to the conflict. Do you think he was talking about the rumors that you and I have heard that as we speak now, literally as we speak, Secretary of State Blinken and his British counterpart are in Kiev meeting with Zelensky, giving him whatever the latest guidelines are and his ability to use Russian and British long-range missiles to reach deep inside of Moscow. I believe that he is talking about that, but the Russians have made similar charges that basically Ukraine has become nothing more than a Ukrainian proxy. I'm sorry,

Ukraine has become nothing more than a NATO proxy. But here we're now seeing that Blinken is crossing his own red line. I mean, the United States has repeatedly said to launch these strikes against Russia is to invite a precipitous expansion of the conflict. But the United States understands that Ukraine is in a free fall right now. It is collapsing as they speak. And this is a political season. And so you can't have Kamala Harris running around talking about how strong she's going to be about Ukraine while Ukraine is wiped off the planet by by the russians so the united states has to make sure that it says we gave the ukrainians everything they asked for and everything they needed to defend themselves and what ukraine has been saying for some time now is they have to have the ability to reach out and

touch uh the bases uh from which you know russia is operating from on Russian territory against Ukrainian forces in Ukraine. They want to hit airfields, they want to hit command and control centers, logistics centers. And we have provided them with the weaponry that has that capability. It appears that we are going to give them the green light to do that. Would that not constitute the United States and Great Britain invading Russia? And would that not invite a significant military response against the United States and against Great Britain? I mean, the answer is yes to both of those. Of course, it's the, you know, if you become a party to the conflict and then that conflict takes the fight into Russia, you're part of that. So you are,

you know, liable to be held accountable. And would it not invite, I mean, legitimize a Russian response? The answer is yes. But again, I just want to remind people that Russia's playing a big picture strategic game. Nothing that happens in terms of the unleashing of these new weapons against Russian targets is going to change the outcome on the battlefield. That the reality will it make russia's job a little bit more difficult yes will it be politically uh embarrassing uh to you know putin and uh in his government yes um but you know putin's focused on right now kazan that's the city in tataria in tatarstan that's going to host the brick summit near the end of october. This is where the

strategic defeat of the United States, Great Britain, Europe, NATO takes place. The expansion of BRICS to include the possibility of Turkey, we know Azerbaijan wants to be a member, Malaysia, Venezuela is joining already, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates. We are looking at the world redefining itself in a way that signals the defeat of the rules-based international order. And that, of course, is that which the Biden administration has been saying defines America's role in the world, that the preeminent task of the Biden administration is to defend and preserve the rules-based international of the Biden administration is to defend and preserve the rules-based international order. It's ready to get down and be defeated in October if this

summit goes forward. One way to help the summit not go forward is for Russia to overreact to the provocations that are taking place, for Russia to do something that fundamentally changes the geopolitical reality in terms of the world's impression of Russia. Right now, Russia is seen as a responsible nation by the bulk of the world. But if Russia overreacts, takes the fight to NATO, as it would be justified to do so, and expands the conflict, many people around the world, up to and including China and India, may take a step back and say, whoa, wait a minute. Russia doesn't need that. They've worked too long and too hard to make Kazan a success. And it's going to be a success. And Vladimir Putin's going to make sure it's a success. So I think that's another reason why Blinken is in Kiev,

because he, I think, has been advised by people that should know that Putin probably won't overreact to this escalation. And so for political purposes, let's get it done so that we can say during an election period, we did everything we could to help Ukraine defend itself. Talk to us a little bit about intel. Does Russian intel know exactly what Secretary Blinken is telling President Zelensky as they speak in Kyiv? Well, I don't know if it's real time. I would imagine that the Russians have spent a considerable amount of resources to get inside Bankova, the Ukrainian presidential administration. In the past, they appear to have sources that are very well placed.

And I think that they have been briefed very well on what Ukraine expects to hear. I'm sure whatever papers have been presented for the Ukrainian president have made their way to Russian leadership. And then I'm sure that there will be summaries produced after the meeting that will make their way as well. I think the Russians have the Ukrainian presidency thoroughly penetrated. I think they have the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense thoroughly penetrated. That's just the reality. Russia has a very good intelligence service.

Ukraine is next door. For many years, Russia was running, Moscow was running Ukrainian intelligence. When Ukraine became independent, many people who were previously loyal to Moscow now ostensibly become loyal to Kiev. I remember when I traveled to Ukraine in 1997, there was huge problems. I was speaking with the National Security Council of President Kuchma, and they kept warning me about the SBU. They said the SBU is thoroughly infiltrated by the Russian intelligence services, and you can't trust them. And then the SBU was telling me that

Kuchma's people were thoroughly infiltrated by Russian intelligence and the CIA, and you couldn't trust them. I was just a simple United Nations official trying to get the Ukrainians to stop selling weapons on the black market to Iraq. But I found myself in the middle of this geopolitical power struggle that showed, if anything, the Ukrainian government was up for sale to whoever could pay the price that the corrupt individuals were asking. I'm switching a little bit. Is Iran selling offensive weaponry to Russia? And wouldn't one expect it to be the other way around? Well, I mean, I don't know. We do know that Russia and Iran have signed a military agreement that has strategic implications to it. Both Russia and Iran have demonstrated in the past that they're willing to cooperate very significantly. And we've seen this with the drones. Remember, when the drone issue was first raised, both sides denied it. Now, even though they're not admitting to it openly,

everybody knows what's going on. Here's the thing. Russia understands that the way you reduce casualties on the battlefield is to maximize firepower. Right now, Russia has, they have a ballistic missile called the Iskander and it's very effective on the battlefield. Earlier, the Iskander was an army level asset, meaning that in order to target, you had to go up to the army level and work that target in. It's a very difficult, slow, cumbersome process. What Russia has done is broken up those brigades and pushed down firing detachments down to the local level. Brigade and division commanders now have an Iskander detachment that can be firing at targets as they appear as they're developed by drones um to support this you have to increase the production of esconders esconders are produced in one place that is the vodkins machine building plant that's where i worked as a weapons inspector

back in the 80s and 90s um there it's there's only so many production lines they can do i i'm familiar with it i'm familiar with the production lines in question. And if you get them going maximum, there's X amount of esconders you can produce. Without opening up a new facility, you can't produce new esconders. The demand for esconders on the front line is great. I mean, the Russian commanders love the ability

to bring down death and destruction on the Ukrainians, especially projecting into the rear to disrupt logistics, command and control. Russia would like to have additional capacity. The quickest way to get it is go to Iran and buy ready-to-use systems. And I believe that that makes logical sense to bring in systems that replicate the Iskander in terms of operational capability and make sure that they're available to the units that need them on the front lines so that Russia continues to kill as many Ukrainians as possible, suffering as few casualties as possible. Here's Secretary Blinken yesterday on this very subject. Cut number 16. shipments of these ballistic missiles and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine against Ukrainians. Russia has an array of its own ballistic missiles, but the supply of Iranian missiles enables

Russia to use more of its arsenal for targets that are further from the front line while dedicating the new missiles it's receiving from Iran for closer-range targets. This development and the growing cooperation between Russia and Iran threatens European security and demonstrates how Iran's destabilizing influence reaches far beyond the Middle East. Aside from the last statement about the threat to European security, did he make sense in what he was explaining? Does he know what he's talking about? It's clear that he's repeating the intelligence that somebody who knows what they're talking about prepared. Again, it sort of mirrors what I was saying. It makes perfect sense for Russia to

do this. I just find it ironic that Iran's bad for working with Russia to improve Russian military capabilities, capabilities that are being developed in response to a Ukrainian military that has received hundreds of billions of dollars of American and NATO capabilities to include attack missiles, long range HIMARS missile systems, modern tanks, F-16s, the whole work.

All that's okay. Don't worry about the hundreds of billions that we're providing to ukraine but darn it iran don't you dare give the russians a handful of uh of missiles to you know it's just hypocrisy in the extreme and you know ultimately again um it doesn't matter what blinken says this is going to happen if it's going to happen it's going to happen the way the russ Russians want it to happen. And the end result will be lots of dead Ukrainians. This is the moral equivalent of Joe Biden accusing Vladimir Putin of engaging in genocide,

which is what he first called the special Military Operation in February of 22. By the way, Victoria Nuland, our old friend over the weekend, acknowledged American and British interference with the diplomatic efforts to avoid war that resulted in an inch and a half thick agreement, every page of which was initialed in Istanbul in March of 2022, before Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, don't sign it, we got your back. Yeah, I mean, again, if you want to accuse somebody of genocide, accuse the United States of genocide, because of the United States, because of Victoria Nuland, because of Boris Johnson,

hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died that didn't need to die. Tens of millions of Ukrainian civilians have been displaced from their homes that didn't need to be displaced. These homes didn't have to be destroyed. And a trillion dollars worth of Ukrainian infrastructure and economic potential wouldn't have been lost. Ukraine would be a very healthy nation today, one that was neutral, but would thrive in its neutrality. Instead, we get this wreck of a nation that's only going to get far worse before this is done. Victoria Nuland has the blood of Ukraine on her hands. Last question. Last night, the Defense Department announced that the United States military commander, I assume an admiral in the Pacific, called his Chinese counterpart a general and said, your ships are getting too close to ours in the South China Sea.

Cool it. Do you know about this? I mean, I've read the reports. The United States and China have agreed, and this is something that, remember when Xi Jinping came and met with Biden in San Francisco, and since then there's been talk between the Ministry of Defense in China and Lloyd Austin about establishing connectivity for deconfliction. So this appears to be an effort by the United States to use this hotline to seek to de-conflict. But I don't know how much

of this is real and how much of it is spin. I do know that early on in the Biden administration, when Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan met, I believe in Alaska with their Chinese counterparts, they tried to do the kind of lecturing that this admiral apparently tried to do to his Chinese counterpart. And the Chinese told him to pound sand, that you don't get to talk to us that way, that you're not the superpower that you think you are. In many ways, where you're equal, in some ways where you're superior. And that was the Chinese attitude, you know, three and a half years ago. I can guarantee you that the Chinese officer on the receiving end of the line didn't stand up, salute Smiley and say, yes, sir, we're going to back away. I'm fairly certain that he operates under the same instructions that the Chinese diplomats were operating under to warn the

United States that you don't get to order us around. We don't work for you. You don't get to bully us. We can kick your butt anytime we want to, if that's the direction you want to take it. We don't want to go there, but back off. I'm fairly certain that was the Chinese. Why are our ships in, why is our Navy in the South China Sea, Scott? Well, I mean, we inherited the Pacific. A part of Manifest Destiny took us across. I mean, we've been in the Philippines since the latter part of the, since we won the Spanish-American War. Admiral Perry went to Japan in the 1840s. The Pacific is our sea. It's been the American century in the Pacific, and we want to continue this century. We just haven't woken up to the reality that

the rest of the world isn't what it was when we imposed ourselves on the Pacific nations. You know, there's been a change. China is growing. China is expanding. And China is not going to accept the Pacific as an unchallenged American sea. So they'll push back. We don't know how to readjust. We continue to live in the past with capabilities that are incapable of projecting similar capacity forward. Our Navy is not up to the task. We have three carrier battle groups that we can deploy at any one time, maybe surge a fourth. All three right now are dedicated to the Middle East. I'm just wondering where the American Admiral is going to get the Naval power. I read a report that said we have to decommission 17 ships

because we lack the crews to do it. I read another report that said many American ships are operating at 85% staffing because we lack the sailors. I want to know where the Admiral is going to get the military power to back up his words. I'm reminded of the words of the commander of the air group in the movie Top Gun when he was chewing out Tom Cruise's character Maverick. Your mouth is writing checks, your body can't cash. And that's exactly what is happening here. The United States can't back up the rhetoric of this admiral. Thank you, Scott. We covered the world and I deeply appreciate your time and your analysis.

Thank you, my dear friend. I hope we can see you again next week. Thanks, Scott. Just to add one thing for you, because I know this is a topic that is near and dear to your heart. Please. Free speech. As we speak, there's a trial underway in Tampa, Florida of the Uhura III. They've been charged under the Foreign Agent Registration Act by the Department of Justice. It's supposed to be a three-week trial. The government's case collapsed after a week. The head FBI investigator was brought to

the witness stand and was asked by the, and this is the guy who put the affidavits to a magistrate judge who signed the search warrant that led to the indictments of these people that brought them to trial. He was asked if there was any evidence to back up the assertions made in the indictment. He said, no. He said, you accuse these people of working the Russians. Is there any intelligence that shows that this happened? No. You made statements that said things were happening and you, did they happen? No. We have a case of the FBI and the Department of Justice prosecuting Americans for the crime of free speech and they manufactured this case. This is a big deal. This means that a magistrate judge

didn't do their job in terms of asking questions of the FBI, demanding that the statements made to them were indeed accurate. They raided the homes of these people based upon probable cause that we now know was premise on lies. Right, right. It's funny you should mention this. I did not know about the Florida case. My column, which comes out tonight, is called Free Speech and the Department of Political Justice. to Soviet era trials of dissidents and humorists and, and literary types who were tried in secret until the transcripts of the trials were revealed and outrage reigned in the United States. We have become what we condemned. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Scott Ritter. Thank you, my dear friend. Thanks for all of us. We'll see you again soon. All the best. Thank you. Of course. Coming up later today at 2 o'clock this afternoon on much of these topics, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi, and at 4 o'clock, always worth waiting for my dear friend Aaron Mate, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.