Judging Freedom - This Russian Offensive in Ukraine - Scott Ritter

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself? Talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace.

Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule, wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship,

or if you want some counseling for you and your partner, or just need a little extra one-on-one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers, and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance? No problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com.

Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. hi everyone judge andrew napolitano here for judging freedom today is friday february 10 2023 it's about two o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the united states scott ritter joins us now. Scott, always a pleasure. Welcome back. Thanks for having me. Before, of course, before we get into the subject du jour, which is the state of the relationship between the Russian military and the Ukrainian military,

I want your views on the reporting by Cy Hirsch on the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. Mr. Hirsch, well-known, of course, My Lai Massacre, Pentagon Papers, and now this, reports that the president and American intelligence discussed this more than a year ago, that in fact the explosives were planted there by Navy SEALs before February 24, and then Joe Biden gave the order for them to blow it up. In my view, from a legal perspective, this is an act of war against a well-documented ally, Germany, and against a fanciful, because I don't believe they're enemies at all, enemy, Russia, but an act of war nevertheless. What do you say, Scott? Well, first of all, I have to start off, and you would appreciate this, being a judge with full disclosure.

I'm very good friends with Cy Hirsch. We've been friends for a quarter of a century. I'm a big fan of Cy's, whether I agree with him on politics or not, I'm a big fan of his courage and his extraordinary professionalism. This is the point I want to make. First of all, I had no idea this story was coming. Cy didn't talk to me about it. I don't know anything about his sourcing, et cetera. I would just idea this story was coming. Cy didn't talk to me about it. I don't know anything about his sourcing, et cetera. I would just say this. In the 25 years that I've known him, what I know is that he's not a single source guy. There's a lot of people out there saying he only has one unnamed source.

Trust me, Cy Hirsch doesn't work on one source. Cy Hirsch works on multiple sources. And Cy Hirsch is a man who is plugged into the Washington DC scene as anybody out there. So if he's reporting it, it's darn good reporting you can take to the bank. Now, a lot of people focused on the sexy stuff, the explosives, the signal coming from the sonic buoy, et cetera. But you hit the nail on the head, Judge. The most explosive part of this is the president of the United States going to war against an ally. And it's not just we went to war against an ally. We went to war in violation, I believe, of the Constitution.

Because none of what the President did meets the War Powers Act. He didn't seek congressional permission. He acted on it. In fact, there was intent. Mens rea comes in. I hate to use legal terms because I'm not a lawyer. You're using it correctly, Count. I'm trying to get to your level, Judge, but mens rea intent, they specifically talked about how to

avoid constitutional reporting requirements, to bypass the constitution. So this is a frontal assault on the constitution, a frontal assault on our allies, a frontal assault on NATO, a frontal assault on the American people. If you were ever going to pick an impeachable offense, this is it. And yet there is silence from Congress, silence from the media, silence from the American people. And now we cross the Atlantic, silence from Germany. I mean, what kind of country do you have to be to have a report like this come out that without any doubt points the finger, not only at the United States, but Norway, to engage in what is an economic Pearl Harbor. This is a surprise attack on German critical energy infrastructure that seriously damaged the

German economy in a way that not only benefited American foreign policy, but Norway's economy, because Norway was complicit. The next day after the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, Norway opened up a pipeline to send its own gas to Poland for resale to Germany. So they blew up the German energy supply. and now they're saying, here, buy our gas. Wow. We're your friend. Wow.

I mean, just from a moral perspective, it's reprehensible. I mean, Joe Biden single-handedly visited cold winters on tens of millions of innocent, hardworking Germans who heretofore, whose government heretofore, whose commercial activities heretofore, had an amicable, fruitful, prosperous relationship with Russian commercial activities. And now, because of Joe Biden's war,

are cold in the winter, and God knows how long it would take to rebuild that pipeline and to President Putin's credit haven't heard a peep out of him about this not not a peep and you're quite correct about the constitution I happen to believe that the war powers resolution is itself unconstitutional I think because it unleashes the president and the constitution says only Congress can declare war. Congress basically gave the power to declare war to the president under limited circumstances with notification. Barack Obama, legal scholar that he is, when he bombed Libya, used the intelligence assets. So technically he didn't have to report.

Joe Biden didn't do that. He used Navy SEALs, classic American military activity and no report to the Congress. And not a peep, not out of Bernie Sanders, not out of Rand Paul, not out of anybody in the Congress who you'd expect,

I happen to pick people at both ends of the political spectrum for a reason, would be furious at this. Yeah, no, hopefully the American people wake up and put pressure on their elected representatives to do something about this. You know, everybody should be concerned about constitutional abuse. And I'd like to believe that half the concern around January 6th is the assault on the Constitution that appeared to have taken place that day. But if you're going to get outraged about that, then you had better get outraged about this. Okay, let's segue, talking about American involvement, let's segue into Ukraine. A number of reports indicating, and I think you and Colonel McGregor have stated this

as well, that with some of the more sophisticated, not that dilapidated, which we'll get to in a minute, but that more sophisticated equipment, I think they're called HIMARS that we have given to the Ukrainians, American military personnel are choosing the Russian targets. Now, if that is true, American military personnel choosing the target, American equipment sending the missile, American ammunition, the missile itself, but a Ukrainian throws the last switch. Isn't that an act of war, no matter who's throwing the last switch? Yeah, I believe that a strong case can be made for that. But Judge, I'm going to hit you with something even worse than that. Because what we now know is that every target, every target that the HIMARS hits is picked by the United States. That means that

there is a chain of command of personnel wearing the uniform of the United States involved in that. And here's the kicker. HIMARS is being used to attack hospitals, schools, civilian buildings, which means American personnel are picking targets that when they are struck constitute a war crime. Right. Targets that house children and the sick, schools and hospitals, where? In Crimea, in Russia, or in Eastern Ukraine, sick, schools and hospitals, where? In Crimea, in Russia, or in eastern Ukraine, the Donbass, where? Well, in Donetsk. So the Ukrainians will say that we're striking Ukraine, but Russia has incorporated them, but it doesn't matter.

A civilian building with no military application is a protected target. And it's one thing to have the Ukrainians do it. It should be called a war crime. And indeed, many have. Washington Post, Amnesty International said this is a war target. And it's one thing to have the Ukrainians do it. It should be called a war crime. And indeed, many have. Washington Post, Amnesty International said this is a war crime. But now we have American soldiers involved in the targeting, which makes Americans complicit in the crime. And this is shocking. This is disgusting. And I don't understand, again, why we are silent about this. This is another act of war. It may not be as outrageous as the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline because it happens in the midst of other war

related activities, but it's clearly an act of war. How high up the chain of command would the decision makers be? Are we talking about people on the ground in Ukraine, underground in Kiev, or in the Pentagon or Langley? By whom and where are these decisions made? Well, there's the target. Let's get that one. No, the target is done regionally, meaning that there's a joint intelligence center, probably in Poland, affiliated with NATO with an American-only cutout, because that's what we do. Maybe in Germany, but that gets more complicated now with communications, et cetera. But definitely in Europe, that has been given this task by the national command authority. And so, you know, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of

intelligence, the intelligence agency, they have come together and made a decision that they're going to delegate this authority to the European command. And then the European command will designate a specific entity, a joint intelligence center that will do the targeting. And the decisions are made there. Reporting will go back, but generally speaking, the decision, but somebody had to make the decision that Americans can get involved in targeting these civilian sites. So that means four-star general Princeton graduate chair of the joint chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Can he make that decision alone or can

only the president of the United States make the decision? You're talking about American military in American uniforms, not on the ground in Ukraine, but close enough to make a decision about there's a target, let's destroy it. Look, the president of the United States will give general authority. Mark Milley is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But this is authority that will be sent down to the theater commander, the local combatant commander. He's the one who will be given the authority to do a range of mission assignments. An American or a Ukrainian? Oh, no, no, he's an American.

Wow. Is he in uniform and are his boots on the ground or is he in Poland? He's probably in Stuttgart or in Poland and he's an American in uniform doing his job. But the thing is, this is not just a military thing, this is political because now we're involved in war crimes, which tells me that Jake Sullivan has to be involved, has to be knowledgeable of this and is briefing the president because that's his job as a national security advisor is to make sure the president's informed of anything that might blow up in their face. And he's not taken by surprise. And the fact that the president continues to allow this is a shock because this is a report that came out in the New York Times, not a friend of Russia, by the way. The New York Times is reporting clearly that every HIMAR strike has American fingerprints on it, targeting, et cetera. After he got back from Great Britain, President Zelensky made a comment about Russian missiles going over Romanian and Moldovan airspace.

You can imagine what he said. So here he is in Ukraine, which you understand, but with subtitles for everybody else. Several Russian missiles flew over Moldova and Romania. Another proof that every country that just wants to live in collective security is a terror. Румунія – черговий доказ того, що кожна Україна, яка просто хоче жити колективній безпеці, це терор. must do missiles fly over Moldova, which most people have never even heard of, or fly over Romania without intent and without killing anybody, candidly? Well, first of all, I don't know that this is the case, but let's just assume it is. How does it happen? Well, let's say that NATO helps Ukraine build a layered air defense that focuses on previous missile tracks. So, you know, the Russians are going to launch missiles.

They're going to go down a corridor towards a given target set. And so NATO has built a defense in depth. So as the missile comes in, it's getting hit multiple times, increasing the likelihood of being shot down. And let's say the Russians say, man, there's a really important target there that we want 100 percent certainty to hit. Because let me tell you, Scott Ritter would say the same thing so here's what we're going to do boss we're going to fire the missiles out in the black sea and instead of going down the known corridor we're going to sort of take it in a slight detour that's going to tuck in through romania and moldova and we're going to hit them where they're not protected with 100 certainty of destruction and that's what they're not protected with 100% certainty of

destruction. And that's what they did. Now, it's not an act of war. It's a violation of airspace. Complaint can be made, but Article 5 is not kicked, and Zelensky has no clue what he's talking about. And, you know, Romania and Moldova can, well, you know who else did this? I just want to remind Americans in case they go, that's horrible. We did it. We fired missiles over Iran so that we could bring them in and a hook into Baghdad to avoid the layered defenses that the Iraqis had built on known cruise missile approach corridors. So it's a trick that everybody plays. I'm so happy you met that. And this is going to take us off course just a little bit because of this concept that you and I have publicly and privately to each other

condemned of American exceptionalism, which basically means if it's right, I mean, basically means if America does it, it's right. So everybody in America for three days a week ago was fixated on a balloon. I could use some adjectives,

but young people might be watching the show so I won't. A blankety blank balloon. A blankety blank balloon. At the same time, Cy Hersh was about to reveal the true destruction that the Americans did. The Chinese get condemned for flying the balloon, and nobody says a peep about the pipeline because of this nonsense about American exceptionalism. If Joe Biden ordered it and the military did it, it must have been moral, justified, legal, and constitutional. We still have that sickness in us of American exceptionalism. There's no doubt about it.

And what it does is it prevents the American people from being able to think logically and rationally about issues such as this. Ask yourself, why would China put a balloon up? It's not for intelligence collection. I'm just here to tell you. They have geosynchronous satellites over. Had to take very beautiful photographs of American missiles. 300 photographs, 300 satellites circling the earth 24-7. What do they need a balloon for?

No, the balloon is for high altitude atmospheric testing to get specific water particle content for global warming. And the United States knows this. We know that the Chinese are worried about global warming. They know the Chinese are carrying out these experiments. And because, guess what, world? Atmosphere goes around the entire globe. So if you're China, you're not just focused on what's over your atmosphere, but you're focused on what influences the atmosphere as it circulates and comes over you. So your balloons are going to have a global reach to collect this data. We know this, and yet we chose to weaponize what was, look, I'm not saying the

Chinese are 100% in the right here. You don't get to fly balloons over American territory without our permission. I'm sorry. You don't get to do that. But to turn this into, I mean, I joke, because in history, we had the bomber gap, where we exaggerated Soviet bomber strength, so we could build up our bombers. And we had the missile gap, where we turned four missiles into 400, so we could build, we got the balloon we had the missile gap where we turned four missiles into 400 so we could build. We got the balloon gap now, I guess, where we've exaggerated a Chinese threat so we can spend billions of dollars to build a new air defense network to protect against what is a sexed up weather balloon. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's absurd.

Here's a report from cnn it's about a minute and 10 seconds long about the dilapidated condition of the military equipment which we have given to ukraine some of which my dear friend scott not older than i am but it's older than you are carrying weapons designed 75 years ago these uk Ukrainians are grateful that they're training with an American vehicle, even if it's from another age. Meanwhile, Ukraine's war is expected to intensify, and Ukrainians make do with old Soviet weapons and work horse hand-me-downs like these M113s,

aluminium troop carriers which the US Army started army started using in 1960 about 400 have been given to ukraine by the u.s and others ukraine has been given better air defenses better artillery better missile systems than it had before but zelensky said that's not enough and anyway it's not the best equipment often not even second best. Agree? Oh yeah. Ask yourself why Americans don't go to war in M113s anymore. It's a death trap. It was a death trap in Vietnam. We don't do it anymore. You wouldn't want to approach the forward edge of a battle area in a M113. We use modified versions of that as a communication. Okay, in layman's terms, what is an M113 and what do you do with it?

Well, it's designed as an armored personnel carrier. So basically the idea is to take an infantry squad and drive it into the battle area accompanied by tanks. And then as required, you can dismount the infantry to assist. You can, the infantry can stay mounted for maneuverability, but you're supposed to take the infantry. You mobilize it, you harden it with armor so that it can get into the battle area. But it's not survivable in today's environment.

The weapons that are out there today will slice this through this like a hot knife through butter. So now what the Ukrainians use it for is to bring the troops to the battle and drop them off but even then they're breaking down they're being destroyed they're old and they're not protected artillery cuts through them 50 caliber bullets will cut through them it's a death trap so zielinski must know this Lloyd Austin must know this. Whoever's making the decision to send this garbage over there must know this. Again, what are they doing? Why are they sending garbage that's not going to produce the end result that they want? Are we just getting rid of surplus that the Americans

would never want to use? Well, what we're trying to do is, I don't believe that we've ever had what we call a war winning strategy with Ukraine, meaning that we were expecting or even trying to help Ukraine to win the war. We don't want them to win the war. What we want them to do is cause Russia to bleed out. The goal is to create so much pain for Russia that the casualty levels become politically unsustainable. And there is a Moscow Maidan where the Russian people rise up and remove Vladimir Putin from power. And military casualties combined with economic sanctions were supposed to

achieve that, but they haven't worked. The Russians have adapted, overcome, et cetera. All we've succeeded in doing is killing Ukrainians. And ask yourself why the casualty numbers, now almost everybody's acknowledging. You and I have had this conversation over the time and I've put out high casualty numbers and people are like, that's way too high. No, it isn't, ladies and gentlemen. It's maybe a little low right now. Ask yourself why they're this high. It's because we give them garbage. We give them garbage, and therefore we slaughter them. We lead them to slaughter. We are to blame as much as anybody else. One of our regular guests, Matt Van Dyke, the head of a group called the Sons

of Liberty International, which is basically veterans like you out of uniform in Ukraine, training Ukraine military on the use of equipment and basic military skills. He comes on from time to time. I'm smiling because my audience loves to hate him. I can tell from the messages they sent. But here's what he said the other day. I think he's listening to you, Scott. It will be months before the tanks get there, in part because many of them have to be built, in part because the ones that are already built have to have certain high-tech equipment removed from them so that they fall into Russian hands. Russia doesn't have this, and in part because the repair crews, which are just

as large as the crews that operate it, all need to be trained. Are you hearing something different about when these tanks will arrive? No, it's going to be months. Russia is going to make gains. I have no doubt that this spring is going to be very difficult be months. Russia is going to make gains. I have no doubt that this spring is going to be very difficult for Ukraine. Russia is going to regain territory. It's going to regain territory in Donbass. It's trying to regain all of Donetsk. Bakhmut is likely to fall. It's not going to look good for the next few months here. Ukraine really needed to push that winter advantage and they didn't. And they've been on the defensive and it's going to extol price on them. But once that equipment arrives, it depends how well the Russians are able to fortify their gains

as to how long it takes to then liberate those areas and whether an offensive to go for Crimea is possible this year or not. It's looking less likely to be possible this year because a lot of the year is going to be spent regaining territory when the tanks arrive that the Russians will take in March, April, and May. So my view is that this is their former cheerleader who's confronting reality. And I'm going to guess that your view is the war will be over by the time those tanks get there. But I'll let you speak for yourself. Yeah, look, we've talked about military math, so I don't have to go over, you know, burn rate, replenishment rate, etc. The Russians have an extraordinary military advantage, one that they have yet to fully exploit. They're in the process of developing the battlefield to identify weak links, and then they're going to overwhelm the

Ukrainians. It's not going to be limited advances. It's going to be an overwhelming advance that will cause the collapse and destruction of the Ukrainian armed forces. Mr. Van Dyke is somehow of the opinion that Ukraine will be able to compete for this territory effectively and have a controlled withdrawal that will bleed the Russians and eventually cause the Russians to lose momentum, freezing the battlefield until which time the Ukrainians are reinforced. Keeping in mind, what, Russians don't reinforce, but reinforced, and then what, they begin an offensive on their own. It's a fantasy world. This isn't going to be a slow, controlled withdrawal

by the Ukrainians. This is going to be the total collapse of the Ukrainian front line and the annihilation. And I have one word of advice to Mr. Van Dyke, and I hope you're watching. Get the hell out of Ukraine because you're dead man walking. Okay. You will not survive this offensive if you're anywhere near the front lines. So leave now. And that's it. I say this as somebody who has compassion for you, has respect for what you think you're trying to do there, but it's not worth your life and that's it. I say this as somebody who has compassion for you, has respect for what you think you're trying to do there, but it's not worth your life, and it's not worth the lives of any Americans who are over there helping you. Leave now. Scott Ritter, at your passionate

and our most articulate best, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.