Judging Freedom - Ukraine, Ammunition, Tanks & the Russian Offensive - Col. Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, February 15, 2023. It's a few minutes after 3 o'clock here on the East Coast of the United States. Colonel Douglas McGregor is back with us today.

Colonel, always a pleasure. Colonel, we've gotten some odd comments that have been floating around in the news lately, statements by Secretary of Defense Austin, by NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, and by Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley. I'd like to run them. We'll run them separately so that you can comment on them. Before I do, just a couple of general questions. My understanding, and of course you're the world-class tank commander, is that tanks, you don't want to run tanks in mud. Wouldn't you want to run them in the winter when the earth is cold? And if so, wouldn't now be the time for tanks? Because the muddy season

will be there in another month. Do I have that right? I think that's right. It would be preferable to go sooner rather than later. Preferable for both sides, preferable for the Russians that are using tanks and preferable for the Ukrainians that want to use the American. Well, the American tanks haven't arrived, but the German tanks, which are either on their way or there. Well, right now, the Germans are providing 17 tanks, three from Portugal, 14 from Germany. That's not a significant number. They initially said they would end up with 88. That number continues to fall.

I think for the Ukrainians, the mud would be a welcome respite. Okay. Secretary Austin recently reinforced the Joe Biden mantra, we'll be with you as long as it takes and we'll get you as much ammo as you need. He's a little long-winded, but here he is. Ukraine has been at this for a year. And so they have used a lot of artillery ammunition. We're going to do everything we can

working with our international partners to ensure that we give them as much ammunition as quickly as possible. As much ammunition as quickly as possible. I suppose that's so generic it could mean almost anything. But is there still enthusiasm, Colonel, as you perceive it from your sources, amongst the Afghans on Capitol Hill to provide as much ammunition as possible? Or do they see the handwriting on the wall that you've been warning about for a year? I think they see the handwriting on the wall. But having said that, it's not a question of willingness at this stage. We simply don't have much ammunition to send.

We've reached the point where we're rapidly running out of ammunition in our war stocks, and our factories cannot gear up fast enough to produce more at a desired rate. We don't have a surge capacity that we had 50 years ago. It doesn't exist for missiles, rockets, anything. So I think they're going to get something more than they've gotten, but not much. And it's not going to make much difference. On the other hand, as we've talked about before, the Russians, and I just had a conversation with someone who was in Moscow a couple of days ago, who tells me that the Russian general staff is preparing for a 30-month war against NATO and the United States.

All of their munitions factories, equipment factories are running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So they are well-stocked and they are prepared for the worst. Well, guess who agrees with you on the depletion of our supplies. The Secretary General of NATO, General Stoltenberg, here he is now. The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition and depleting allied stockpiles. The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defense industries under strain. I wish that Secretary Austin had been there, maybe he was somewhere else in the room. But the current rate, I'm paraphrasing, I'm going to think I memorized it, the current rate of Ukraine use

is not twice, not three times, it's many times our ability to supply them. What does that tell you? It tells me that soon the Ukrainians will have nothing because NATO will have nothing with which to supply them. If you make $10 a day and you spend $15 a day, sooner or later, you have no cash. Yes. Ukrainians are running out of ammunition. There's no question about it. And they'll have to fall back and regroup. If they don't, they'll simply be annihilated. And that might not even work either. We'll talk about that later. But the bottom line is, yes, the situation is dire. And the more desperate things become, the more ridiculous, in some cases, the claims are made by the Ukrainians and the West. Do you have an opinion as to why General Stoltenberg would have said that and if he would have said that without running it past his masters in Washington first?

No, I'm sure that they asked him to say it. Everybody knows it. It's an open secret. We're in the same boat as our European allies, but I don't think anybody in Washington wanted to make that omission. So they simply said, Secretary Stoltenberg, please emphasize this point. Again, it's a statement of desperation. Please, please, please send whatever you have. We're running out. That's not a good thing. General Milley, who was standing right next to Secretary Austin when he made the comments that we just ran a few minutes ago, you better be sitting down, Colonel, says Russia has lost. Take a listen.

NATO and this coalition has never been stronger. And Russia is now a global pariah. And the world remains inspired by Ukrainian bravery and resilience. In short, Russia has lost. They've lost strategically, operationally, and tactically. And they are paying an enormous price on the battlefield. Your comments, Colonel? Well, I think he's gotten down Jake Sullivan's talking points very well. Unfortunately, none of them, you know, equate to reality. Russia is hardly a pariah. If it were a pariah, its economy would be in ruins and its economy is

going gangbusters because everybody in the world is ready to do business with Russia except us and some of our European allies. And even there, there are lots of cracks in that system. Otherwise, I think whatever they tell you about the Russians, you should just turn around and apply it to the Ukrainians. They talk about no morale, no leadership, poorly trained, all this sort of business. It doesn't apply to the Russians right now. It applies to Ukrainians. It's very sad. It's a tragedy. And as you say, we've all seen this coming, but no one is willing to stand up, admit to it, and ask for talks with the Russians, sadly. Do you see some sort of a shift going on here? I mean, these comments by General Milley were so forceful. work for him would take seriously what he just said.

And yet he said it before an international audience and it was broadcast all over the world. That clip we just gave you was broadcast all over the world yesterday. Well, let's be frank, Judge. This entire administration has lost a great deal of credibility in a whole range of areas over the last several months. Anything they say has to be viewed with great skepticism. General Milley has made it very clear that he is aligned with the left. He is part of this administration. He's going to say whatever they want him to say. End of discussion. Your concern about professional integrity and so forth doesn't really occur to him.

He sees a different future. Remember that when these people retire, there are lots of wealthy left-wing oligarchs that will provide income for them and take care of them. The objective here is to meet that test. Please reward me for what I'm saying when I retire. That's all. But you know him. Does he mean what he says, or is this an act intended to audition for the type of post-military retirement

job he'd love to have, the one like his boss, Secretary Austin, had at Raytheon? Well, I'd say it's the second, not the first. He's very definitely interested in the income. I don't know him personally. I have only met with him once, and I only know him by reputation, which was never very good in the Army. This is not somebody that was known for standing up and taking any tough positions under any circumstances. This was a man who was always willing to get the job done. Yes, sir, three bags full, as we say. So he's doing what he's done throughout his military career. I mean, is this the type of person, is this the mentality and the character of human being, much like General Petraeus, that rises to the top in today's military? Yes.

Definitely. So this is not Joe Biden's fault. This is culture that's been going on in the military for generations. The politicians rise, not necessarily the best generals. Well, if you go back to the 1930s, look at the senior officers in the ranks of the French army. They were all very much like Petraeus and Millie. And of course, they failed miserably. And if you go and watch any of the documentaries, you'll have plenty of French officers that are younger, obviously, in many cases, or lower rank will come on and say, well, the politicians liked easy commanders.

They wanted lapdogs, people that would go along, people that don't brook opposition. And listen, that's what we have. Tell us what you can about the Russian onslaught that's coming. We know that President Putin is giving what's described as a major speech on the 22nd of February. That's a week from today and two days before the anniversary of the commencement of hostilities. Would he be prepared to say, oh, by the way, there's 250,000 troops that just crossed the border and if he were would we know that ahead of time from intelligence sources that a number that of human beings that massive is in one place at one time well judge i thought it was the 21st correct me if i'm wrong oh i'm honestly going by a writer you know we get hundreds of hundreds sometimes thousands of messages per episode when you're

on and i'm going by what the writer has said. I think it's the 21st. What is happening right now is that we're seeing advances designed to effectively secure the axes of advance for the mobilized force that is being marshaled in the south. And what's the mobilized force? Well, we're looking at 250,000 right now of the Russian combat troops. Some of them are south and a little east of Zaporizhzhia when you look at the map. Others are just behind Bakhmut, which they are waiting for the Wagner military group to clean up. And then the other group is over near Liman, which is just east of Kharkov. And remember, we talked about three major concentrations,

one in Western Russia, one down in the south, and one up in Byelorussia or Byelorussia. The one in Byelorussia is sitting quietly, but is prepared, whatever comes. But these forces are going to move on at least two, maybe three axes, but they're not going to move until it's completely clear. And if we look at the strikes that are going in right now, air, missile, rocket, artillery, they're stripping out all of the air defense radars and all the air defense artillery that's out there. So they want to be sure that they have a clear open field for their close air support, for their drones, for their rockets, for their missiles. Sometime in the next few days, we're going to see this gargantuan move north and west out of those three areas.

Let me just interrupt you. Gargantuan meaning with respect to the number of boots on the ground. Yes. Do troops literally walk miles on the ground? No, almost everyone. No, no, no, no, no. Almost everyone will ride. Most of your infantry will be armored infantry, following behind armor, artillery strikes, and so forth. So no, people are not walking at all. Now, you've seen elite light infantry from the Russian side confront Ukrainians in places like Bakhmut, Uglidar, elsewhere. You're now going to see the thing change with the armored force moving forward because the terrain

favors fields of fire and the kind of rolling open terrain that is good for armor. And this is perfect for the Russian way of warfare. That's what we're going to see. But it's going to be an incremental rollout. Remember, the majority of the forces the Russians are now moving forward are not bloodied. These are not people with lots of combat experience. On the contrary, many of them are fresh recruits

or reservists that haven't seen much, but they are under the command of experienced combat officers. That's what counts. And thus far, they have been moved up to the line, exposed, brought back repeatedly, shifted back and forth. They've practiced their maneuvers. They're ready to go. So once these last remaining strong points on the edge of the Donbass are gone, then we'll see them move. And their goal is everything east of the Dnieper River.

In other words, everything from the Russian border to Kiev. Right, right. I want to make you laugh a little because we're talking about very serious stuff. So my former colleague, because he did work at Fox for a while and then ABC and then CNN and now News Nation, Chris Cuomo is over in Ukraine. And he did what I thought was an excellent report interviewing young Ukrainian either recruits or conscripts. Colonel, when I say young, I'm talking about 16 or 17 years old. In his report, he showed them doing serious military drills, and then he interviews one of them who speaks English, who tells him at his age, he has been to the front lines, he has seen blood and death. He's not afraid of it himself. Is there some age, I should

know this, either internationally or legally in Ukraine, below which human beings cannot be put into battle? Well, there should be, but there won't be, because it depends on how desperate the state is to survive. Right now, the Ukrainian state is desperate to survive. So they're going to reach down very, very low. But there are a couple of things here, Judge, that should be mentioned. Just because some of these kids may be 15, 16, 17, doesn't mean they can't be effective. In fact, there's a lot of history that suggests that they can be very lethal. We talk about our landings in Normandy. And when we faced the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Corps, we were complaining about all these veteran soldiers.

In reality, more than 85% of the soldiers were under the age of 19. And they fought ferociously, and they inflicted three casualties for every one that they killed. These are German soldiers or American? No, Germans against us and the British. This was June of 1944 and July of 1944. Now, the point is this. Young soldiers that have never seen action are frequently much braver than those of us that have seen action, simply because we've survived some encounters. We know how lethal it is. They don't. So I believe the young man. But the sad truth of the matter is that no matter how brave you are,

no matter how much willpower you may possess against overwhelming, accurate, devastating firepower, it's pointless. Overwhelming, accurate, devastating firepower is what the Russians are going to bring to bear. Your analysis is so astute. But the reason I said I was going to make you laugh is because of our person on the other side of this, Matt Van Dyke, who's physically present in Ukraine and comes on once a week. He's the head of this group, Sons of Liberty International. They purport to be veterans, American military veterans who provide training to, and non-lethal training to Ukrainian civilians and military. When I asked him about the morality of conscripting young people, he basically said, it's a day in the park for them. And I got angry when he said that because I didn't believe it. But I want you to watch this clip and then I

look forward to your response. How could someone refer to a draftee in the Ukraine military as having the time of his his life that's just death and blood and gore believe me it's not a summer resort believe me in most cases uh that is not the opinion of most conscripts but the one conscript that i know he uh it gave him purpose it gave him camaraderie um he was actually pleased that that he was serving his country. Colonel, this is worse than propaganda. This is utter bullshit. Well, in defense of Mr. Van Dyke, he said this is the one conscript that he'd spoken to. So let's be a little understanding. He spoke to one. That may well have been the attitude of one conscript. But frankly, towards the end of the

Second World War, all of the European nations that were engaged in the fighting were running out of manpower. There wasn't much enthusiasm in the last six months of the war to go out and be killed after just a minimum training and equipping. So I have trouble with that. The other thing is that I know that the SBU, the NKVD equivalent on the Ukrainian side, is rounding up and sending deserters back to the front. And they've got lots and lots of deserters. Many of them are very young. And they have executed some of them as an object lesson.

So I think things are much worse on the Ukrainian side than obviously Van Dyke is willing to admit and many others will. Let's switch gears to the balloon. The balloon that captured in the American imagination and people staring in the sky for hours two weekends ago. A person you and I know or know of, Gordon Chang, from time to time on Fox News, holds himself out as an expert on China, argues that the balloon flew over Malmstein Air Force Base, where approximately a third of America's land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles are stored. Then it flew near both the Warren and Minot Air Force bases, which house the remainder of America's Minuteman wings. Then it passed close to Whiteman Air Force Base, home to the nuclear-capable B-2 bomber, and then Ofut Air Force Base, headquarters of the Strategic Air Command. Quote, this path suggests China is gathering intelligence for either a first or second strike on America's nukes, close quote. Should we believe this stuff?

The short answer is no. First of all, you don't steer balloons. I'm sorry, but it's very difficult. Once you launch the thing into the atmosphere, the predominant winds have a bad habit of moving it wherever it wants to go. Secondly, I talked to someone at the U.S. Weather Service, and they told me that the path taken by it was roughly equivalent to where the jet stream goes across North America, that it went over those areas is probably not necessarily deliberate. It simply worked out that way. And again, assuming this thing was collecting intelligence,

I have great doubts about that. I'm prepared to believe in many things, but I don't think it can collect much. They have 300 satellites, 100 of which are military. There's no shortage of opportunity for the Chinese to find out anything they want without relying on something like a balloon. And then we haven't even talked about something mentioned in USA Today, which is about the thousands of Chinese in our university and corporate laboratories. The thousands of Chinese who come here illegally to the southern border. We've had 5 million illegals enter the country since President Biden took over. All of that is infinitely more important. So no, I don't

think so. And I think he's just discarding the reality that the Chinese were the first to adopt a no first use. And they mean it. And if you look at the structure of their nuclear arsenal, they are not postured to deliver a decisive first strike. They're postured to deliver a certain second strike. General Stoltenberg said that he thought the balloon was a joint Russia-Chinese operation. Do you know or have you heard any evidence of that other than Stoltenberg's opinion? No. I think anything that you hear at this point about these balloons is you should be skeptical.

And that is probably the funniest one I've heard yet. You know, let's spread the blame for the evil balloon around and insist the Russians had a hand in it. Again, the Russians have more satellites than the Chinese. It's just crazy nonsense. Okay. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, when it happened, President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, Deputy Secretary of State, I'm not certain of her title, Victoria Nuland, we know who she is, we know what she's done in the past, all said the Russians did it. President Putin truthfully said, what are you crazy? Why would we do that to our own industry? did it. Cy Hirsch, he of Watergate, CIA spying, domestic spying, My Lai Massacre, Pulitzer Prize fame, probably the best. All right, Bob Woodward, don't get mad at me, the best investigative reporter in the United States comes up with a lengthy piece with three sources, that's his reputation for every

allegation in there, demonstrating President Biden ordered explosives put down there in June and the explosives detonated in September. He had the explosives put there by Navy SEALs, military, planned by CIA intelligence, triggered by CIA intelligence, so he can claim it was intelligence and not military. Have you ever heard of an American president using intelligence and military resources to attack an ally, Germany? That's a good question. I have not heard of that. It's the first time that we've done that, I guess. And that's very unfortunate because Germany didn't deserve it. I'm not sure it should have happened one way or the other.

It was effectively an act of war, in my judgment, under international law. Yes, Colonel, it might have been a war crime because they attacked a non-military target for a non-military purpose. Well, that's true. We haven't been very good historically in tracking those things and holding anybody accountable for them, but I'm sure you're probably right. The bottom line is, Cy Hirsch is many things, but he's an honest man. He makes honest mistakes like we all do from time to time. But I think his track record is excellent. And this particular incident, everything he describes is plausible. Because if you'd have moved this through Special Operations Command, it would have been very difficult to keep this

concealed from Congress. Not that Congress has stood up lately and made any difference, but nevertheless, that's true. So he went, apparently, CIA, Department of the Navy. That certainly makes sense to me. I just regret the whole thing. I think it was totally unnecessary. It makes it harder to end the conflict. And again, whenever you make the decision as we have to precipitate this war, and people need to understand that long before this thing began with Russians intervening in Ukraine, 14,000 people were killed since 2014 in those two Russian autonomous republics. And that was one of the points that Putin wanted to put an end to, the violence against Russian citizens living in Ukraine. Long before that happened,

we refused to honor anything that the Russians wanted, said, or thought, or did. We treated it all with complete contempt. This particular action makes it much, much harder to end the war. When you go into something like this, you should always think about how do I end it? How do we put an end to this? The notion that we should fight every war to the point where there are no enemy left or everyone is annihilated, which is a mistake we made in 1945, is ridiculous. That's not what we should do. We are, in theory, a liberal democratic republic. That should be the least of our aims. But it seems that way. And if you're sitting in Moscow right now, you say to yourself, we can't depend on anything anybody says. We have to prepare for a long war. So the order comes down. We may have to fight for 30 months before this is over, because we're

not simply dealing with Ukraine and Ukrainian forces. We're up against the United States and NATO. And of course, if they're looking at 30 months, how long can that drag on before some serious mistake is made and we find ourselves in direct combat with Russia. Are you hearing anything, any fear in Washington of Biden and others being accused of war crimes over the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline? No. In fact, they laugh at the prospect. What about things they're immune? You have been very critical and rightly so

of chancellor schultz i'm sure that he was in the dark there's no way he could have known about this ahead of time if so he's committed he under german law an impeachable offense they humiliated him i mean psy chase humiliated him you learn from a reporter that your ally destroyed an asset that your biggest utility company built and on which half of your population relies to heat their homes in the winter, and you say nothing publicly. Well, the problem here is that the German population itself has grown complacent and comfortable after many, many decades of being protected by this thing called NATO, which as you and I know, is ultimately the United States of America. And they have willingly subordinated themselves in most cases to almost anything we wanted. Now they refused to participate in Vietnam.

They refused to participate in Desert Storm. But for some reason now, we've seen a change of heart. Initially, they were unenthusiastic about bombing Serbia, and for good reasons, because of the German experience during the Second War. Ultimately, they caved and they supported it. Now we have a government that seems even more willing to become a vassal of Washington than any of its predecessors. It's only a matter of time until the German population finally wakes up, goes to the polls, and we'll see an end to this. Germany is too powerful.

Germany is too great. It's too important. And the German people need to come out of this funk that they've been in since 45. You know, this is a great tragedy. If you look at Japan, you look at Germany, the Japanese were not transformed into a nation of self-loathing Japanese, despite the fact that they realized they committed terrible crimes in many cases. Right. But we have really converted the Germans into being a self-loathing nation.

That needs to end because, face it, who is still alive today that had anything to do with the Second War? Nobody. Colonel, always a pleasure to have you, no matter how terrible the events are that we're discussing. Thank you so much for joining us, sir. Thank you. Judge Napolitano, more as we get it for judging freedom.