Judging Freedom - Ukraine Russia War - Beyond the Propaganda w_ Col. Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, February 7th, 2023. It's about two o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Colonel Douglas McGregor is back with us. I have a lot to chat with you about, Colonel, but there is a little bit of breaking news, and it apparently comes from the Russian military, although it's not good for them. You tell me the significance of this number. Russia suffered a record 10,030 troop deaths in the last 24 hours. Is this believable? Is this a high number? Yeah, I'd say that's a very high number. 10,000 Russian soldiers. No, 1,000. 1,030 troop deaths in the last 24 hours. I don't know what 24 hours, but this just broke on Yahoo, and everybody's picking it up. So there must be more than one

source for it. Yahoo is quoting the Russian military. Well, it's interesting because they have not sustained those kinds of casualties in the past. For them to lose a thousand a day in one day, it would be interesting to know what the cause is. Did they indicate at all what had caused these deaths? No, it's one of those short, Colonel, it's one of those short summary articles. It's no more than two paragraphs. It's like it was written on the fly. Maybe more is to come. If something breaks during the show, we'll pick it up and let you know. You and I discussed a piece in the Financial Times based on writing by reporters who are all over Europe that NATO's stockpiles are getting low and needing

urgent replenishment. How could that be? Oh, I think that's easily explained. First of all, even in the 1980s, when we were pouring enormous amounts of money into our military establishment, NATO was really conducting business as usual. Now, that was better than what we've seen since the early 1990s, but there was no sense of any imminent danger of war in Europe that justified massive production of equipment or munitions. Once the wall fell, so to say, you see that the German army was

rapidly disbanded. The German government simply disarmed itself and fell into the hands of these combination of Greens and leftists who were convinced that Fukuyama was right, that history had ended and there would be no further conflict. So NATO, and you've been saying this, NATO is giving arms to Ukraine from its substance, not from its surplus, and its substance, whatever it may need for whatever purpose, the old days, the Russian bear, but whatever purpose, its substance is depleted significantly. Oh, absolutely. And again, this reinforces another point that the Europeans did not sign up for a war with Russia. When this whole business began, and I say business, I'm talking about going back to 2014 with the installation of the government. It was essentially friendly to us, guided by people like Victoria Nuland and others from Washington.

And then the subsequent massive buildup of the Ukrainian army designed effectively for one purpose, to attack Russia. Specifically, not just to attack Russia, but to regain control of Crimea. So this was an unambiguously offensive force aimed at Russia. I think the Europeans looked at this and said, well, this won't really go anywhere. The Russians really don't want to fight. And the Russians are no longer armed as they once were. And what we're discovering is that they were not entirely wrong, that the Russian military was hardly prepared for a major war,

which is why they ultimately went to the pause, the strategic pause, the economy of force, and they went to a war footing. They're now on a war footing. Their factories are running seven days a week, 24 hours a day. They're not in any danger of running out of ammunitions or equipment or anything else, and they're turning out excellent equipment,

brand-new equipment in many cases. It's arriving very rapidly at the front. They now have a very large force, and it's getting larger every day. So I think the Europeans just never signed on for this. And the problem we have right now is that we grossly miscalculated on, you know, the Russians, we don't really understand them, we didn't pay any attention to them. We're staring strategic defeat in the face. Have our supplies been depleted, and are they in need of replenishment, the Americans, to the same extent that NATO's are? Well, of course. You've got to remember that if you look at something like the Javelin, a friend of mine at raytheon told me the ns was ultimately posted by fox news in one of the articles but friend at raytheon said look we've gone through almost seven years of production of uh javelins in ukraine you know it takes time to build these missiles whether it's high mars or or raytheon raytheon's other products like NASAMs and so forth. All of these missiles are

very complex, high-tech weapons. We've gone through our stockpiles very quickly, and we have no surge capacity, none. And that's something people don't understand. But the Russians have managed to very rapidly surge production, and the Europeans are very concerned about it. That's why inside NATO, behind closed doors, we were saying, this can't go on. You've got to end this, Washington. Everyone's at risk. We have nothing left. In fact, the whole tank issue is blowing up in everybody's faces because the tanks are simply not showing up. Suddenly other European members are reluctant to commit their leopard tanks and if i were sitting in their shoes right now i would feel the same way why would i send my armor over there i might

in their minds they say well once ukraine is destroyed we have to be able to defend ourselves and i i think they're right to to this argument late last week jenifer excuse me general christopher cavoli i don't know if you know him, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, an American general, was quoted as saying Ukraine's losses are, but I'm surprised to hear that from General Cavoli, unless this is the type of leak that's intended to acclimate the public to reality. Europe and what he says is certainly going to have a huge impact in Europe. Most people in the United States won't pay any attention, but everybody in Europe will. And so in that sense, you could be right that he's signaling that this is not going to go on. We cannot sustain this. He's not going to come out and say it, but I think that's his message. Would someone of General Cavoli's position, an American four-star, but commanding American and foreign troops to the extent that he's commanding them, you can tell me what that means, in Europe, have needed the permission of the State Department or the Defense Department or the West Wing to make

a statement that profound? Absolutely. It would have to have been vetted in the White House as well as with the Office of Secretary of Defense, and I suspect the Secretary of State. He also used a phrase, and maybe this is Military Science 101, I don't know, precision can beat mass. Can you tell us what that means? I did not necessarily use that. No, no, you didn't use it. General Cavoli did. Yeah, Cavoli is not wrong.

What you need, though, is the following. Wars are won and have been won certainly for the last century plus by accurate, devastating firepower. Your ability to direct accurate, devastating firepower. Your ability to direct accurate, devastating firepower against the enemy at a place and time and space that makes his position hopeless. Let's put it that way. We have precision. Unfortunately for us, so do the Russians. So do the Chinese. This monopoly that we had for years on precision munitions is gone. Now what the Russians are demonstrating is that they understand that you need both. You want precision munitions, precision missiles, precision rockets,

but you want huge quantities of them if you're going to win. So Cavoli is trying to sort of be on both sides of the equation. He said, well, precision can beat mass, yes, under certain circumstances. But if your opponent has precision and mass, probably not. And that's the case with Russia right now. Wow. You and I also talked about some of the behavior of Ukrainian agents and recruiting officials. I don't know if they're military or not.

Lowering the conscription age to 16. Now, everywhere in the world, a 16-year-old boy is a boy, not a man, not a fully developed man and too young for the military, but I guess not too young for Ukraine. You and I shared a video. I don't know how old this kid was, 14 or 15, was literally kidnapped right in front of his mother's eyes and shoved into a military truck. They were just walking down the street. What is this going to do for the morale of the people in Ukraine? Is it common or is it isolated? Has the conscription age in Ukraine, this is almost child abuse, been lowered to 16? My impression is yes, it has.

And there are multiple sources confirming that this is the case. And there's lots of evidence being posted by ukrainians all the time about the true situation there are pictures of ukrainian soldiers that are obviously you know 15 16 years of age so there's no doubt that this is going on but i think this is this is part of the larger picture the russians went into this economy of force and they maximized the effectiveness of their connectivity between space-based and terrestrial-based ISR, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, assets above, and gun systems, rocket systems, missile systems. They've inflicted

terrible casualties. Whole year groups of Ukrainian men are dead and are gone, have been annihilated. And at the same time, you have this much smaller population for which to draw on, as I talked about previously. There aren't 37 million people in Ukraine anymore. The areas that Zelensky controls are perhaps 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 million, which is roughly the size of the population of the Netherlands. That population is mostly male, I'm told, because lots of old men, women, and children have left the country. But still, the men that are there are not all able. Some of them are in advanced age, and lots of them are children.

And so they're in desperation turning to this. This regime is at the end. It really is. But it's not going to give up. It's going to fight to the bitter end, and it's going to sacrifice whatever it can to stay in power. But when will Joe Biden and Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin and Jake Sullivan, the people that presumably are making these decisions, recognize what you just said, that the regime is at the end. I think that for all intents and purposes, that message was delivered weeks ago from the Department of Defense to the White House, and it was rejected.

Period. They're rejecting reality in deference to their political needs. Well, I guess we'll hear that in the State of the Union tonight. Well, I'm sure you'll hear an entirely erroneous picture. I mean, someone asked me today, how did we end up like this? I said, well, we've had 40 years of Cold War, at the end of which the Soviet Union fell apart, and we emerged, if not victorious, then certainly healthy and well, and we avoided global war, which was our goal for 40 years. In just one year,

we faced defeat in Ukraine through this proxy war, but more important, we're on the threshold of a potential confrontation with Russia, something that we worked for decades to avoid. So I guess the answer to your question, Judge, is it doesn't look good. We're not going to admit failure. No one will say they were wrong. The Russians love anniversaries. February 24th, of course, is the anniversary of the beginning of this military incursion. From your sources, Colonel, does President Putin have his hundreds of thousands of reinforcements ready to pour in to eastern Ukraine and begin marching and killing and destroying on their way west? Yes, they're ready. That's why I thought that by now they would have already pulled the string, so to say, and have moved north. But the shaping attacks that have been going on down in southern Ukraine have essentially set the Russians up for multiple

axes of advance from the south, up towards Zaporoshaussia up through the bakhmut area and further east up along the border with russia i don't know how which one they're going to take maybe they'll take them all but that has worked why why they have not already attacked two news i mean one thing i'm sure sorovikin realizes and garazimov realizes is that their strategy of enticing the Ukrainians to attack them relentlessly has worked. Ukraine has been bled white. And they may be saying, well, there's no reason to rush. We can wait another three or four days. Let's wait for additional ammunition. Let's wait for additional whatever it might be. Remember, logistics is important, and they want to push forward ammunition, medical support, more firepower, all of those kinds of things. And it may be they want to

push some more forward, but the truth is they could go right now, and there's not much to stop them from going straight north and on the eastern side all the way to Kyiv. Have you seen any evidence of demoralization amongst the Ukrainian troops because of their vast casualties? Anecdotally, you go on Telegram and you look at the things that are being posted in Ukrainian by Ukrainians, and yes, there's plenty of evidence for it. There's no question about that. Also, the hatred and hostility is growing for Zelensky, as more and more Ukrainians are blaming him. Let me stop you. Is this hatred from the public, Ukrainian public, from the military, or both? Well, I'm talking primarily about soldiers in the field, but that may also apply to the population. I just don't have access to that in Western Ukraine.

I don't know what they think there. But soldier-wise, oh, absolutely. And they're also looking at very corrupt leadership. You know, there are comments coming in all the time. You're stuffing your pockets with cash. You and the generals, you're corrupt leaders. And we're dying, you know, by the bushel every other day. I mean, assignment to

Bakhmut for the last couple of months has been essentially a death warrant, and everybody knows it. Not too long ago, maybe three or four days ago, the former foreign minister of Poland revealed that at one point the Polish government was thinking of, I don't know how they would do this physically, militarily, and legally, partitioning Ukraine and considering the western part of Ukraine, the part largely untouched by the war that includes the capital Kiev, as a Polish protectorate, and thereby triggering Article 5, the obligation of all of NATO to defend Poland, if that part of Ukraine, a la Polish protectorate, were attacked by Russia. I mean, this just sounds to me crazy. It almost sounds like the justification Hitler used to combine Austria to Germany to protect Austria, even though the only people Austria needed to be protected from was him. Although most Austrians disagreed and they were quite happy to join the German state.

I think Hitler is a bad comparison. I think I think a better comparison would be somebody like Stalin, you know, the man that murdered 16 times the number of people Hitler ever encountered. I think Poland is another state in the region with unfinished business. You've got to go all the way back to the First World War and understand the Second World War was an extension of the First and then all of the people in the region that were formerly part of Austria-Hungary, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, even the German Imperial State or Prussia, all these places fell under Russian domination, Russian communist domination,

and everyone was unhappy with it. Everyone hates it, and everyone felt betrayed. The Poles in particular, once they got out from under Soviet occupation and control, always envisioned a time when they would regain their former stature in Europe as a great power. So these kinds of thoughts and strategies have been around forever. The problem is, if they are seriously considering this, and they may be, I mean, it's hard for us to know, but nothing would surprise me. The polls are romantics to the bitter end. If they think that by moving into Ukraine and claiming that they are acting in the name of NATO and Washington. That'll be the end of NATO. The Europeans will say, you've had it. You're on your own. We're not bankrolling your war to regain your empire against Russia. Well, we already know that the president of Poland

has said his goal would be to claim back Crimea. Now, that is an impossibility and it's insanity. Yeah, but you mean the Ukrainian president, right? No, the Polish president. Oh, he wants to recapture Crimea? Yes. He wants American troops and his troops and Ukrainian troops to recapture Crimea. This is an impossibility. And I think you'd argue, you'd agree with me, it's insanity for him to say that. Well, he's obviously on hallucinogenics of some kind that would make him billions of dollars if he could mass produce it. But no, I don't see any evidence for that happening. And again,

look at everybody else involved. And I guess you have to make exceptions for people that live in Northern Norway that think that might be great, who are on the edge of the West and are totally remote from reality. You may have some of those in England. I don't know. But everybody else on the continent of Europe will walk away from that. There's no chance of that. And that's the end of NATO. People just say, wait a minute. No, we're not joining this war on Russia. Russia is not the Soviet Union. Is there any chance, no matter what Washington does, that Ukraine can win this war? Of course.

Or that Putin can lose it? No, of course not. No, no, no. Putin isn't going to lose anything. And so, you know, somebody said, well, Putin is weakened and adrift. I said, you mean Joe Biden? They said, no, Putin. I said, no, Joe Biden, not Vladimir Putin. The Russians have a strategy. They know what they're doing. They're methodical, they're deliberate, they're effective. We don't. We never thought through the consequences of our

actions. We're all sitting around here in Washington saying, oh, what do we do now? Ukrainians are going to lose. We can't have that. We've got to ship more over to them. What do we do? See, this has been my concern from day one, that then people who are rank amateurs are saying, well, we've got to do something. Maybe we can move into Western Ukraine just out to Lvov and set up a safe zone. I don't think it's going to go down very well with the Russians at this point. You can't tell your opponent, you must be humiliated. Your state must be dismembered and your government must be destroyed. Then we will kindly accept your surrender and welcome you into the brotherhood of international globalism or something. That's effectively

what we've been saying. So if you're a Russian right now, you're looking at this and saying, we're just going to keep going until there's nobody left in Ukraine that opposes us. And I'm afraid that's the path they're on. And I don't see any evidence that we're going to try to seriously arrest it. What will it take in your mind for Zelensky to call up Tony Blinken and say, let's start some back channel communications with the Russian foreign minister because this can't go on much longer? Or is he not the type of rational person to do that? Or is Blinken not the type of person to accept that? I think Blinken and the president would have to assure Zelensky that he and his inner circle will be flown immediately to Miami or Malibu or somewhere and ensconced in wealthy homes and surroundings and live comfortably for the rest of their lives, in which case he might do that. But otherwise, forget it.

All right. I want to switch gears just a little bit. Colonel, where on the planet is the largest gathering of Chinese intelligence agents outside of China? Well, the largest concentration, let us say, of intelligence operation, in other words, the biggest operation outside of China, with all of the technology and capability, is probably in Mexico. Probably on the outskirts of Mexico City. And we obviously know at whom and at what those intelligence activities are aimed if they're in Mexico. Remember, the Soviet Union maintained its largest KGB operation in the world in Mexico, because Mexico was very friendly to the Soviets. I mean, these are old issues.

Venezuela, Cuba, and Mexico were always pro-communist. They supported the communists in the Spanish Civil War. They supported the Soviets and the communists during the Second World War. They supported them ever since, off and on. So the bottom line is, this is why this business about the balloon is so depressing. You know, the balloon is not large enough to carry a serious payload that can communicate anything or collect anything. Somebody said, well, it's the size of three school buses. It has to be the size of the Goodyear blimp before you're going to put anything on it that makes any difference. And in the meantime, the Chinese have 300 satellites circling the globe.

A third of those have military capability. And several of them constitute China's global positioning system that guides all the missiles and rockets and munitions that they have to their targets. Every day, the Chinese satellite constellation monitors where every surface warfare ship in the United States Navy is located. That location information can be rapidly transformed into targeting data. I mean, this is serious. We need to know about it. they don't need a balloon they have plenty of satellites that will read the names on gravestones in Arlington I mean it's almost monitor every conversation they want including the one between you and me and Jill and Joe Biden

I mean they they caused 90 percent of the country to be fixated on a balloon for four days. And rumors spread that Joe Biden said shoot it down and the military overruled him, which I can't imagine happening. I think they hesitated to shoot it down because it was overpopulated areas. Do you think that this balloon was a diversion while something else was happening? Or do you think that the balloon was used by the administration to begin laying the groundwork for hatred of China because Joe wants a war with China over Taiwan? Well, I think the person that's done the best job of answering this question is Matt Taibbi. He published an article that's called Government by Panic. And I think this Biden administration decided to capitalize on the panic. I think it backfired on them.

I think they made a mountain out of a molehill. The issue for us is the intelligence operation in China that obviously has connections to the drug cartels, the fact that Mexico's government is an organized crime facade, which allows these cartels to have access to global finance, the fact that these Chinese are working with the drug cartels and the other criminal elements in the Caribbean basinin to push people into our country, thousands of them. Last year, supposedly 20,000 Russians entered the country. I'm trying to find out if anybody has kept track of how many Chinese have come in, because we know large numbers of Chinese girls are brought in that end up in the slave trade, the sexual slave trade. Nobody bothers

to bring that up. That's another ugly dimension of this business. But the point is, we already have them in the country. They're in our universities, in our laboratories. They're all over the place. They have access to IP. They have access to secrets. What are we doing to protect ourselves? And we're worried about the weather balloon. I think it was probably just a weather balloon that got loose, sadly, because they don't need it. This is what's so disturbing when you listen to senators and congressmen. This is a serious threat.

Has no one briefed these people on what the capabilities are? Maybe they're in trouble in Ukraine. Nobody bothered to sit down and explain Russian military potential. Colonel, I'm reading the comments by the thousands of people that are watching us now, and you are an American hero the United States in the world arena, which the government doesn't want to present it. And that requires courage and heroism. And my hat is off to you. Thank you very much for joining us, Colonel. Okay.

Thank you, Judge. Judge Napolitano, more as we get it. Colonel loves to come back here. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano, more as we get it. The colonel loves to come back here. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.