Judging Freedom - Ukraine Russia War - What is Next_

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, November 16, 2022. It's about 3.05 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. My guest today, of course, is absolutely no stranger to the Judging Freedom audience, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Colonel, there is much to talk about with respect to the errant or intentional missile firing that ended up in a Polish village and killed two villagers, as well as a very recent, ended just a few minutes ago, press conference given by the Secretary of the American Secretary of Defense and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We'll start with the Errant missile. So we know the facts that somehow a missile of Russian origin ended up in Poland near the border, I understand, and it killed two villagers. Can you tell us about this? Who could have fired a Russian missile? These missiles were not of Russian origin. Now, the S-300 system was designed by

the Russians, but these missiles are not of Russian origin. They're Ukrainian missiles. And we knew that this was probably either a mistake, an accident, or potentially an attempt by the Ukrainians to somehow or another involve Poland. I didn't believe the Ukrainians would do that. So I pretty much dismissed that up front. And now I think we know with absolute certainty this was an accident. This was not intentional. And what people don't understand is these air defense crews that man these batteries over in Ukraine have been under enormous pressure. Virtually every night they have been subjected to massive cruise missile drone attack, and they are under pressure to shoot down whatever they possibly can. Right. So it's very understandable that someone

launched a missile, it was misoriented, it ended up in Poland. It's tragic. But it was an accident. Let me show you a brief clip, just a few minutes old, of Secretary Lloyd Austin, the American Secretary of Defense, addressing this very issue. We're still gathering information, but we have seen nothing that contradicts President Duda's preliminary assessment that this explosion was most likely the result of a Ukrainian air defense missile that unfortunately landed in Poland. And whatever the final conclusions may be, the world knows that Russia bears ultimate responsibility for this incident. I don't know how Russia could bear ultimate responsibility for the incident if the first part of his statement is it was an error by the Ukrainians.

But the first part of the statement is newsmakingmaking because it's lloyd austin and doug mcgregor agreeing yes well he's right on that i'm glad that they told the truth the second part is the nonsense of the evil russian unprovoked aggression when of course we know we've been spending years provoking the russians and we built an army with the express purpose of attacking Russia and armed it and trained it and launched it. And just before we were preparing to launch it, it was preempted by the Russians for national self-defense. So that's nonsense, but the rest of it was true. Is it unthinkable that the Ukrainians would do something like this intentionally, knowing that President Duda of Poland is an outlier who somehow thinks that the Ukraine military, aided by NATO and the U.S., can capture Crimea.

Might as well try and capture Moscow and capture Crimea and return it, their words, return it to Ukraine. I think there's no question, but what the doors to the asylum in Warsaw are wide open and all the lunatics have escaped and they currently run the Polish foreign and defense ministries. It's crazy. Would the Ukrainians do this at some point? I guess it's possible, but frankly, Judge, they don't need to. Poland has already provided thousands of Polish troops in Ukrainian uniform

to fight inside the Ukrainian army for Ukraine. I want to stop you for a second. Polish troops in Ukrainian uniform. Oh, yes, yeah. This has been going on for a long time. And I don't know if I mentioned it during one of the discussions that there was an altercation between the Polish, so-called Polish mercenaries, which is what the Russians call them. They're just Polish soldiers in Ukrainian uniform. They've taken the oath to fight for Ukraine. And a group of roughly 10,000

plus some Romanians that are new to the game apparently showed up at the front and they were ordered by the Ukrainians to launch an attack. This is somewhere in the neighborhood of Bakhmut. And the Polish officers, they're very professional. Polish soldiers are excellent. They went up and looked at it and they said, no, we're not going to attack. If we attack there, we're going to be slaughtered just like everybody else has gone in there. And they got into a fight, and then ultimately, these were Ukrainian Nazis,

and they threatened to kill the Polish officers, so the Poles opened fire and killed them. Now, apparently, there'll be no further discussions about this because the Ukrainian government has decided, you know, we need the Poles desperately. We don't want this to blow up into a larger conflagration. And so nothing has been done about it. But that tension is still there. Why doesn't the American public know that some Ukrainian soldiers were threatening Polish soldiers on Ukrainian soil. Well, if they were told, and I think there are some outlets that carried something about this, certainly in Europe there were.

I don't know that Americans would have paid much attention because I don't think they understand it. And then secondly, since when was anybody in the mainstream media really interested in informing American citizens about anything? I mean, everything's a narrative. All right. But if President Biden, Secretary Blinken, Secretary Austin, the folks that are running American policy, at least nominally, are they aware of Polish troops in Ukrainian uniforms? I mean, is this a way to inveigle NATO into this war and get us one step closer to World War III? I think it has less to do with enticing the rest of NATO into combat or dragging it into combat

than it does with the weakness of the Ukrainians. And it became very clear very early on with the heavy casualties the Ukrainians were taking that they needed this. And the Poles aren't the only ones. They're just the largest contingent. On the issue of the weakness of the Ukrainians, here is the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, just a few minutes ago. Gary, cut number three. So across the entire frontline trace of some 900 or so kilometers, the Ukrainians have achieved success after success after success. And the Russians have failed every single time. They've lost strategically. They've lost operationally.

And I repeat, they lost tactically. All right. Is your blood pressure down, Colonel? No. In fact, I have to pay tribute to General Milley and his ability to contradict himself repeatedly and change his story to align nicely with whatever his political bosses want him to say. I mean, after all, most of the time the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is picked because he's someone they can rely on to say whatever it is they want him to say. Now, recently, as you know, this is last week, Milley got himself into trouble because he went over to the White House and the Oval Office. And when he was asked about the situation, he said two things. These are the components, you know, my wording, but it's roughly the same. He said, first of all, the Ukrainians have accomplished what they can reasonably accomplish at this point.

And then secondly, it's a good time to turn to negotiations. We should negotiate. Well, those are probably truthful statements that he honestly believed. Oh, yes, because he knows they're bled white. I mean, their little counterattacks right now are company size, 90 or 100 men with a few vehicles. You know, just three months ago, they were attacking in groups of 30 and 40,000. Then two months ago, they were attacking in groups of 30,000 and 40,000. Then two months ago, they were down to 500,000 and 800,000. Now they're down to groups of 190,000. The idea being to keep pressure on the Russians. The Russians have slaughtered them. The exchange

rate is roughly one Russian casualty for every eight to 10 Ukrainian casualties. Wow. So who can tell a four-star general, who's the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to go on national television and contradict himself and lie? Who can tell him that and get away with it? The guy in the door, the Secretary of Defense? It's the Secretary of Defense. I mean, usually when Bob Gates was Secretary of Defense,

that's what he did. Everybody has been doing this for decades. This is what happened during the Vietnam War. Earl Wheeler was moved up and became, he was Chief of Staff of the Army, and McNamara made him Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And his nickname in the Pentagon was the Chief Sycophant of the army. And, you know, when he was appointed, the first question that came out of Kennedy's mouth, or actually at that point it was LBJ, previously it had been Kennedy, well, can we trust him?

Is he going to do what you tell him to do? Is he going to say what we want him to say? Oh, yes. No danger at all. Got it. And that's how the four stars that end up in these key billets in washington usually get there that somebody that they know will do what they're told and say what they're supposed to here's uh general milley again uh accusing the russians of war crimes number four

gary the deliberate targeting of the civilian power grid causing excessive collateral damage and unnecessary suffering on the civilian population is a war crime. That's wonderful. You know, we did that with great precision during the Kosovo air campaign. That's one of the reasons that the Serbs really collapsed because they had been depending on the Russians to provide them with food and energy during the coming winter and when the Russians said we can't do it because we bribed the Russians with billions of dollars to bail out on milosevic that's what milosevic said well we have to throw in the towel because we destroyed the power grid. We destroyed their stores of fuel and energy. So that's the first

thing that you do. And that's not necessarily to make the civilian population miserable. It's just an unavoidable consequence of essentially disarming your opponent. And right now, all these strikes that went in last night, the strikes that are going to go in tonight, the strikes that have been going in there for days are aimed at destroying fuel, power, ammunition, transportation, and the occasional command and control structure. Has anybody ever been prosecuted for war crimes for attacking fuel, infrastructure, power, and command and control. No. Of course not. And if that were the case, then we would have been in front of the Nuremberg trials in 1945.

That's war. On the other hand, we have lots of evidence that Ukrainians, especially these Ukrainian Nazi units, have shot the kneecaps out on Russian soldiers, that they have bound Russian citizens, in other words, Russian citizens who are living in Ukraine, in other words, Russian speakers, where they have tied their hands behind their backs and then executed them by putting a bullet in the back of their heads and then burying them. We have lots of evidence for that, and no one in the West will cover it. These people that you're referring to as Ukrainian Nazis, are they sort of freestanding militias of Ukrainian males, or are they Ukrainian military with Nazi-like political beliefs? I would say it's more the latter.

And I would sort of treat them as the guardians of the regime, of the Zelensky regime. They are used both in combat, but also for the most part now, because many of them were killed by the Russians early on in combat in eastern Ukraine. Now more and more they're being used as enforcers. In fact, a report I saw recently said that air defense crews, Ukrainian air defense crews, trying to shoot down these missiles

were actually threatened by some of these groups with execution if they did not produce more downed Russian aircraft and missiles. Do these groups comply with command and control, or are they rogue? No, I think they comply with the command and control they get from Kiev. How responsive they are to local commanders, I couldn't say. But if you want to make sure that people attack when they're told to attack after they've taken very heavy casualties, you threaten them. And that's what the communists did during World War II. The NKVD did that. In fact, the NKVD executed one million Soviet soldiers who refused to fight or retreated under fire.

That's what they're doing. President Putin has recently, and this is newsworthy to me in the political sphere, been criticized publicly from the right by some Russian leaders for not being aggressive enough. I don't think they were oligarchs. I think they are leading figures in Russia. Maybe some of them are academics.

But for the first time during this conflagration, they criticized him from the right for not being aggressive enough, for not overrunning Ukraine. Can he get more aggressive? Can he overrun, he, President Putin, Ukraine? Well, this aggressiveness that you're talking about was never intended at the outset. They operated with a different set of assumptions. That's over. And now they're treating Ukraine as a theater of war. I mean, Russians were asking six months ago, why are there any bridges left over the Dnieper River? Yes. Why haven't we already destroyed the rail lines and the transportation networks? Why haven't we already destroyed the energy systems, you know,

the power grids and so forth? They thought that should have happened up front. But remember, when Putin went in, he told everyone explicitly, I don't want to do that. I don't want to kill Ukrainians. And they treated this, I think this is very important. They treated Ukraine as a brother Slavic country. In other words, this is a war we Russians really don't want to fight. All right, that's over. And the conditions have changed. Now they are at war. And when this offensive or offenses, I should say, are unleashed, and I don't know if that'll happen in two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, or eight weeks, but when it begins, long after the ground

freezes and thoroughly freezes, you're going to see Ukraine become a genuine theater of war, and those forces will advance in a way that everyone thought they would back in February. Okay, so here is General Milley pretty much saying the opposite. Now, before we run the tape, Gary, we know because you've explained it to us and history supports what you say, that the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the higher up you are, David Petraeus, the more likely you are to say what your bosses and masters want you to say. But what I would like you to keep in mind as you listen to this gibberish that we'll play in a minute is what he thinks he's gaining by saying this other than pleasing his bosses. Gary, take number five.

The probability of Russia achieving its strategic objectives of conquering Ukraine, of overrunning Ukraine, the probability of that happening is close to zero. Now, that was not part of his written statement. That was in response to a very astute question by a reporter. What would he gain by saying something that he knows is the opposite of the truth, other than pleasing the guy next to him? Well, first of all, he said that they would not achieve their objective of overrunning Ukraine. That has never been an objective. The Russians

are not interested in overrunning Ukraine, particularly Western Ukraine, which is historically Ukrainian. That's never been been Russian they don't want to go there they're going to have to unfortunately in order to destroy the Ukrainian armed forces and to eliminate the regime in Kef that's going to happen now why would he why would he dismiss this out of hand uh I think that he knows that he made a mistake when he leaked the truth to the New York Times, because when he said they've done all they can do and we should negotiate, that's a clear and unambiguous indicator that he knows what's coming. He knows the Russians are going to take a sledgehammer to this place,

and he doesn't want to get in front of it, and he doesn't want to be drawn into it, because he knows we're not ready to fight in that environment. Has he directed whoever works for him? And I don't know how the Joint Chiefs of Staff works, but has he directed people in the Pentagon to prepare plans when Joe Biden says we're not negotiating? Let's take them on. Are plans drawn up for the entry of American boots on the ground into this theater of war? I'm sure that they have contingency plans for U.S. and allied military intervention in western Ukraine. How far in they plan to go, under what conditions they would go, I have no idea. But they would be imprudent, given the

attitude of President Biden and the civilian leaders around him, not to make preparations for something like that. Now, I know that nobody in the Pentagon, at least as far as I can tell, no one at the top, wants to do that, because we understand that that will make us a co-belligerent. We will end up at war with Russia. These generals, remember, they have been misinforming everyone for decades about how ready we are and how great we are and everything that we can do. And they are now afraid of being caught in that big lie. All right, I'm going to run another clip that we hadn't planned to run. Gary, I think you still have it. It's the clip of General Milley saying that we are the greatest military in the world and the Chinese and the Russians will never overtake us. is. But they're going to try, but they're not going to get there. We will be number one five

years from now, 10 years from now, and 50 years from now. We are not going to let China take number one. Hap or true? The only thing I can say with absolute certainty is that we will spend more money than anyone else. Well, we'll spend more money than the next 12 governments combined, which includes Russia and China. But this is more bluster. This is bloviating. And the proof is in the pudding. And again, I'm hearing that they are very afraid that this administration, the people at the top, do not understand the fragility of our position in Eastern Europe. And right now, everyone is concerned about the fact that if you decided to march in there, oh, I'm sure the Poles

would go with you, maybe a few Romanians, although I'm not entirely sure that would last very long. Nobody else is going to show up. I mean, look, we've got the Italians that have said we're not sending any more aid unless it's humanitarian. The Germans have said, look, we've got the Italians that have said we're not sending any more aid unless it's humanitarian. The Germans have said, look, we've sent all that we can do. If we send anything else, we won't have anything to fight with ourselves. I got to think that if they really want it, the crowd around Biden and their colleagues in Western Europe, in the countries that you just mentioned, particularly Poland, really want NATO troops on the ground, they're going to have to pull a false flag. They're going to have to have some

demonstrable, however erroneous and calculated, public event to gather public support around. Otherwise, I would think if Tony Blinken says, hey, we're going in, his colleagues are going to say, see ya. Well, just keep in mind that about 1963, 62, shortly before Kennedy was assassinated, everyone had pretty much decided in the administration, we're going to go into Vietnam. Frankly, everybody had pretty much decided that. In fact, Kennedy, I think, instructed McNamara to call General Lemnitzer, who was a Supreme Commander in Europe and a World War II veteran, and ask him what he thought about moving forces to Vietnam. And McNamara called General Lemnitzer and said, General, how long do you think it will take for us to get the 101st into Vietnam? He said, well, I should think it

won't take very long. He said, the question is, how long is it going to take us to get it out again? At that point, McNamara was not happy and hung up on him. Do you understand? You're dealing with a similar group of people right now. I don't certainly understand. We're certainly dealing with a nearly identical mentality. Now, the one thing to keep in mind is in 1965, we were in infinitely better condition militarily than we are now. We probably had the best army we'd ever had in our history. The Navy was superb. The Air Force was superb. So we were quite capable of going in and conducting decisive operations. What I'm trying to say is we're not capable of going in and conducting decisive operations. What I'm trying to say is we're not capable of that right now. Our forces are not in great shape. The conditions or the foundations

for our power have eroded significantly over the last 30 years. The generals know it, and they're worried. That's why Milley's earlier leaks and statements indicated exactly that. And instead now he said, oops, I don't want to be retired early. I don't want to be fired. I'm sorry, and goes back out and says what he knows is not true. Colonel Douglas McGregor, always a pleasure. Thank you for your time. My viewers, thank you for your time and for your lucid and courageous

explanations we'll see you soon thanks for joining us Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom