Judging Freedom - Zelensky "Offensive started too late" & Black Sea War Games w/Larry Johnson fmr CIA

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Zelensky "Offensive started too late" & Black Sea War Games w/Larry Johnson fmr CIASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 12th, 2023. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us. I want to start with something unusual right off the bat, which is a CBS News report in which David Martin, CBS's longtime national security and Pentagon correspondent, apparently spent a lot of time with General Milley. And there are a couple of scenes of him, the two of them talking in this report. The report is a half an hour long. We're only going to show about a minute and a quarter. But towards the end of the report, General Milley takes David into a subterranean secure room and shows him, you can see on the wall, maps of Ukrainian positions. I just want your opinion on this, and then we'll get into the state of the war. So here's that

CBI. Here's a portion of that CBS News report. And General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. What do you have up first this morning? About 10 minutes, I got a call with General Zaluzhny. General Valery Zaluzhny, commander of Ukraine's armed forces. I talk to him every week as a minimum, sometimes twice a week, three times a week. That much? It's 6.45 a.m. Three hours later, he takes us underground, deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, into a top-secret command center where all

the intelligence collected from the battlefields of Ukraine is monitored by his staff. This is the crew that keeps Secretary and I informed on a day-to-day basis of what's happening out there in the current operation. How well can you see through the fog of war from here? The fog and friction of war is always present, but our information systems are pretty good. Should those maps have been on air? Did they reveal national defense information of the type for which the young man and the National Guardsmen in Massachusetts and the former president of the United States were indicted for showing to others?

No, they sanitized the place. They cleaned it up. You can see some of the signs on the computers in the back. They got J33. That means operations. J3 is ops. J2, that's intelligence. So they've got the entire elements of the joint staff

scattered around that room. And they're got the entire elements of the joint staff scattered around that room and they're showing the map the real story what martin should have said is general we're now three months into this offensive these guys haven't even breached the first line what's going on didn't even ask that well another general would have pulled out his copy of the Wall Street Journal, which has been reporting consistently, and only that the first line has been briefed. I don't know. I was surprised that he showed it. At some point in history, maybe a day ago, an hour ago, four weeks ago, those maps were valid and revealed sensitive intel information. I was just surprised to see them on national television. You're telling me I shouldn't be worried about it.

Yeah, there are maps that can really show disposition of forces, but those maps, what he's showing, no different than what Ukraine publishes every day on a Ukraine live map update. All right. Here, you asked the David Martin saying, hey, General, what happened to the offensive? Here is General Miley. I think he's standing next to his British counterpart. I'm not sure who this fellow is. It does not look like an American military uniform to me.

You may recognize the gentleman or the uniform or both. But here's General Miley sort of hemming and hawing, but saying, well, they could still pull this off. The Ukrainians have achieved very steady progress and they've maintained a depth of combat power that is significant. And there's still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days worth of fighting weather left. So the Ukrainians aren't done. This battle's not done. And they haven't achieved, they haven't finished the fighting part of what they're trying to accomplish. So we'll see.

It's too early to say how this is going to end. They at least have achieved partial success in what they set out to do. And then we'll get the cold, as you mentioned. It'll start, the rains will come in. It'll become very muddy and it'll be very difficult to maneuver at that point. And then you'll get the deep winter. And then at that point, we'll see where things go. But right now, it is way too early to say that this offensive is failed or not failed.

There's still heavy fighting going on. The Ukrainians are still plugging away with steady progress through the various defensive belts that the Russians have put in place. Under oath, that's perjury. I mean, he can't possibly mean Ukrainians are showing steady progress in the offensive. He reminds me of the owner of the Washington Nationals baseball team. He was in last place. And, hey, we still got a chance. We might get to first place. It's not going to happen. The season's run out. They don't

have enough games to play. And, you know, Milley is, I don't know if he's auditioning for his next job in the private sector, but it's just downright silly. on top of the fact that Zelensky the president of Ukraine contradicted him today or maybe it was yesterday I don't not sure exactly the moment of the interview but Zelensky admitted no we've lost the counter-offensive we've lost because we didn't we didn't have air superiority is one of the one of the excuses he uses. So Milley and Zelensky, at least, don't have their story straight. Does General Milley talk to General Zelensky every day? And does Zelensky bow down to Milley

because he wants the flow of arms and cash to keep coming? Well, they talk at least once a week. And then if things are really going bad, maybe two to three times a week. But, you know, Milley's trying to convince Zeluzny to do what America thinks that they should do. Zeluzny, to his credit, is pushing back against, because America's offering advice

about something that's never done. I mean, candidly, this is like some guy who wants to be a marriage counselor who's never been married, trying to suggest what you need to do. You know, this is because we haven't. We've been fighting Iraq. We've been fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. They don't have anything like what Russia's fielding against Ukraine we're really in no position we actually ought to be in there taking notes trying to figure out what is it we

need to do in the event we we go to war with Russia here's uh President zielinski saying the counter-offensive took too long and the weapons didn't come when we asked for them when we speak about their counter offense It depends on many cases. Of course, we gave a lot of time for Russians We gave a lot of time to prepare to mine To put the mines and to put the mines on the fields and on the big territory And so you you see the three defending lines and that's because you were waiting for what the weapon? That's why I said it depends on many issues. We, look, we waited too long.

It's true. No, I'm thankful to partners, to United States. I'm thankful very much, President Biden and to Congress. But we have to understand, first, we waited too long. They put mines. Then when we been ready from the point of view of our partners, because the decision to give us, for example, Bradley or another kind of weapon, the decision, it doesn't mean the result.

You don't get them immediately. Of course you don't. Of course you don't get them immediately of course the of course you don't of course you don't what is he does he nobody's talking about him and he must know that asking for a tank on monday it's not going to arrive on thursday yeah glad to give you a hamburger today for you know something on look um it is stunning that he's admitting that they've lost that. That that that should be the headline. He's a Linsky admits that they've lost. Now he's blaming it sort of on the West.

But you notice there at the end, oh, well, you know, I'm not I'm not ungrateful. I'm so, so grateful for all the help they've given us. You know, you didn't you did not have to be Klaus Witz or Sun Tzu or some great military leader from the past to know that at the outset of this operation, Ukraine did not have any kind of air power that could pose any kind of threat to the Russians. And without that kind of airpower,

they were bound to fail. There were some of us that were saying that three months ago. And now he's acknowledging it. Thank you very much, Captain Obvious. Here he is saying the opposite. Here he is saying the front lines are moving east. Fellow Ukrainians, at the end of this week, it is important to say a few things. First of all, the front line. Over the past seven days, we have advanced. There is movement in the Tavria directions. There is movement in the Bakhmut direction.

Kupyansk and Lyman directions, Avdivka and Mariinka, we are holding our ground there. I am grateful to all the warriors who make this possible. Every week, our warriors continuously keep the initiative in the hands of Ukraine. It is Ukrainian heroism that determines how this war will end. Is this just for domestic political consumption? Yeah, I call it Ukrainian hokey pokey, you know, put the left foot in, put the left foot out, put it in and shake it all about. That's what they're doing. They move a little bit forward. Hey, we moved. You know, we moved. Well, the question is, did you break through that first line of defense and destroy the Russian emplacements? And the

answer to that is no, we didn't. And it goes back to what he was telling Fareed Zakaria. We don't have the weapons that we need in order to do that. And so they've been throwing up manpower against these Russian entrenchments and getting chewed up and just decimated in ways that are just horrific. You and I know that they have not advanced beyond any of the Russian defenses. You and I know from your sources, McGregor's sources, Ritter's sources, etc., that they haven't even approached

the first line of defense. Oh, but what does General David Petraeus say about this? Here he is, we're waiting for the Russians to crumble. Do you think that the geography and the geometry of the war still favors Ukraine and will get better? Depends on a number of different factors. Most significantly is whether or not Russian forces at some point crack and perhaps even crumble or even collapse.

Again, that's not the base case necessarily. And that's certainly what those of us who are following this very, very closely are looking for. That's, I think, the key. The Ukrainians know that. The Ukrainians are fighting for their very survival. This is their war of independence. Russian soldiers are not all that happy to be there in many cases. They certainly can't look over their shoulder and see who they're fighting for. There are are slight cracks but nothing like a real crumbling much less a collapse but that's I think what we need to watch for that's what I'm sure the Ukrainians are trying to figure out how to precipitate they can't precipitate a crack in Russian defenses can they no no uh somebody needs to figure out what the what hallucinogens Dave Petraeus is using obviously

they make him very happy and he's but he's not in touch with reality I mean this is what he's saying is absurd it reflects just and Scott Ritter I know commented on this yesterday on your show as well I mean the Russians come out of a history of remembering the past. You know, we have trouble barely remembering 9-11. Certainly, nobody paid much attention this year to December 7th. But every year, you get what they call the March of Immortals throughout Russia of people carrying the pictures of their relatives that died in World War II. They remember.

You heard Vladimir Putin just the other day addressing a group of school kids, and he was reading a letter that he got from his grandfather. And his grandfather was describing the death of Vladimir Putin's grandmother during World War II. She had been shot. She was already a mother, Vladimir Putin's mother, but she had been shot

and was dying and her husband described the death of his wife in his arms so this memory lives fresh with Russia they know that they're fighting foreign invaders and for Petraeus to say something so abjectly stupid just really

it makes you wonder how in God's name could he ever get promoted to four stars? I guess because he just, you know, kissed up to the right people. You and I have seen that in our careers, people who are disconnected from the truth, but they tell the boss what they believe the boss wants to hear. Sort of like what the CIA tells Jake Sullivan. And when he's listening, Joe Biden. Let me switch gears a little bit. How dangerous is it, if at all, I don't want to put words in your mouth, for the United States and the United Kingdom and a few other countries with smaller navies to be conducting war games now or next week, I guess, in the Black Sea?

Yeah, I heard Doug say that. Oh, boy. That's going to be crossing a red line. You know, if that is true, and I know Doug was still trying to confirm whether or not it was true, but if that is true, that the United States is going to conduct this freedom of navigation operation in the Black Sea, it is a high likelihood that it could result in a confrontation with the Russians, and that this would then escalate the conflict

beyond a special military operation into a full-blown war. Well, certainly, Secretary Austin and Secretary Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan and presumably the president know this? Does he want to poke the bear? Does he want to run for re-election while we're fighting a war against Russia in their theater of war where they have a critical mass of military operations and we don't? Well, that's where it comes back to what David Petraeus was saying, because it reflects the belief of a weakness on the part of Russia on a lack of capability to respond effectively.

And so if you start with that premise that Russia's incapable, it's weak, therefore we can do basically what we want and we don't have any fear of retaliation. That's a miscalculation. We've used the analogy before of I'm able to convince you that, oh, this Mike Tyson, he's a pushover. Just get in the ring and throw some punches at him.

You'll beat him easy. Well, you'd be angry with me after the encounter because you would have said, Well, you'd be angry with me after the encounter because you would have said, Johnson, you lied to me. All right. Colonel McGregor reports from his sources about 450,000 Ukrainian deaths. That's about 380, 387 military and the rest so-called volunteers and foreign mercenaries. If true, that number is extraordinary. If you extrapolate that onto the seven to one kill ratio, you see how few the Russians have lost and the percentage of their military gone and how great the Ukrainians, is the Ukrainian loss and the percentage of its military gone and how great the Ukrainians is the Ukrainian loss and the

percentage of its military now gone well part of that is based upon an article in the German paper the workers daily and they cited as of last fall like the end of October 1st of November, 372,000 KIA already then. And since then, there have been, I would estimate, at least another 130,000 KIA. So I think we're well over. On the Ukrainian side or total? On the Ukrainian side. On the Ukrainian side. I think the Russians are hovering probably around 50,000 dead.

But again, you don't say, that's just johnson's opinion no just step back look at social media the russians and ukrainians both have similar access to social media you are not seeing graveyards in russia that have flag upon flag upon flag of newly dug graves. You're seeing that all the time in Ukraine. In Ukraine, they're proposing to build a 600,000-sized cemetery that can hold 600,000 dead. And you can see it from satellite pictures where they're building it. You're not seeing that in Russia. And, you know, people say, oh, Russia's an authoritarian state.

You know, without getting into that argument, the fact of the matter is with the ubiquity of cell phones and social media these days, Russia could not cover that up if they were having the kinds of casualties that Ukraine is. By contrast, you get just not only the images, you had the head of medical services for Ukraine, a woman doctor the other day, just yesterday talking, the horrific number of casualties. She was basically conceding that, you know, Ukraine again was losing, that there was nothing they could do about it. Does the humanitarian loss, like what you're talking about now, factor into decisions in the West Wing?

Like, wow, how much more of this can these people tolerate? And maybe we should dial it back. Maybe we should call Putin and get together in Geneva? No, Biden and his team don't care. There's a complete disregard for Ukrainian humanity in this. All they're concerned about is trying to weaken Russia with the ultimate goal of taking out Putin and gaining control of the natural resources of Russia,

putting it under U.S. control. And with each passing week, the United States' position becomes weaker and weaker because you've got the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, now in Russia. Russia is expanding. Doug McGregor used the term horizontal escalation, and that's exactly correct. Russia is now creating new problems that the United States is going to have to worry about. The G20 was a bust in contrast to BRICS. You've got countries lining up to become members of BRICS.

You don't have a waiting list of folks saying, oh, I want to become a member of the G20 so we can be equally irrelevant. Last subject matter, were you surprised when Putin stated over the weekend that the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia were wrong? No, not at all, because Putin, despite attempts in the CIA and others to try to portray Putin as the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin. He's not. He is by some training, a lawyer as well as an intelligence officer. And he has been free to admit and acknowledge mistakes that were made in the past, particularly by the Soviets.

There's some criticism of him in Russia that he's considered too soft and too moderate, too reluctant to go out and engage in acts that would risk escalating the war. But I think historians will look back on this period of time and say, thank God Vladimir Putin was in charge because he was one of the only adults in the room on the world stage at the time. Larry, thank you very much for your time. We'll see you on Friday afternoon for our roundtable.

Okay, see you then. Thanks. Thank you. All right, there you have it. Two busy days. We put a lot of content on the board, and I know you appreciate it. We're up to 197,000 in the subscriptions. We'll reach that 200,000 mark almost any day, certainly by early next week. by Christmastime. Tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your co-workers why you watch judging freedom, because you really don't get anywhere else the attitude about human life, about natural human rights, about American governmental restraint that you get here.

A lot of the folks that are on with me were once regulars, as I was once, although I'm back on Newsmax, on cable television, but they're not welcome there anymore. They're always welcome here. Help us spread the word because we are always looking out for your liberty.