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Aug. 21, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:57
Re-Broadcast: Phil Giraldi : Israel and Personal Liberty
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, August 14th, 2024.
Phil Giraldi joins us now.
Phil, my dear friend, no matter what we talk about, it's always a pleasure to be able to pick your brain.
Sometime in the past week or so, we're not even sure when it happened, Ukrainian forces, and there may have been NATO forces involved.
invaded the Kyrsk region of Russia, and they're still there.
This has resulted in somewhat of a logistics move on the part of Russia to get troops there Is it likely that U.S. intel, CIA, DIA, MI6, and Mossad were involved in providing the intelligence to facilitate this type?
Well, I would assume that you have to think in that direction.
We are paying for this war.
We are providing the weapons.
We're providing the intelligence.
We definitely have boots on the ground, as do the British and the Poles and probably others from the Baltic states.
They're all there.
They're all playing certain roles.
I mean, this is a real war.
And the fact is that, you know, here we have Joe Biden, what, two weeks ago, telling us that he's the first president in 100 years to say that the country is not at war.
He must be missing out on a few things.
I mean, we're in major wars, involved in major wars in at least two places, and we're involved in a lot of And here we have a President of the United States telling us we're not at war.
I would say that, you know, this is a given that U.S. was involved from start to finish.
And bear in mind that this is the kind of thing, an attack on Russia, where this decision making had to go All the way to the top.
Now, the question is, who is at the top of our system now making these decisions?
Because it apparently is not Joe Biden.
Is it likely, because of this investment, this enormous investment, which is now up to $185 billion, with a B, in the war in Ukraine, that American intel guided this?
Is it likely that American technicians manned the weaponry, the offensive weaponry that was used to, the artillery that was used to allow the Ukrainian troops to run in?
Then I'm going to ask you, is it likely that some of these troops weren't Ukrainian?
But let's do this step by step.
Isn't it likely American intel planned and authorized this, or MI6?
I can't imagine.
The Ukrainians doing this without CIA and MI6 blessing.
Can you?
No.
But let's call it NATO.
Okay.
Because that sort of, you know, gives us wiggle room in terms of who actually is on the ground sharing the intelligence.
but it's probably the same intelligence that's being developed by all the big guys.
And I say this with some confidence because...
So it's got to be something that's being fed to them from elsewhere, and probably all the way down to a detailed battlefield-type level.
You go here, you do this, you do that.
And I would suspect that's very much the case.
Is NATO or are we at war with Russia?
We sure as hell are.
Well, if you have American intel, American offensive weaponry, American technicians operating it, American-made ammunition firing it, Americans have participated in an invasion of Russia.
You know as well as better than most people.
Phil Giraldi, what this authorizes Russia under international law to do in response.
Yeah, Russia has made pretty clear that it will use whatever it needs to use, depending on the level of the threat.
I think Putin is a more sensible leader than what we're forced to live with.
And he is probably making clear judgments based on risk levels and other things that our leadership doesn't even have the capability to spell the word.
And so I think this is the case, that we are in it up to our eyeballs and there's no escaping that apart from someone.
finally coming to grips with home truths about what is going on here and what it all means.
Russia will do whatever it needs to defend itself.
Colonel McGregor reports that the Russians report that their intel picked up English-speaking soldiers and their linguists claim that some of them had what they call American accents as opposed to British accents.
Colonel McGregor also says that if that is true, they were probably disguised in Ukrainian uniforms.
What is the significance of that?
Is that a violation of international law?
That's a war crime.
I wouldn't jump to that conclusion right away.
There are probably a number of other ways of covering these people rather than jump into a Ukrainian uniform or something like that.
I can think of a number of, for example, diplomatic covers that would enable someone from a foreign embassy to be You know, on the site, making an evaluation, doing that kind of thing.
There are ways to tweak these things.
I certainly have been.
I was in my career with the agency in those kind of cover situations myself.
So cover can be exploited.
And cover would be more sensible to have an exploitable cover than to be jumping into the uniform of a belligerent in this specific conflict.
Switching gears, let me run for you a clip of Minister Ben Gavir, the Minister of Israeli National Security, roughly their equivalent of the head of the FBI,
leading a couple of thousand Zionists on a march into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a mosque which under Israeli law, as you know, is reserved for those who practice Islam.
But here he is, even speaking to the cameras and boasting about what he's doing.
We are at the Temple Mount on Tisha B 'Av.
Today we commemorate the destruction of the Temple, but we must also honestly acknowledge that there is significant progress here regarding the governance and sovereignty.
The sight of Jews praying, as I said, Our policy is to permit prayer.
But I'll say something else.
We must win this war.
We must win.
Not go to summits in Doha or in Cairo.
But defeat them.
Bring them to their knees.
That's the message.
We can defeat Hamas, bring it to its knees.
How helpful is this in the midst of ceasefire negotiations?
Although I say in the midst of, Hamas has quite understandably declined to participate in the ceasefire negotiations in light of this movement by Mr. Ben-Gavir and in light of the murder of the chief Hamas negotiator.
You know, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is not Hamas.
It's a religious foundation that's overseen by an office that's run out of the Jordanian government.
And the Jordanian government is at peace with Israel.
So if this clown is, you know, emoting about how he's going to do this and do that, and this was just outrageous in terms of his impudence in going there with these settlers armed.
And with Israeli soldiers standing around and picking their noses, you know, this is sending messages about what ultimately we can expect from these people.
And he's not the only one talking about exterminating Palestinians.
Let's be clear about that.
And here we have the U.S. government, when confronted with these statements, basically not reacting, not saying anything, and sending $20 billion more to Israel to arm it.
I mean, this is astonishing.
This is probably the most outrageous thing any U.S. government has done.
In many, many years.
And so, you know, this is a crime against humanity, and the United States is a full participant in it and looking the other way as Gavir makes these threats.
Here's a threat from his colleague, Finance Minister Smotrich.
Sonia, if you can put up the full screen.
So it's in Hebrew, but the headline is that A ceasefire would effectively be a surrender deal.
Now, these two fellows, Mr. Smotrich and Mr. Ben-Gavir, have said many times that if Prime Minister Netanyahu agrees to a ceasefire, they'll leave the government, and if their colleagues from these Zionist parties leave with them, then Likud will not have a majority.
We all know this.
He won't have a majority in the Knesset, and Netanyahu's out of a job, and he's back to being a defendant in the three But what does the behavior of these two say to Bill Burns,
the head of the CIA, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, who's the chief American negotiator, to Amos Amos, as he calls himself, Hochstein, the Israeli-born former IDF, now State Department official, who's the other American negotiator?
Well, I hope it will be some rather harsh words and some focus on actual U.S. interests here.
But, you know, Smotrich actually went far beyond what was just flashed up.
He said that basically to starve the Gazans to death, meaning to starve all two million of them to death, would be both fair and moral and just.
This is what he said.
And again, the US State Department spokesman was confronted by a journalist with this comment.
And of course, there was basically no reaction from the United States.
So this is just, you know, this is the tip of the iceberg.
This is where they're going.
They really have no respect for other religions, for other countries.
If anyone thinks for a second that Bibi Netanyahu gives a damn what happens to the United States the day after the United States destroys Iran to make Netanyahu happy, then they're delusional.
This is a country that basically its leadership and much of the population, like 90%, which supports what's going on there, are essentially, they're hostile to everyone.
And the fact that people like Biden and our esteemed Secretary of State who lands in Israel and the first words out of his mouth is, "I am here to you as a Jew." He didn't say, "I was here to you as the Secretary of State of the United States of America, now you." Well, I would have fired him right on the spot.
Is Russia prepared to line up behind Iran?
And if the answer to that is yes, Netanyahu has many, many faults.
He's arguably a genocidal maniac.
But is he stupid?
Is he blind?
Well, he lies constantly, so it's a question of which lie you're looking at.
But to look at it seriously, I would be very interested in some of the opinions of some of the guests you have on your show in terms of Russia, how they're playing this game.
I don't believe that Russia wants to go whole hog on arming the Iranians with the types of weapons that would lead to a major war, a major conflagration.
I feel one third of Israeli Jews are Russian in origin.
And the Russians have a very careful relationship with Israel and with Netanyahu.
So I don't see it going quite in that direction.
I have a feeling that there will be a level of support.
Which will be a kind of level of certain weapon systems like air defense systems being provided that will serve to intimidate the Israelis from going farther.
And we'll see some more of that.
I'm not really sure that the Russians would want to encourage Iran to take any initiatives or to increase the level of the conflict.
What has happened to America's image of itself in the past 30 years, Bill Giraldi?
You're a student of this.
Yeah, to a certain extent I am.
I've been kind of through this when I was with the government and ever since then taking an adversarial position to what the government was doing.
You kind of see things in a different light.
I think the United States has dug itself into a deep hole ever since 9/11 and the over-response to 9/11.
It keeps digging.
You know, when we send one of our esteemed senators, like that fellow from South Carolina, You can attack anyone.
You can do anything.
And we're with you.
Come on.
That's not the message the United States should be sending.
When I was growing up and in the army and later on in graduate school, traveling around Europe and everything, Americans were liked.
Americans were respected and our governments were more or less respected.
But this has just all gone.
Gone down the toilet, I hate to say.
And when you travel around now, you hear quite the opposite.
I can't resist this, even though we've played it several times today.
Here is that fellow from South Carolina yesterday.
You'll know immediately where he is, and obviously you already know who he is.
Cut number 14. So two and a half years later, you're still standing and you're in Russia.
Remind me not to invade Ukraine.
I'm so proud of you, your people, your military, your leadership, your country.
You're under siege unlike anything I've seen in my lifetime.
They were predicting in Washington that Keeve would fall in four days, the whole country would fall in three weeks.
Well, they were wrong.
Some things never change, Phil.
Well, I think we should get the government to do a donation, and we can get a clown suit for this guy to wear when he goes to these places, so everybody will know what he's all about.
I mean, this is an example of insanity at high levels in the United States government.
And there seems to be a lot of it around.
You know, I didn't run this clip, but sitting next to him is a...
And when Colonel McGregor looked at the two of them, he said, well, that's the uniparty.
On war, it's just one party in the Congress.
That Richard Blumenthal and Lindsey Graham would be buddy-buddy on this issue when they disagree on virtually everything else should not be a surprise.
Do you agree?
Yeah, I do agree that there's a war party.
I've recently written an article which I had sent to you that I'm arguing that America has reached a point where it defines itself in terms of its enemies.
So it's always looking for enemies.
If we want to make excuses for having a Lousy foreign policy in Latin America, we blame it on Venezuela.
If we have problems with what's going on in the Middle East, well, we just blame it on Iran reflexively.
But I ask you, seriously, when has Iran ever actually threatened the United States or threatened serious United States interests?
I mean, this is just a fiction.
And Russia, And it's the United States that turned this around.
Arranging for a coup in Ukraine.
And then proceeding from there to expand NATO.
So, you know, who in the hell is the one that's making the mistakes here and doing the stupid things?
It's the United States.
What has the United States gained other than enriching the military-industrial complex beyond imagining, since our defense budget is bigger than the next 10 countries combined, which includes Russia and China?
What has the United States gained by making Russia and China, these economic powerhouses, into enemies?
Yeah, well, it succeeded in impoverishing many Americans.
That's one thing it succeeded in doing.
And now that we have a $35 trillion deficit, debt that we cannot pay in all probability in the near future, and when the economy collapses, there are a lot more Americans that are going to pay the price for this.
And it's just insanity.
And as I say, yesterday I saw this $20 billion more for Israel.
To kill Palestinians, this is in our interest?
We have 900 military installations around the world outside of the United States.
Can anybody seriously argue that they're all for defensive purposes, Phil?
Well, I can hardly think of one that's for a defense purpose, a legitimate defense purpose.
This kind of stuff just eludes me.
It's who is the one threatening us or who are the ones threatening us?
know right a China let's go let's go to China China China is a competitor with the United States in an economic sense and in a political sense.
But it's not out to go to war with the United States.
And yet we are the ones cranking up the Taiwan issue.
And how many times have we heard lately from people like the gentleman from South Carolina that, They're going to have problems with China.
But, you know, China is a competitor, was a competitor.
But now China will be waking up to say, hey, what do these people really intend?
Can we trust them?
Doesn't Iran have the right to defend itself against the state terrorism that has Pulled off an assassination in its capital?
Well, there have been a series of assassinations of technicians and political figures.
And of course, we have good old Donald Trump killing Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad and 10 other people when he was there on a peace mission.
That was in January of 2020.
So, you know, this is reaching the point where there's no sense to any of this.
We just seem to be on a course of destruction, and we seem to be picking up enemies as we go along.
And soon the whole world is going to say, hey, you know, the United States and Israel, I mean, those are the really evil forces at large in the world at the time.
And, you know, there's so much truth to that.
Bill Giraldi, a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter what we talk about.
Thank you very much for your time.
Deeply appreciated.
Okay, well, thank you for having me on.
Sure, we'll see you again next week.
Coming up tomorrow, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow at 8 o 'clock in the morning Eastern, Ambassador Charles Freeman at 11 in the morning Eastern.
Professor John Mearsheimer at 3 in the afternoon Eastern, and the always worth waiting for, Max Blumenthal at 5 in the afternoon Eastern.
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