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Oct. 23, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
36:31
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Is the Resistance Growing?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, October 24th, 2024.
Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now.
Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you so much for your time.
Sure.
I would like to talk to you about what appears to be the coming war between Israel and Iran and whether there is a growing resistance and the significance of the document leak, which purports to have been an American surveillance of the Israeli attack plans.
But before we do, if I may, some questions about Ukraine.
Do you have an understanding of whether or not Yes.
There are a couple of things that people need to understand.
First of all, the photo that was used with a flag on top of a hill showing North Korean troops in the foreground listening to ostensibly a Russian officer.
That occurred in eastern Siberia.
In other words, you could call it Russian Manchuria.
First of all, North Korea shares a border with Russia.
All you have to do is get on the train, you ride up there, and that's what North Korean troops do on a pretty routine basis.
They go up for training, and whenever foreign troops come into Russia to be trained by Russians, or foreign officers attend Russian military academies, they are all given Russian uniforms.
So this is a standard, routine operation.
I don't know what the Russians specifically said to the North Koreans, but this is not unusual.
However, this has nothing to do with Ukraine, and there is no need or intention under any circumstances to send North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine.
This is another effort trying to create the illusion that somehow or another Russia has been weakened.
We've been down this road before.
The Russians are turning away people who are volunteering to fight in Ukraine.
They have no manpower shortage, and they're healthy.
It's the Ukrainians that have a manpower shortage and are losing airspeed and altitude every second.
When Secretary of Defense Austin made a somewhat ambiguous statement that there were North Korean troops in Russia, was he misinformed?
Or was he misinforming us?
Listen to his comment.
He said, if it is true, that's how he begins his statement.
If that's true, then this is evidence for Russia's weakened state and so forth.
He knows it's not true.
That's why he said, if it's true.
So he did misinform us.
He should have said, I know it's not true.
However, if it were, here's how I would analyze it.
Well, he's being paid to toe the line and proselytize for the narrative.
I mean, this caused Mike Turner, who I think is a nutjob, who is the Republican chair of the House Intel Committee, you may know him, you may have testified before them when you were in the Defense Department, I don't know, to say it's time for American troops on the ground in Ukraine.
To attack North Korean troops.
This is absurd, is it not?
Of course it is.
But Abraham Lincoln said that there was no bar to stupidity, ignorance, or incompetence in politics.
He was right.
All right.
Do you think that the State Department silently and the Defense Department, maybe not as silently, recognize that Ukraine is on its last leg?
Oh, absolutely.
There's no question about that.
Behind the scenes, NATO is crumbling rapidly.
People are all looking for off-ramps, but they're all stuck in the same position.
How do you stand up and say, oh gosh, I'm sorry, I was wrong?
You know, what could Lyndon Johnson say in 1968?
I didn't understand what I was doing.
I'm in over my head.
It's the same routine.
They just haven't found a way.
To quietly withdraw.
And ultimately, I think what will happen is that everyone will turn against Washington.
Washington will have been the enemy that dragged them into a war they never wanted to fight.
Because there's no support for the war against Russia in Ukraine, anywhere in Europe.
Nobody's suiting up and ready to go anywhere.
It's nonsense.
Yet this week, Colonel, Secretary Austin in Kiev, face to face with the former president still claiming to hold office, Zelensky, said here's another $400.
We've wasted billions and billions and billions of dollars.
We have no idea how much we've wasted.
We know that a large portion of the equipment, some people say as much as a third, some say 25% that we have, uh.
And this money will certainly subsidize the government and the leadership of the military.
Everybody asks, well, why haven't the Ukrainian generals stepped forward and being heard?
Well, they're being well paid.
Why does the parliament stand up and give Zelensky a standing ovation?
They're all well paid.
This is one giant grift.
Why is it that the attorney general of Ukraine resigned two days ago in a draft dodging scandal, and it didn't even make the front pages?
Is corruption that endemic?
No, the Ukrainian people are miserable.
But it's institutionalized.
You know, you've seen all of the film clips of...
I mean, this is a Stalinist regime.
The secret police is effectively like the NKBD, shooting anybody that refuses to fight.
Stalin shot one million Soviet soldiers who refused to fight against the Germans.
So this is a standard practice, and I would expect this man, Zelensky, who is essentially a Bolshevik.
To do exactly what he's doing.
And he's not going to stop until it becomes clear to him it's time to get out of town or die.
Transitioning over to Israel, Colonel, since we were together last, the Israelis succeeded in killing maybe their principal target in the past year, Yahya Senwar.
Some have said this is a great victory for Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Some have said, well, it's just a PR victory.
Some have said they have made Senwar an iconic and everlasting hero.
In the history of the Punic Wars, Hannibal is telling his leadership in Carthage, thank you for the accolades.
Thank you for the celebrations.
We have inflicted numerous defeats on the Romans, but the Romans have never asked for a ceasefire.
The Romans are not suing for peace, and thus our victories to this point are meaningless.
His point was well taken.
You know, unless you march right into Rome and ultimately crush the Romans, disperse the population, you're not going to defeat Rome.
Well, the same is true for the Israelis.
All they're doing is destroying infrastructure in Lebanon as well as in Gaza and probably eventually anywhere else that they decide to fight.
And we'll talk about that because there is a plan.
And that's to drive whoever lives there out of the country.
That's the point.
That's why you destroy infrastructure, hospitals, buildings of all kinds and types.
You're driving out the population.
This is part of the Greater Israel Project.
Has Israel defeated Hamas?
No.
Here's somebody who disagrees with you.
Our colleague Ambassador Charles Freeman refers to this person as the worst Secretary of State since World War II.
Cut number 16. Israel has achieved most of its strategic objectives when it comes to Gaza.
All with the idea of making sure that October 7th could never happen again.
In the space of a year, it's managed to dismantle Hamas' military capacity.
It's destroyed a bunch of its arsenal.
It's eliminated its senior leadership, including, most recently, Yahya Sinwar.
This has covered the cost, great cost, to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Now is the time to turn those successes into an enduring strategic success.
And there are really two things left to do.
Get the hostages home and bring the war to an end with an understanding of what will follow.
Is he credible?
Netanyahu will never bring the hostages home.
Then there's no reason for war.
Well, let's understand something.
Everyone in the world today, not just in the Middle East, but virtually everyone, views Blinken as Netanyahu's point man.
And that's what he is.
Our government has been hijacked.
There's no one up there directing much of anything.
They are, along with the government in London, by the way, they are all 100% on board with the Greater Israel Project.
And he's certainly not going to say anything other than what he has.
So everybody knows that he repeats Netanyahu's talking points.
There's no daylight between them.
One wonders just what happens in the White House behind the scenes.
Let alone the State Department.
I think the one place that there are some voices that don't fall in line is DOD, because the CIA is joined at the hip with MI6 and Mossad.
So virtually no daylight between those entities and us.
And of course, the American people know nothing about it, have never been consulted.
And the media ensures that the truth about what's actually happening on the ground never gets through.
Colonel, the White House announced in the past week two different announcements basically saying the same thing.
Two deliveries of THAADS, the acronym, anti-missile defense systems, each accompanied by 100 U.S. troops.
Did I miss something, or did Congress authorize troops on the ground in Israel?
No.
I have people telling me all the time, you know, Carl, this is unconstitutional.
And other people say, what happened to the War Powers Act?
We've got to come to terms with the reality that this government, this regime, has no use for the law.
How often have we spoken about freedom of speech and the various amendments in the Bill of Rights?
They don't care.
They're not interested.
This has nothing to do with what is good or bad for the United States.
Obviously, it's all bad for us.
It's about a small group of people who've hijacked power, and they're exercising it.
And the American people are paying very little attention.
This is the way Vietnam began, Colonel.
They didn't have THAADs at the time, but they sent, you know, small groups of troops over there under the guise of being advisors, technicians.
What happens when they're shot at?
What happens when they're killed by incoming Iranian missile fire?
The Mike Turners of the world will say it's time for troops on the ground to attack Iran.
Exactly.
From Netanyahu's standpoint, that's music to his ears.
Please, by all means.
Remember in 1914, or actually it was before 1914, it was about 1912 after the Entente.
It was stupidly foreign between Great Britain and France, two countries that had been in each other's throats for hundreds of years.
And I think it was the prime minister at the time, Asquith, he asked the president of France, how many soldiers do you want us to send and how soon do they need to be there in the event of a German war with France?
He said, just send us one.
We'll send him as far forward as possible and ensure that he is immediately killed.
Well, his point was, we're not worried about that.
We want you in the war.
Britain had almost no army to speak of, but its massive industrial power made a huge difference, as did its navy.
You have a similar situation now.
Get these people on the ground in Israel.
You have this radar, which is a half a billion dollars apiece.
You've got two of them now, I suspect.
I don't know if they've got a second one coming.
I suspect they will.
You know, that's a target.
As soon as it radiates, it radiates on a scale that we can't even describe.
You put a human being in front of it for a few minutes, the human being will be fried.
So this thing is going to emit.
It's going to be a huge target.
And the Iranians are going to have great difficulty avoiding its destruction.
They're going to have to take it and destroy it.
This is unavoidable.
That's what Netanyahu wants.
The real question is, when the news comes out that we are now officially at war with Iran, if it ever does come out, what will the American people do?
I don't know.
Well, getting back to your analogy in 1912, Colonel, are not these 200 American troops effectively tripwire?
Of course.
But there are only 257,000 who are already in the region.
Many of these are distributed in small pockets in forward operating bases in Syria and Iraq, Jordan.
Will these be targets?
Most certainly.
I'm sure they probably will be, although I'm sure the priority targets may be other things, you know, our aircraft carriers, air bases, obviously anything that can be targeted that launches missiles or aircraft.
So, yeah, this is obvious, and people should be very concerned about it, because you're now talking about a war that will spread very rapidly, and I hope we'll get to that in a second.
The documents that were revealed on the website Telegram, which have all the earmarks of being legitimate American top-secret documents, revealed a couple of things that American intel spies on the Israelis.
Probably no news to the people in the business.
That American intel does not share everything with the other four eyes of the five eyes.
Probably nothing news to those in the business.
That American intel casually refers to the Israeli nuclear weapons program.
Something not supposed to be acknowledged in an American document or by an official of the United States.
What is your view of the significance of the release of these documents, whether it involves these aspects that I've mentioned or something that I have failed to mention?
Well, first of all, these documents don't tell Iran anything that the Iranians haven't already figured out.
I'm sure they've been through many, many scenarios.
Iran is a sophisticated state.
They can think through these things as carefully and effectively as anybody.
So I don't think it was ever meant for Iran.
I think whoever leaked this was probably leaking it to inform the American people of what's actually going to happen.
There are still lots of people.
I run into them all the time and say, oh, well, you know, Netanyahu will never strike Iran.
This is never going to happen.
And we have to understand that he very definitely is going to strike Iran.
He has no choice.
He's taken unsustainable losses against Tisbola in the north.
He's still taking losses inside Israel from Gaza.
This is not getting any better.
The only thing he's got left, the only play that is available to him at this point, is to start a major war with Iran and then await the Iranian response, knowing that that will bring in the United States.
We're obligated.
We already said we are going to defend Israel.
Well, defending Israel really involves offensive operations by U.S. forces against Iran, which is what he wants.
So these things are going to happen.
It's inevitable.
I shouldn't say inevitable, but largely unavoidable.
Let's put it that way.
Well, what do you think will happen next that will produce a wider war?
I think that several things are going on.
First of all, let's look at it regionally.
People aren't paying attention to what's happening in Syria.
I think we're involved, along with Mossad, in stirring up the Kurds against the Turks.
This is designed to warn Erdogan that if he and his government are considering supporting anyone against Israel, that they'll have a major war on their southern border or southeastern border.
Frankly, the Turks can cope with that.
And I think they'd probably welcome the opportunity to go in and annihilate the PPK and anybody that stands in their way in northern Iraq.
For a very long time, the Turks have been arguing that northern Iraq is really Turkish territory and that the Kurds and Turkmen that lived there should be inside Anatolia.
That's an easy thing to happen, but it's not going to stop the Turks if there's a decision to enter the war otherwise from going back.
We've discussed this before as well.
Assad was the lesser of all the evils and a force of stability there, but the Israelis have always wanted him gone.
The Russians have stood by Assad, and they're not going to give up their bases on the Mediterranean.
So all of these forces are coming into play right now in very ominous ways.
Now, how does this become a regional war?
And by the way, before we move on, A lot of money is starting to show up from Saudi Arabia in the bank accounts of Egypt.
In other words, the National Bank.
I think that's going to happen in Jordan.
And I think the Saudis and the Emirates are sending money saying, you don't have to be dependent upon the United States and the West.
Is the resistance growing?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Everybody is on board.
It's just that not everybody has the military power to respond.
So they're responding in whatever ways they can.
And that's why I was talking about the peninsular Arabs who can finance Egypt and Jordan.
This is the biggest problem that King Abdullah faces.
And for that matter, General Sisi.
How do I move forward and have some solidarity with the rest of the Islamic world if I go under financially in the meantime?
So they're saying, no, that's not going to happen.
BRICS is very important right now.
Xi said that it is absolutely essential.
That we move past the dollar.
That we stop using it.
Everybody who's at that conference understands that's where things are headed.
This is the new parallel system.
Now, back to what is the ultimate firecracker that blows this thing up, and that is Israel's strike against Iran.
Now, we've had all sorts of articles come out in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal saying, oh, well, the Israelis have agreed to do this or not agreed to do that.
If we understand anything, we should understand this.
Mr. Netanyahu continues to exert far more influence and power in Washington than anybody in the government today.
He is going to do whatever the hell he wants to do.
Let's be frank.
He's going to do it.
President Trump has said he'll underwrite it.
Kamala has tried to burnish her pro-Israeli credentials, but I think...
But if you're sitting where Netanyahu is right now, you really have an incentive to launch your strike before the election.
You want to get this war underway, so regardless of whomever wins, they're stuck with fighting it.
So that's where you get the regional war.
And once we go after Iran, that brings in Russia.
Russia has already got thousands of people on the ground in Iran.
They're working feverishly to build everything that is required for Iran's defenses, but also to help the Iranians with regard to missiles and warheads and so forth.
This is the beginning.
Once he strikes Iran, that's your regional war, boundless, unlimited, no stopping it.
Does Russia engage in the war in an offensive way, or do they limit themselves to supplying the Iranians with defensive anti-military?
But as it becomes clear that we are committing, you know, hundreds of fighter jets armed with various types of munitions designed to be launched at a distance so that the fighters are not shot down by air defenses.
And we have all these vessels out there, including submarines.
And this cannot be tolerated by our friend Putin for very long.
He's going to intervene.
Now, how he does that and under what circumstances, I can't predict.
But it would be very hard to avoid.
And Xi and Putin have both said to Iran, we will stand with you.
And by the way, that probably includes another 80 countries in the world.
Right now Israel is really dependent entirely on us and on these promises of equipment and support from Great Britain.
Britain is no longer a major power, but it helps to have the British on board as well.
But that's about it.
So this is a very serious moment, and I see no evidence anybody anywhere is interested in stopping this from happening.
On the contrary, I think London and Washington have signed on very strongly.
For the Greater Israel Plan.
They want to see Lebanon cleared.
They want to see Syria largely cleared of its population and its enemy Assad.
And I think they're interested in seeing eventually something similar happen to Jordan as well as the West Bank.
It's lunacy.
I don't think it makes any sense.
I think it will fail, but that's where we are.
And what do London and Washington want to do with two million?
However many survive the Israeli genocide, Palestinians, where will they go?
Where will they live?
I don't think it's of much consequence to them.
Let's be frank.
If you destroy the infrastructure, the message is clear.
Leave.
And millions of people are already milling around aimlessly in Lebanon and marching north towards Turkey.
And that's what will bring the Turks into the fight.
And that's why Turkey's presence at BRICS right now is so important.
And Turkey will eventually join BRICS.
This little spat with India, I think Xi and Putin will broker a deal and Turkey will join BRICS.
And once Turkey is in BRICS, that completes the process of solidarity across the region against Israel.
Turkey would have to leave NATO, would it not?
Well, a lot of people have thought that for a long time, but, you know, Mr. Erdogan is nothing if not clever.
And he'll keep his foot in our camp as long as possible.
He would prefer to be thrown out rather than leave.
And there may not be an effort to formally expel him because I don't know that the rest of the Europeans would sign on for that.
I think right now NATO is moribund.
I don't think it means anything.
I think it's an empty vessel.
President Xi at the BRICS summit yesterday decided to address the humanitarian disaster.
The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip continues to deteriorate, the war in Lebanon has started again, and the conflicts between relevant parties are further escalating.
We need to promote a ceasefire as soon as possible, stop the killing, and make unremitting efforts for a comprehensive, just, and lasting solution to the Palestinian issue.
Send troops or military hardware there?
Does he exert economic leadership or does he just make moral statements like this one?
No, I think all of the above minus Chinese troops.
Remember, there are now Russian warships in Iranian ports, and you have the Chinese contingent or flotilla in the Indian Ocean is larger than it's been in the past.
I think you're going to see...
So again, you know, how do you put it?
I mean, for those out there that continue to invoke the World War I analogy, think of Iran as a very large version of Serbia.
Once it's attacked, everything falls into place and we start going to war.
And one wonders how long that could possibly last because we don't have the conventional military power.
The stocks of munitions, missiles, rockets, and so forth to keep going.
Our Navy is not in good shape.
They're cannibalizing equipment and ships to keep things at sea.
You have a tremendous morale problem.
People have been at sea too long.
And we've lost a lot of quality people out of the armed forces in general.
If you had to pick a time, a worse time, if you will, to start a war, I don't think you could do better than this for us.
It's the exact opposite of what was the case in 1990.
In 1990, our armed forces were in pristine condition.
We were at the peak of our capability and power.
And it was a consequence of that that Saddam and his friends were all beaten rapidly into submission.
This is the opposite now.
We're the ones that are really not quite a facade, but we're certainly nowhere near where we were in the past.
Starting a major war, which is something that nobody apparently in Washington believes could happen, is the last possible thing that we need.
And when Americans come home in body bags under President Biden or President Trump or President Harris in an undeclared war, how does that look politically?
I agree with you, but let's stop and consider something else.
If you're watching the financial system right now, there's a great deal of information on the net suggesting that Bank of America is close to going under.
Bank of America is a huge financial institution, and I don't know that the Fed and others can save it.
It has too many unrealized losses on the books.
The bond market is frightening, and interest rates are actually rising.
We are on the precipice of a financial crisis that could drag us into the pit of despair, could seriously harm the United States and the people that live in it and destroy our living standards.
Couple this with the war.
What does the war do?
Well, the war accelerates the disaster.
It brings on the financial collapse much more quickly.
That's one of the reasons that I'm puzzled by our readiness and willingness to let the Israelis do whatever they want.
In fact, we're not even exercising any restraint, so I guess letting is the wrong word, but underwriting it.
Right.
Here's someone else who's perplexed at the West.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, yesterday, cut number one.
Western politicians have been disgraced.
Western policy has been exposed.
They have failed.
This is a major defeat.
No one should speak of the Western civilization anymore.
This is Western civilization.
It doesn't care about taking money from its own people in all sorts of ways and sending it to kill small children, innocent offspring, destroy families, and martyr 10,000 children, leaving thousands orphaned.
It doesn't matter to them.
This is Western culture.
Does that encapsulate the view of the Arab street, the two billion over there?
I think it probably reflects views widely held all over the globe.
The rest of the world views this in very negative terms.
It is the European and American media, Australian media, the Anglosphere that continues to And remember, inside Israel, the population there is being told that they're winning.
Anybody who watches Israeli television listens to people talk about what they're going to do in the future with the territories that they're, quote-unquote, are conquering.
It's a sort of fantasy land, both here and in Israel.
So when this war begins, it's going to be a very frightening specter for everyone.
You're not talking about a war where the Israelis attack and destroy the grid or the electrical ability or set off pagers in supermarkets.
You're talking about a major destruction of Iranian infrastructure or an attempt to do so.
Well, they will prioritize their attacks against military targets, but I'm sure that many of those targets are in close proximity to civilian infrastructure, and the Israelis don't care about that, as we've seen thus far.
So I'm sure some of that will happen.
The bottom line is that Netanyahu is not going to waste his opportunity.
He's a very smart man, and he's got a lot of capability working for him, so he's going to do as much damage as he possibly can.
To Iran's strike capability, to its intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and communications.
It's not going to work, but he's going to try, and then he's going to prepare for the counter-strike.
And that's going to be the wish-fulfilling moment for him, because that's when we will inevitably engage.
That's where we're headed, and we know that.
And that's the danger, because it's all going to race out of control.
And right now, Washington appears to be on autopilot.
Nobody seems to be raising any serious questions about anything.
Have you heard any discussion by the candidates of this?
Is there any sense of great danger looming on the horizon?
No.
So God bless America.
Do we have the ability to give Netanyahu what he needs, offensive weaponry to degrade Iran's offensive attack?
And this is the danger of escalating to the nuclear level.
The Israelis are the ones who are most likely to use a nuclear weapon first.
When they do that, the proverbial genie is out of the bottle.
all hell will break loose.
And if the Iranians have not already built nuclear warheads for use against the Israelis, it'll happen pretty quickly if they don't simply show up on the runways.
I just have a terrible feeling that if things don't go the way Mr. Netanyahu wants them to, which is almost unavoidable, that they will turn to nuclear weapons.
Here is Sir John Sowers, who's the recently retired president.
Chief of MI6 giving us a slightly different view of this.
I'd be anxious to hear your thoughts.
Cut number 13, Chris.
The defense minister perhaps got ahead of himself when he implied there would be some form of intelligence operation, some form of cyber operation against Iran.
The Americans have clearly been trying to restrain Israel.
the Israelis might see an opportunity to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.
Obviously, one of our biggest concerns has been Iran's slow but gradual process towards acquiring nuclear weapons.
But in order to I think what we will see is some form of cyber attack against the nuclear facilities,
possibly coupled with What do you think?
Well, this is the discussion that we've seen in the media.
Remember a couple of weeks ago, maybe it's not even a couple, probably a week ago, there were statements in the Washington Post and elsewhere that Mr. Netanyahu had agreed not to strike the oil facilities in Iran, the production facilities.
And then there was a discussion about they won't touch the nuclear facilities.
And Mr. Netanyahu spoke publicly and said, let me be very clear.
We will do whatever we want.
We will do what we do.
think is in our interest and we don't care what anybody else thinks and we're not agreeing to anything.
I think he's delusional if he thinks that the Israelis are going to deliberately avoid Colonel McGregor, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Thank you for your time.
Not easy issues to analyze, but you've been very generous with your time and very clear in your thoughts.
Thank you, my dear friend.
Thank you, Judge.
Of course.
Have a nice weekend.
Right.
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