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Oct. 24, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
27:15
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap-Up
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, October 25, 2024.
It's our favorite day of the week.
It's our favorite time of the day.
It's the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
Gentlemen, welcome here as always.
Let's go to the hot news.
I'm not sure I understand what the story is here.
I'll start with you, Ray.
The Secretary of Defense of the United States has said that intelligence tells the US that North Korean troops are in Russia.
From Larry and from others, we believe they're on the other side of Siberia, where Russia and North Korea have a common border.
President Zelensky says that they will be ready to attack Ukraine, and he believes they will actually be in what he considers Ukraine by the middle of next week.
And now we hear rumors that if the South Korean troops are going to help Russia, well, the North Korean Well, I'll give it a try.
Yeah, the news came out and it was confirmed by the White House and CIA spokesman, David Sanger from the New York Times, that there were reports that North Koreans were sending troops into Russia to help with Ukraine.
Now, when these first reports came out, at least I kind of dismissed them.
The Russians don't need any help from the Korean troops on Ukraine.
And they don't.
So what's the reason here?
Well, it looks like there are enough reports to indicate that at least the U.S. is saying now there are 2,000, 3,000 North Korean troops in Russia.
What does that mean?
Well, our South Korean friends, they're going to help us.
And what they'll do is they'll send their F-16s, of which they have more than 100.
And even more important, F-16 well-trained pilots to airbase in Romania.
South Korean pilots.
Yeah, sorry, did I say South Korean parts?
Yeah, that's what I You're not talking about American pilots in South Korean gear.
You're talking about South Korean pilots flying South Korean jets over Ukraine or Russia.
Yeah, they know how to do that.
I mean, they've been trained in that up to NATO standards.
And so they can do that, except in reality, they're not going to ever get very far because of the Russian air defense and all kinds of other intercept capabilities.
So how do I put this together?
Well, Putin was asked about this just yesterday in Kazan.
And he said, well, you know, photos.
There are photos that probably don't lie.
And you know, by the way, we have a mutual defense treaty with North Korea, and there's a very important Article 4 in it, which obligates both sides to come to the immediate military aid of the other if there's an invasion by another country of the other state.
What is Putin talking about?
I mean, Ukraine has invaded Russia now, right?
And so what he's saying is, yeah, there's probably North Korean troops there, but what the U.S. is doing is saying, yeah, they're there, and that justifies South Korean troops to go into Romania and fly.
It's crazy on both counts, but it looks to me like maybe an October or early November surprise where our administration could say, ah, the cavalry has come.
South Korean pilots, South Korean F-16.
We're going to turn this thing around.
Just wait until November 6th.
You'll see what we can do.
That's what I make of it.
Larry, this expansion, this absurd expansion, is almost just what you and others have predicted.
Is it realistic that South Korea would enter the fray because of its animosity towards North Korea?
Yeah, look, this entire North Korean narrative is a CIA, an intelligence community, manufactured story.
And it was manufactured for one purpose, to create a justification for South Korea to send pilots to Romania to fly F-16s and to fly those against targets and hit targets inside Russia.
You say it's a story.
Is it true or is it made up?
Well, the part about North Korea is made up.
Look, here's what happened.
Sometime three, four, five weeks ago, the guy in charge of the CIA's operations in Ukraine, they're sitting there looking at themselves saying, my God, these Ukrainian pilots are not working out.
We've got to get these F-16s into action.
How do we do this?
Hey, let's get some South Korean pilots.
They could do it.
Yeah, because they're not part of NATO, and they've been helping Ukraine since the outset of the war in other ways.
So, yeah, maybe they could do it.
But how do we get this in there?
Well, first we've got to construct this narrative that it's North Koreans are in there.
And so we'll put that story out.
That's what Jure was referring to, the fact that David Sanger was the first one to report it.
Huh, how about that?
The guy that traditionally gets the CIA leaks gets it.
So we'll put that story out, and then everybody will start talking about the North Koreans, and then the South Koreans, when we send them there, it'll be seen as a response to all of this.
That's what this is about.
What does the CIA hope to accomplish by this?
A mini World War III?
No, they're trying to save the dollars of BlackRock and everybody else.
This is about money, Judge.
This is about billions.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are at risk with these idiotic Western oligarchs who thought it a great idea to try to buy up big swaths of Ukraine, and they now realize they're going to lose it.
And Russia ain't giving it back.
Russia's not going to give them a return on their investment.
Where do we go from here?
Does the presence, the real presence, There's no prospect, in my view, that Russia is going to encourage North Korea.
It does itself attack South Korea.
What Putin is trying to say is, look, fair is fair.
We have a defense treaty with North Korea, which has this binding commitment to help one another if there's a flare-up of one attack of aggression, or actually the word is aggression into another country.
So now you people are...
If there are North Korean troops in our country, well, so be it.
We train regularly with North Korean troops.
We don't need them to help us on Ukraine.
But, you know, we're bound at the hip.
We're going to support North Korea and, by extension, China in the Far East.
You just got to watch out.
This is what this is all about.
It's all over that you are the only people that have allies in NATO.
We have allies, too.
Now, this has extreme ramifications because I was surprised a year ago when Putin concluded a mutual defense treaty with North Korea.
And I was surprised that it was ratified by the Russian Duma just yesterday, okay?
So there's a lesson here.
Don't mess with us.
We have allies.
We're committed to their defense.
They're committed to our defense.
if there are a couple of thousand North Korean troops in our country, well, that's proof positive that we're real closely cooperating.
Now, how this South Korean thing comes in, The South Koreans say they have satellite images.
We'll have to see what they are.
And we decided to either take advantage of it or we somehow encouraged this to happen so that the South Koreans could send their F-16s and their pilots.
Now, I have to say that I've only seen one report.
That's the case.
I don't know if this report is confirmed or not, but the source is good enough for me to say, well, let's assume it's true.
That is, it's true that South Korean planes and pilots are now based in Romania.
How much longer can North Korea last, whether it has the aid of, excuse me, can Ukraine last, Larry?
Whether it has the aid of South Korea or the $400 million that Lloyd Austin brought them earlier this week or not?
Unknown.
I mean, I think they could be done as early as the end of this year.
And I don't see how they make it out of the spring.
Because right now, Judge, all across the front, they're falling back at an accelerating rate.
They will attack that air base in Romania, where those planes are based, to take them out.
And they will destroy those aircraft, and South Korean pilots will die.
and at that point, yeah, they know what may be screeching, howling, they may be like these, uh, They're a bunch of yappy little dogs, but they don't do anything.
They just bark and make noise.
Don't they like you, Larry?
No, they don't like my two Rottweilers.
That I understand.
And my Rottweilers react just like Russia will.
They ignore them.
They ignore them.
At the BRICS conference this week, Xi Jinping of China chose in his opening comments, I mean, they're there talking about economics, he had to say something about Ukraine.
Here he is.
China and Brazil, together with relevant countries in the global south, have launched the Friends for Peace group on the Ukraine crisis, aiming to gather more voices committed to peace.
We must adhere to the three principles of not spilling over the battlefield, not escalating the war, and not provoking fires from all sides and help ease the tension as soon as possible.
Interesting that he decided to mention that at an economic conference designed to overwhelm the G7.
Ray McGovern.
Well, it is interesting, Judge, and Putin has referred favorably to that Brazilian-Chinese proposal.
What's also interesting is that, what was I going to say?
Well, yeah, a part of this whole process has resulted in China and India.
You just saw Moji there in that picture.
Coming together for the first time in five years between the two leaders, and it looks like they've worked out a deal on the border and that the concessions were made mostly by the Chinese side.
And the whole deal is, look, we've got a common enemy here.
We've got a common threat.
Let's bound together.
Let's bind together.
We're willing to make some concessions.
And so let's India and China combine in a way they haven't for five years.
The other thing that just escaped me will probably come back in another half a second.
Okay.
Let's transfer over to Israel.
All of you, that is both of you, along with Colonel McGregor, Colonel Wilkerson, Scott Ritter, Professor Mearsheimer, have argued that The killing of Sinwar was actually more of a benefit to Hamas than it was to the Israelis.
He is now an indelible and permanent and utterly iconic hero to them, even though Prime Minister Netanyahu boasts that his people got their man.
Tony Blinken says that The Israelis have achieved their goal in Gaza.
None of you agrees with that.
Where are the Israelis going next?
Their military is exhausted.
We even heard some news that they might be pulling back some of their infantry people from Lebanon.
Larry, how do you read all this?
Yeah, no, that's the report today.
They're saying, hey, we've accomplished our objectives in Lebanon.
Pull it out.
The reason they're saying that is they're taking casualties at a rate that they didn't take in Gaza.
And meanwhile in Gaza, they're starting to take more casualties there.
So, you know, Blinken's declaration that, "Hey, you've accomplished your objectives.
You've got Senoir.
Quit while you're ahead." He's trying to give them an off-ramp.
That's, I think, the U.S. preferred outcome.
But given the fanaticism, Of the Zionists, that is really a small element, but they control a significant portion of the government.
I think they're going to attack Iran.
Iran's going to retaliate.
Israel's going to suffer devastation that it has never suffered in its 76 years of history.
And this war could potentially get out of control.
So I think that's where it's headed.
I don't see how we avoid that because Israel is not willing to back off and accept the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah and their demand for an independent homeland for the Palestinian people, that they have a legitimate demand.
They don't accept that.
And until that, they're willing to accept that.
no way to have a negotiated peace.
Will Netanyahu wait until November 6th as a favor to Joe Biden, or is he going to attack sooner?
How did you know what I was going to say, Judge?
It's the Irish in us.
Yeah.
Well, look, I'm a big...
October 1st, Iran makes it clear that they can't attack Israel at will with hypersonic missiles, okay?
Now, October 2, Netanyahu says we're going to strike back, we're going to strike back, we're going to strike back.
October 2nd.
Now it's October, what, 25th.
Okay.
Well, that cries out for some sort of explanation.
Well, Yom Kippur never did it for me, that they wouldn't do it before.
How about the 18th, when those very sensitive intelligence reports were leaked?
Well, they sure didn't affect that one way or another.
So here we are, 10 days before the election.
Getting back to your question, what's going to happen?
Would Blinken and Biden want Netanyahu to start a major regional war right before the election?
Well, I don't know.
They've done some crazy things in my view, but I think between the Russians restraining the Iranians, which I believe there's good proof of, and the U.S. military, I emphasize military, restraining the Israeli military, I think there's a good chance we'll make it for the next 10 days without a major war in the Middle East.
Now, I'm an outlier on that, but there is some explaining necessary as to why it's been 25 or 24 days since October 1st.
Larry, Netanyahu is the personification of selfishness.
Would he wait to save Kamala Harris, or would he wait only if he felt it was in his own best interests?
He has zero.
Interest in Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.
He does not care.
He cares about him.
You know, he is a consummate narcissist.
And so he's going to do what is in his best interest.
And to hell with Kamala and to hell with Joe Biden.
He doesn't care.
So, that's why I say he's a wild card in this regard, and he's become...
I've seen a video of him from 35, maybe 40 years ago, where, and I think we played it on your show at one point, where he talks about, he's defined terrorism, and he defines terrorism very simply as attacks on civilians, especially women and children for political purposes.
And I was going, man, I agree with Beebe.
Beebe is the man.
He was right.
He's not that man anymore.
He has become the very terrorist that he was decrying back then.
I would certainly agree that he has no incentive to prevent Trump from winning.
I think that's part of the deal here.
He wants to see how the election goes.
If it goes as he desires and Trump wins, then I think Netanyahu feels that he's really riding high.
I'm going to play a clip from Secretary Blinken, whom our friend and colleague, Ambassador Charles Freeman, says is the most underperforming Secretary of State since World War II, including Hillary Clinton and Mike Pompeo in that list, but we won't get into the comparisons.
But here's what Secretary Blinken did say two days ago.
Chris, 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 come at 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.
Bibi will never bring the hostages home, right, Ray?
Because then there's no reason for war, and then he's got all kinds of domestic problems on his hands.
Well, I think this is a diversion.
Why is Blinken blinking around the Middle East on his 11th tour since October 7th?
I think he's trying to create some hope for success with respect to the hostages and the ceasefire.
And I note that on Sunday in Doha, Egypt and Israel and the U.S. Bill Burns again will be there in Doha.
speaking indirectly with Hamas leadership to see if that can be done.
Now, I think that's mostly window dressing, but that's another little straw in the wind for me to suggest that By the way, Judge, I remember what I was going to say about Ukraine, and that is simply that there was not one mention of Ukraine in that final document coming out of the 130 or so clauses coming out of BRICS.
Not one mentioned you can't find Ukraine on a word search.
There's one paragraph that can be...
We want peace.
We want a peaceful resolution of conflict.
But it shows, you know, BRICS really was about something quite different.
And in terms of BRICS, Ukraine is just a bother off on the sidelines to be taken care of after the election.
Larry, before you respond, here is Secretary Blinken in Doha the day after.
This is a moment for every country to decide what role it's prepared to play and what contributions it can make in moving Gaza from war to peace.
And as I said the other day, I think this is a pivotal moment for that question because Israel has accomplished the strategic goals that it set out for itself, making sure that October 7th and the horrors can never happen again by effectively dismantling the organization of Hamas.
It succeeded in doing that and bringing to justice its leaders, those who, notably Sinwar.
So now that Sinwar is dead, this naive thinks that there can be serious ceasefire negotiations when the Israelis murder the negotiators on the other side.
Because they recognize that as this war continues and getting an end to it would help Kamala.
It would help Kamala.
And maybe for that reason alone that Bibi Netanyahu doesn't want to lift a finger.
But you keep hearing the same theme over and over.
Hey, you've achieved your strategic objectives.
Hey, you've dismantled Hamas leadership.
Hey, they can't do another October 7th, so you're safe.
So let's just call it off.
Which, again, shows that the United States Blinken, either they do really understand, but they won't admit it, or they actually don't understand what the purpose of the Zionists are with respect to their cause.
They want to eradicate the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
They want full control, not only of The West Bank and Gaza.
They want control of Lebanon.
They want control of Syria.
They want control of Jordan, of Iraq, and of Saudi Arabia.
Smotrich said so just last week.
Laid it out.
That's their vision.
All of this belongs to us.
And these Arab Muslims, they've got to go.
That's what you're trying to negotiate with.
Until you deal with that, there is no negotiation.
Ray, I'll give you the last word.
Well, I would say here that...
Well, I'll give it a try.
It's a tough act to follow after, Larry.
Let me put it this way.
It's very clear to me that Antony Blinken grew up in the privileged suburbs of Paris and not on the streets of New York.
The way he handled bullies, Look, you wanted to beat up, well, the five of these guys lying underground.
You're going to stop now.
That doesn't work with bullies, okay?
And the fact that Blinken thinks that in his wisdom and representing the United States, he can exercise this kind of influence on Netanyahu, well, if he thinks that he's naive, if he doesn't think that, Because Goebbels at least knew how to speak.
Blinken kind of goes all around the base and appears pretty pathetic.
I think Chas Freeman is absolutely right.
This is the worst Secretary of State in probably our history, not just since World War II.
Gentlemen, thank you very much.
Thank you for your time.
Thanks for the double duty.
Look forward to seeing you on Monday.
It's such a great way to start the week with both of you.
All the best.
Thank you, Judge.
Of course.
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