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Oct. 28, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:08
Ray McGovern : The Koreans Are Coming to Ukraine!
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, October 28, 2024.
Ray McGovern will be with us here in just a moment on The Koreans Are Coming.
Where are they?
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Ray McGovern, welcome here, my dear friend.
Thank you, as always, for your time.
It's such a pleasure to be able to chat with you.
Do we know if Israel did any serious damage to Iran over the weekend when it supposedly retaliated for Iran's retaliation for Israel's provocation?
What we know, Judge, is that no one has been able to show any photos.
No one's been able to show any real evidence that substantial harm was done by the Israeli airstrike.
As you know, it was limited in nature.
It's pretty clear this was at U.S. urging, finally, our military stepping up to the plate.
But to the degree that damage was done, all we have are videos showing that each and every
So the answer, long-winded answer, a short one, is no substantial damage was done, despite the Israeli claims that, oh, they did.
A lot of them have their claims as long as this ends this cycle of escalation.
You know, one wonders, Ray, what the purpose of such a toothless assault was unless, as Alistair Crook believes, the Israeli missiles and computer systems and pilots confronted a defensive system which confused them, with which they were unfamiliar.
And they basically either gave up the ghost or turned around.
Alistair thought it was going to be three waves of attacks.
And in effect, it was just half of one wave and nothing substantial got through.
Does that make sense to you?
It does.
It's one of the options here.
I've heard one variant of that, namely that the first wave was to clear the way for the others.
They didn't clear the way for the others, so it could be reasonably deduced that, well, there were no two more waves.
But, you know, it looks equally possible, especially since, well, since Iran warned not only the U.S., but even Israel, a day or two before, hey, you know, if this is limited, we're not going to have to retaliate.
And the U.S. is putting great pressure on Israel.
I favor that former interpretation, but equally, we'll know more in the coming days for sure.
Alistair also reports that an Israeli newspaper reports that the IDF suffered, this is the English translation of the Hebrew word, catastrophic injuries in their weekend foray into South Lebanon.
Well, whether Netanyahu recognizes that or not, his military have to.
They're spread real thin.
They can no longer expect the U.S. to support them no matter what they do.
So the situation has changed.
Netanyahu and his forces are taking a black eye against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is striking with missiles south of Haifa, and there's no chance that those Israelis that had settlements up to the border And that was not only a sensible purpose of why Israel went in there.
It was one of the purposes.
After all, these people have not been able to go to their homes for months and months and months.
It's an embarrassment to Netanyahu.
I'm wondering how long it will be before even his hardline opponents move against him because there's ample evidence that he's been really a feckless leader.
You read my mind for the next question I was planning on asking or thinking of while you were speaking, and that is, might his domestic political stability be suffering somewhat because his ultra-right colleagues, they breach no error.
They have no tolerance for a setback.
Their language is as strident as can be.
I mean, one of them, born in New Jersey, by the way, Ron Dermer.
You may know of him.
Not from New Jersey, but from Fox.
I mean, he speaks English the way Netanyahu does and the way we do.
Very close ally of Netanyahu.
Former Israeli ambassador to the UN, which is that era during which Fox When I was there, basically said our goal is to de-radicalize the Palestinians.
What does he mean by that?
To change their way of thinking by killing them?
Well, if you look at Webster's definition of de-radicalize in the Israeli version, the sixth meaning is exterminate, and the seventh meaning is genocide.
That's what he really means.
That's what they're all aiming for.
They say it for God's sake.
Now, the question is whether these hard-right people are going to be able to survive these losses and this embarrassment of not being able to really do much damage to Iran.
The question now is, in my view, it's a threshold.
It's a liminal issue here.
Israel has demonstrated in its own unintentional way that it is now deterred, deterred not by a nuclear weapon in Iran's inventory, but by very sophisticated missile read it can go so fast that you can't shoot them.
So the question is, it's Israel's move.
There's one commentator, a former Indian diplomat named Badrach Omar.
He's very good.
Here's a piece this morning.
It talks about Israel being in a Zulzwang, okay?
It's a German word for...
You're in a place where you have to move, okay?
You got to move, but you got no good choices, right?
And that's where Netanyahu is right now.
And how long he'll be able to hang in there?
I've been hoping to leave for a long time.
But the realities of the military are on the ground, and particularly this latest embarrassment, and that they're taking it on their chin in Lebanon.
By and by, the Israeli populist will say, okay, however vengeful we are to take it out on all Palestinians and get rid of them all, well, this ain't the way to do it because we're not succeeding.
Who calls the shots in the Middle East?
Biden or Bibi?
Well, it seems to me that Netanyahu up until now has been having Biden sort of on a string.
Now, what happened, and some of us saw this about six weeks ago, when on a different but very critical issue, Ukraine, The Russians have said this is a red line.
We know it is, and we're not going to allow that, okay?
So, Blinken took it on the chin that time.
So, what about this time?
Six weeks later, we have the U.S. military telling Biden, in my view, look, you let Bibi do what he wants to do.
He's going to get Iran retaliating in such a way that it's going to be an existential threat.
To Israel.
Do you want that?
Because then maybe he's going to call you on the phone and say, "Oh, please help!
Please help!
Please help!" Well, no, I don't want that.
Okay.
Well, tell them to restrain it.
That's what I think happened here.
And in restraining it, you know, they really didn't do much damage at all, as far as I can see.
Larry Johnson had something up there two hours after the strike started.
It looked like iPhone sort of video.
Showing all these look like stars are coming in and then all of a sudden exploding with the, I assume, the S-400 system.
So the Russian air defense system has been advertised as pretty sophisticated, too.
And so, yeah, sometimes I worry about Lockheed and Raytheon.
They're going to lose a lot of business because they've not been shown to be quite as effective as Russian air defense.
I guess it is fair to conclude, Ray, that the Iranian air defense system is far superior to what the IDF thought it was before Saturday.
Yeah, and that's hard to believe.
I mean, you know, there have to be people in the...
Well, that's it.
You know, I was just going to say, Mossad and the Defense Intelligence Agency in Tel Aviv Look, you know, this may come to a no good end here.
We don't know how many S-400s they've already been able to install over the last couple of months, but they're pretty effective.
I think they went ahead anyway, just as our permission heretofore has gone ahead anyway without much infringement on what the Israelis want to do.
That's over now, okay?
And the Israelis are in a hard place.
There's no options there other than to come to their senses, and next week before the election, I don't expect anything to happen, but that will regulate how they react.
If Trump wins, they will take a big sigh of relief and wait a decent interval and then feel free to do whatever the hell they want, in my view.
Switching gears, are the North Koreans in Russia?
I'm not talking about on the other side of Siberia training.
Are they in the area near Ukraine?
Are they on their way there?
Or do we not know any more today than we knew when I last asked you this last week?
Unfortunately, the answer to your last question is no.
We don't know an awful lot more, except Putin has sort of spoken out about it again.
He's not denying it.
What he's saying is, look.
We have a mutual defense treaty with North Korea.
So it's none of your damn business if there are North Korean soldiers in our country.
Wise up.
If there are, well, they are duty bound under this treaty to come to our defense if we are invaded.
Soto voce.
We have been invaded in Kursk.
Right.
For them to show up in Kors, no big problem.
That's just a demonstration that there's teeth in this treaty, and that works both ways.
South Korea, if you have any designs on stirring up trouble in North Korea, we're there and we're duty-bound to come to the aid of North Korea.
This is big.
And he said it twice now, once at Bricks and once just on Friday.
So he's trying to drive home this thing.
Look, we have a treaty obligation here.
And if the North Koreans...
Well, that's proof positive.
It has teeth.
And, you know, it's none of your damn business.
Now, are they needed in courts?
Give me a break.
They're not needed in courts.
Will they show up in courts?
Maybe a platoon or a company, I imagine.
But it's demonstrative.
And meanwhile, and this is really important, over the last 24, 36 hours, the Russians have taken key strategic positions in the Donbass.
In Donetsk.
And it looks like in another week or so, even another couple of days before, even before the election, Putin has the potential to send those troops all the way to the Dnieper River.
That would be another embarrassment to our administration right now.
Here's President Putin on Friday, October 25th, right after the conclusion of the BRICS conference.
In Kazan, Russia, Chris, cut number one.
Satellite images are said to show North Korean troops here in Russia.
What are they doing here?
And wouldn't that be a massive escalation in the Ukraine war?
Now, as for our interaction, relationship with the North Korea, you know, we ratified
as I read that, and please put your own reading on it, Ray.
If they need our help, we'll be there.
And if we need their help, they'll be here.
Yes.
And again, to emphasize the nature of this treaty, when it was signed a year ago, it surprised the hell out of me.
I mean, the Russians are very discreet, very perspicacious.
They don't want to get bound into a relationship which requires them to come to the aid of North Koreans who have not traditionally been very...
Besides that, we have very sophisticated Russian missilery technology gone to North Korea.
So the situation is really such that Putin is trying to have this has effect.
Look, look, we have allies to not only Belarus.
We've got North Korea and sort of a voce, China, Iran.
You ought to remember this, Mr. Biden, because we have these guys.
They're not bound, most of them, by a treaty like NATO, but that's even better because bilateral treaties, defense treaties, like the one we have in North Korea, they come into effect once either country is invaded.
Putin doesn't go to the next sentence and say, well, yeah, you know, we were invaded by the Ukrainians.
And of course, one of the moving forces behind all this public discourse is Zelensky himself and people who favor the Ukraine.
I say, oh, the Koreans are coming.
The Koreans are coming.
Now, one last thing, because people might be a little wondering about this.
On Friday, we had a one-source report which said that this was preparatory.
All this North Korean presence in Russia was preparatory to a move by Ukraine and NATO, U.S., to send South Korean pilots and F-16s to an airbase in Romania.
One of the reports said they're already there.
Now, what would that be for?
Well, because these Ukrainian pilots are not really trained well on these F-16s.
They still haven't grasped the language.
How many F-16 do they have?
Over 100.
How many pilots?
More than 100.
So it all makes sense in a conceptual case.
What does that mean?
There's nothing since then.
It could mean that this was kind of a straw in the wind put out by this one source who's very close to the Kremlin and to the Russian military to say, look, we know that Zelensky would also like this.
Just be aware.
We know about that, and we're not going to hunker back on our defense obligations to North Korea.
Just be aware that if those South Korean pilots go up, they're going to get hit just as the Israeli missiles were hit just on Friday night or Saturday night, whatever it was.
How do you think the elites in the EU and NATO will react to the presence of North Korean troops in Europe?
Well, they will raise a din, but as Putin explained, you know, he's very specific.
Look, we have this relationship with, if they're training with us or if they're here, it's none of your damn business.
Isn't that pretty much what we say when the Russians complain about, you know, NATO troops in Ukraine?
Poland?
I'm just there because you say it so credibly, so matter-of-factly.
Yeah, I wish I had the Russian here, but he says, yeah, I suggest this is no one else's business, period and quote, in English.
So, I mean, fair is fair.
And the thing that I would emphasize here is that Putin has come back to this twice now, and he's trying to demonstrate, look.
We've worked on our bilateral defense treaty relationships in such a way that you should accept it.
You should believe it.
With respect to China, with respect to Iran, it'll be something short of a mutual defense treaty obligating each side to come to the end or the other if they're invaded, but it'll be tantamount to that.
And one last footnote here.
What about this Iran-Russian treaty?
Oh, wait a second.
They've been working on it for two and a half years.
Three months ago, so was it going to be signed at Kazan, at the BRIC?
Oh, no, then the head of Iran said, no, we hoped they would, but it wasn't.
And is it going to be signed ever?
It'll be signed when the Russians have a believable pledge from Iran not to raise the ante in West Asia, not to retaliate for the
Here's President Putin at the same press conference, this time talking about Russian troops and Ukrainian troops in Kursk.
Number two, Chris.
Our troops are very active in the Kursk direction, some of the Ukrainian units that have mounted an incursion.
Enter the Kursk region have been blocked and encircled.
This group totals around 2,000 people.
There are attempts at deblocking that from outside.
There are also attempts at a breakthrough from the inside.
Right now, the Russian troops are proceeding to eliminate this group of forces that has been encircled.
The Russian troops are focusing on eliminating this group of forces that has been encircled.
This is consistent with what Larry has said, what you have said, what everybody that has looked at this has said, except for President Zelensky.
Well, you know, it's obvious that this was a fool's errand.
No one knows exactly why Zelensky laid this thing on and why NATO advisors promoted him, said, yep, okay, let's do this.
But the Russians call it a cauldron.
The encirclement is now a cauldron.
I think there were about 20,000 troops sent in from...
Even the escape routes back into Ukraine proper have been blocked.
Why all this?
Could no one predict this?
Of course they could predict this, but they did it anyway.
Why?
Well, it has to do with pre-election politics.
It has to do with Zelensky's hell-bent desire to show the West that, no, no, we can do this kind of, we can even invade Russia.
How he got his military to go along with this is another question.
Whether this makes him still weaker, I'm sure it does.
Because the military now is scratching its head and saying, my God, most of our people are surrendering or retreating or running away.
What are we going to do now?
Let's get rid of Zelensky, bring back Zelensky from London.
How much longer can Zelensky last?
Well, as long as Washington allows it.
Now, Washington is the one that will tell the powers that be in Kiev.
How long Zelensky should stay around.
They have no alternative right now.
They'll wait until the end, until the election.
We'll see what happens then.
And, you know, they too have a zugsfang.
They have a choice.
They have a necessity to choose without any reasonable courses of action that promise success.
So, you know, it's a bad situation in both fronts.
And not only that.
But you have problems in the Taiwan Straits.
Biden is probably going to be very glad to get out of there on the 20th of January.
That said, he's going to have to make some real decisions if he's capable of doing that between now and the 20th of January.
And my God, all bets are off.
Depends on largely on who wins next Tuesday.
Thank you, Ray.
Always a pleasure, my man.
We look forward to seeing you with Larry on Friday afternoon.
Thank you, Judge.
Sure.
Have a great week, my friend.
And the aforementioned Larry is, of course, Larry Johnson, who will be with us at 11 o 'clock this morning, at 3 this afternoon, Phil Giraldi, and at 4 this afternoon, fresh off a rousing, lively gathering of anti-war activists in New York City yesterday.
On the other side of town from where former President Trump was holding his rally, at four this afternoon, Scott Ritter.
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