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Nov. 5, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:38
Scott Ritter : Ukraine’s Done; Israel’s In Uproar.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, November 5th, 2024, Election Day here in the U.S. Scott Ritter will be with us in just a moment on Ukraine is finished and Israel is in an uproar.
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Scott Ritter, my dear friend, welcome back to the show, and thank you, of course, for your time.
I do want to spend some time with you on Ukraine, but before we get there, I'd like your thoughts on the latest developments in Israel within a day of the government ordering Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox to be subject to the draft pursuant to a ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court.
And within a day or two of the announcement of the arrest of Prime Minister Netanyahu's chief spokesperson on espionage charges and the refusal of a court to grant him bail, Prime Minister Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
What's your take on this?
Well, Gallant's been on thin ice for some time now.
There was talk about Netanyahu firing him.
Back prior to the Iranian missile attack, the second one, on October 1st on Israel.
Gaunt stayed on because you know he was they needed the continuity of command to craft Israel's retaliation strike but even then But Netanyahu came under a lot of pressure.
I think the arrest that you speak of, of the spokesperson, relates to the release of documents that were very embarrassing to Netanyahu.
Netanyahu's always blamed on Hamas, but these documents show the exact opposite, that it was Benjamin Netanyahu himself that purposefully sabotaged everything.
Gallant has been opposed to Netanyahu's escalation.
In Lebanon and potential escalation with Iran, he has spoken out over, condemned Netanyahu for the lack of strategic vision, you know, how to win these wars, how to end these wars.
And I think his firing was inevitable.
It was already, you know, being talked about.
Netanyahu just needed the right time to do it, and I think he took advantage of.
The uproar over the release of these documents to say that he no longer has trust and confidence in the defense minister, so he fired him.
Was Gallant, is Gallant respected by senior military leadership in the IDF?
And if he was, does his successor Israel Katz enjoy that kind of respect?
Well, Gallant is somebody who holds the respect of the military.
You know, he has come under harsh criticism because of October 7th.
And also, you know, remember, he's the Minister of Defense.
The buck stops with him for the failures in Gaza and the failures in Lebanon.
But, you know, he has been able to deflect this by, you know, pointing the finger rightfully so at Benjamin Netanyahu and the interference in this.
You know, in these issues by the Prime Minister.
You know, Israel Katz is not, you know, an unknown.
He's a longtime politician.
He's been the Minister of Foreign Affairs under previous Netanyahu administrations.
He most recently was the Minister of Energy, which means he's involved in Israel's nuclear program.
You know, he's a man who's read into the deepest secrets.
So he's an establishment man who, you know, We'll be able to come in and hold the respect of the generals so long as he is willing to articulate to the prime minister the advice being given by the military.
I think Katz will be able to do that.
Who calls the shots?
Who decides in Israel the nature and extent and timing of attacks on Iran?
Who made the decisions to have three waves of attack, canceling the first wave halfway through and totally canceling the second and the third?
Is it Netanyahu?
Is it Gallant?
Is it the professionals in the field?
No.
In Israel, when Israel enters into an emergency situation like this, they form a war cabinet.
And there's three members on the war cabinet, and all three have to concur before something can be done.
It's a unique aspect of Israeli democracy so that the prime minister cannot do things on his own volition.
Normally, he would have to take it to the Knesset and get concurrence, get political support for issues.
But in time of war, they've shrunk that down to three.
But you need the concurrence of the entire war cabinet to move forward.
Now, generally speaking, you can surround yourselves with people who are politically loyal since you picked them.
So one would assume that if you pick your defense minister and your minister of interior as your big three, maybe have a couple more surrounding you that advise you.
These are people who are politically loyal to you.
So generally speaking, they will support what...
what you propose.
What's happened with Netanyahu though, is that because these conflicts have taken on a personal nature, meaning they seem to be being waged to preserve the political legacy of Netanyahu above and beyond promoting this security, legitimate security of Israel.
There's been some division in the, The traditional Likud people like Gallant, they don't see eye to eye with Bin Gavir and those extremists.
So there's already some tension there in the war cabinet.
What happened?
As you see it, and I know I've asked you this before, it's a prelude to a follow-up.
What happened when Israel last waged an assault on Iran?
Did they confront a Russian missile defense system with which they were unfamiliar?
No, no, I mean...
You know Alistair very well.
And I have a lot of respect for Alistair, both in terms of his professional pedigree and the fact that he still maintains very good connections on both sides of the fence over in the Middle East, especially in Israel.
So, you know, Alistair Crook has indicated that the Israelis were painted by an air defense system of an unknown nature, 75 to 100 kilometers inside Iraq before they got to the Iranian border.
And this disrupted the Israeli attack.
I would say that the Iranians probably were not able to fully integrate.
If Russia did provide them the S-400 air defense system, one of the most advanced systems, that it wouldn't have been fully integrated into the Iranian air defense network.
The Iranians are very good, though, at air defense.
We saw that with their missiles that are able to penetrate Israel's ballistic missile defense shield.
And Iran has developed some advanced capabilities that take advantage of intelligence that they've gathered, for instance, in Syria, where the United States flies F-35s, F-22s.
They're able to get the radar cross-sections on that, develop radars specifically designed to detect this.
And I think that the Iranians surprised the Israel.
It's more likely to surprise me with an indigenously produced capability, one that has been thoroughly integrated into the integrated air defense of Iran.
So I think it was probably an Iranian system of unknown nature, meaning that the Israelis had yet to encounter that.
Did the Israelis do significant, appreciable, measurable, noticeable damage to Iran's?
Nuclear or Iran's missile defense system with whatever they did 10 days ago.
My gut feeling is no.
Even if you had everything hit, it's an extensive missile defense system.
It's an extensive anti-air defense system.
A lot of targets, a lot more targets than systems were fired.
I believe that they did hit some targets.
They did do some damage.
The Iranians admit to four military personnel being killed, one civilian being killed.
I believe that they'll hit some targets in the Parchin missile production facility.
But again, as somebody who has planned these kind of strikes during wartime and done the battle damage assessment of them, both in terms of looking at it in the immediate post-strike using Intelligence means, and as a weapons inspector walking the ground afterwards, seeing up close and personal the damage done.
Even when you get all your weapons deployed, the damage is often far less than you think you're inflicting.
Here, we have a disrupted Israeli attack of an incomplete nature, where Iranian missile defense appears to have shut down the majority of the Israeli missiles.
I don't believe the Israelis delivered anything close to a knockout blow to Iran.
Here's General Jack Keane on Fox News, who has what I think is an off-the-wall view of this, but I'd like you to comment on a cut number three.
Military effects of that strike.
It's beyond what's being reported because they have literally taken down most of the Russian air defense system, the so-called S-300 missile defense systems that the Russians gave them years ago.
And that's what's really protecting their nuclear enterprise, their oil and gas industry, and other key strategic assets like the missile production factories that the Israelis did destroy at multiple sites.
Those are ballistic missiles.
So yes, this air defense system destruction is really powerful because Iran is sitting there essentially naked.
Iran is sitting there essentially naked.
Does this make any sense?
No.
Again, General Keene knows nothing about air defense systems.
He wouldn't be able to outline.
Or do an overlay of the Iranian air defense network.
He wouldn't be able to explain how the S-300 is deployed, why it's deployed, how it integrates in with other air defense systems.
And so he's basically taking talking points that are fed to him by somebody in the Pentagon who is told to spin this thing in a certain way.
With all due respect, I mean, I...
Since he's retired, he has become overly politicized.
He's lost any credibility he may have had because he's not capable of challenging the official narrative.
I have yet to see him challenge the official narrative when it comes to things like this.
And all he's done here is taken data that was spoon-fed to him by somebody else.
There's no original analysis in General King's statement.
None whatsoever.
If the Israeli Air Force is unable to penetrate successfully the Iranian missile defenses, can we conclude that the United States Air Force is similarly or will be similarly unable to succeed in such a penetration?
It'll be difficult.
Remember, Israel has a problem of time and space and the fact that they have to fly over potentially hostile terrain to get to Iran.
The United States, you know, we can use aircraft carriers if we take our B-52s out of Aloudad, where they're just sitting ducks there, and move them to Diego Garcia, etc.
We're pretty good at, we have very good intelligence and we're pretty good at identifying, overlaying enemy air defense and we can do suppression of enemy air defense.
It's not a guarantee that we could have our way with, but I think we're capable of putting a strike package in and hitting any target we want to inside Iran.
We're not bad.
It doesn't mean we won't suffer losses, and it doesn't mean that when we do strike the target, we're going to destroy the target.
But I have confidence in the American military's ability to penetrate just about any air defense system in the world and put bombs on target.
What is the, if you know, Political ramifications of BB Gate, you know, the leaking of these documents.
Why would it have been done by someone on the inner circle of Netanyahu unless he hated his boss or he's of the view that exposing these documents, which is an act of espionage under Israeli law, would force Netanyahu from office, expedite a ceasefire?
Well, I think that's just it.
I mean, first of all, Benjamin Netanyahu is a liar, and he's lied to the Israeli people.
So one of the things that has happened with these documents being released is that Benjamin Netanyahu has been exposed to the Israeli public as a liar.
Now, many people suspected him of this, but now there's no longer a debate about this.
The families of the hostages are a very politically powerful constituency, and he has now shown that he has betrayed them.
The same thing about any family of soldiers who have died who could have lived had Benjamin Netanyahu implemented a ceasefire.
This becomes problematic.
So I think this was designed to weaken Netanyahu politically in hopes of getting him pushed out of office.
It's designed to...
And we'll see.
This could be a fatal wound.
So maybe the firing of Gallant was Netanyahu's attempt to get his own lies and failures off the front page.
Well, I think he's going to try to shift a lot of the blame onto Gallant.
And so by firing Gallant, he now, you know, And again, Israel Kotz is not an incompetent person.
He's a very politically savvy politician.
He's been around for a long time.
He's served in cabinet positions.
He's not a neophyte.
And so he'll serve Netanyahu well.
So I think Netanyahu believes that he can bolster up politically the war cabinet.
But we'll see, because there's no guarantee that Kotz is going to be a dupe to Netanyahu.
You know, Kotz is not cut out of the same piece of cloth as Ben Gaviria's, and there still will be this hostile dynamic there.
Will the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox be drafted?
Well, some of them will be.
I mean, some of them will oppose.
Does the IDF want these characters in the military?
No.
The IDF would prefer not to have them.
But there's a manpower problem right now, an absolute critical...
Israeli reservists are starting to commit suicide in meaningful numbers.
Some high-profile suicides.
A very highly trained pilot killed himself before rather than go back to duty.
Others are killing themselves.
The desertion rates between 12 and 24 percent.
Many of the reserve units, when they are mobilized because of the high level of no-shows, are combat.
They look like a brigade on paper, but they're really a little more than a reinforced battalion because they don't have enough personnel to fully staff it out.
This decision to draft is designed to Expand the manpower base for the Israeli Defense Force, but these people don't want to fight, and it will cause far more problems than it will solve.
Switching gears to Ukraine, is it on its last leg?
Yeah, I mean, it's been on its last leg for a while.
I mean, the Ukrainians, you know, again, we just have to give credit where credit is due.
Every Russian officer I've spoken to, every Russian soldier that's fighting them, has never said anything bad about the fighting capabilities of the Ukrainian soldiers.
In fact, many of them are just shocked about the fact that the Ukrainians will die before they surrender.
They make the fighting very, very difficult, especially in an urban environment where, you know, traditionally, if you had people down in a basement and they know they're going to die.
The white flag will come out and you can bring them out.
The Ukrainians say, no, you've got to come in and kill us.
And then the Russians do.
But this takes time.
It complicates things.
So the Russians are in a very tough fight.
But the Ukrainians have reached the point of no return.
They can't undo the damage that's been done.
They're going to lose.
This war, they can't change that.
There's nothing the West can do to change that.
So now the question is just, how do you want Ukraine to collapse?
And that's the big question right now is, at what point in time does the West step in?
When will the Ukrainian government be ready to admit what needs to be done to resolve this situation?
Because some very difficult decisions have to be made, but they can't be avoided and they're going to have to be made soon, such as.
The incursion into Kursk, now universally recognized as a disaster and the last vestiges of forces, including Americans, in there about to be eliminated?
I mean, I think it's recognized by everybody as a strategic mistake by Ukraine.
They made a gambit.
They made a gamble.
It's not unreasonable some of the things they were thinking.
They just failed to execute properly.
The Russians failed to respond the way that many people had thought they would respond.
And the end result is that Ukraine's strategic reserves have been effectively taken off the board.
20,000, 23,000, 30,000 well-trained, well-equipped, highly motivated troops no longer exist.
Chris, do we have Victoria Nuland on with Rachel Maddow?
Oh, there's a combination for you, Scott.
He's at it again.
This time he's not even trying to hide his hand, and he has far more sophisticated tools.
You know, his AI is better, so he can make these fake videos.
He has done things like spend $10 million trying to buy American influencers.
and get them parroting his lines and not even know it's happening.
But he's also got a brand new, very, very powerful tool, which is Elon Musk and X. You know, in 2020, the social media companies worked hard with the U.S. government to try to do content moderation, to try to catch this stuff as it was happening.
But this time, we have Elon Musk talking directly to the Kremlin and ensuring that every time the Russians put out something like this, it gets 5 million views on X before anybody can catch it.
So it's quite dangerous.
Although I do think the American electorate has gotten more sophisticated and more savvy about this stuff.
Thank you.
Well, they monitor.
Of course, they care.
The American president is, you know, one of the world's most powerful leaders.
And as a leader of a nation that possesses nuclear forces that are targeted against Russia, of course, Russia cares.
But Russia isn't going to try and change.
First of all, they're not, as far as Russia is concerned, America is the problem, not a particularly American president.
You know, Anatoly Antonov, when I spoke to him, said that, From his perspective, the most important thing is predictability.
He doesn't care who is the president as long as the policies of the United States are predictable.
And while we didn't get into too many details, the implication was that Donald Trump is a very unpredictable person.
So for all these people out there thinking that the Russians want Donald Trump, no, I think the opposite is the truth, that the Russians actually would have preferred It's
very difficult to put together.
But the idea that Putin's going to come in here and try and sway the American people is absurd in the extreme.
It just isn't happening.
I mean, and the other thing is, you can tell, you know, when you get Rachel Maddow and Newland together, or anything coming from the Biden administration, as soon as they bring up, you know, sophisticated AI and all this stuff, what they're saying is, we don't have better ideas.
this because that's ultimately what this is about if people are putting things out there For instance, the things that I've done in Russia to bring information back and to push back on some, you know, notions that may exist in the Biden administration.
Rather than saying, no, no, no, no, here's our counter information.
Here's our better ideas.
Here's our better information.
What they do is they say, no, no, that's Russian propaganda.
Well, no, it's not.
It's facts.
It's fact-based.
They call it Russian propaganda because they don't have The ability to articulate a counter-argument, to put out opposing facts.
Even though we're seeing with Elon Musk, they're afraid of Elon Musk because he's putting out facts that they can't challenge.
They're afraid to challenge.
What is the stability of the Zelensky government, or what is its life expectancy?
Look, I think we're going to see a very difficult winter for Ukraine.
And I think what we're going to find is if Zelensky survives this winter, he won't survive long into the spring.
There is an absolute need for change in Ukraine.
And the Ukrainian people are starting to recognize that.
And Zelensky is rapidly being seen by many, including his supporters, as the problem, not the solution.
I would be surprised if he lasts the winter, but even if he does, he's not going to go deep into the spring.
There will have to be peace.
The Ukrainians will insist on it because they can't continue doing what they're doing.
Scott Ritter, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Much appreciated.
We'll talk to you again soon.
All the best.
Thanks.
Of course.
Tonight, of course.
Most of us will be watching the election returns, but tomorrow we'll be here, 11 o 'clock in the morning, Colonel McGregor, two in the afternoon, Professor Mearsheimer, three in the afternoon, Phil Giraldi, four in the afternoon, Aaron Maté, five in the afternoon, Professor Sachs.
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