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Nov. 21, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:23
Scott Ritter : Russia fires first ICBM in combat for the first time in history!!!
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, November 21st, 2024.
Scott Ritter joins us now on two breaking news subjects.
Scott, I want to spend a fair amount of time with you on whatever it is the Russians fired today.
But before we do, the other breaking news is the indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his fired What is the significance, the geopolitical significance, if any, of these momentous steps?
Well, from a political standpoint, obviously, it's a sharp blow against Netanyahu, Galant, and Israel.
Because the implication behind the indictments, the issuing of these warrants for arrest, is that they have committed criminal acts, acts of genocide.
It furthers the case that many around the world, myself included, are making that Israel is a genocidal state and that the leadership of Israel is accountable for these actions.
So it's damaging in that way.
Anybody who thinks that Netanyahu will ever have a pair of ICC handcuffs placed on them, it will never happen.
First of all, the United States has made it clear that it will never happen.
And the United States is on record telling the ICC, if you ever arrest an American service member, if you ever try to bring charges, we passed a law that said we can come in and kill you.
They would treat Netanyahu as if he were an American.
I mean, let me back up.
Suppose his plane needs fuel and he lands on Iceland, and they come out to arrest him on the tarmac.
What happens?
The United States puts Iceland on notice that that's an act of war.
We will treat it as an act of war.
We've said that the ICC has no jurisdiction, and we've said that we will protect him.
We treat Israel as an extension of the United States.
Again, for anybody out there thinking that I'm happy about this, I'm not.
I would love to see ICC handcuffs on this man.
I would love to see him in the Hague.
I'd love to see him rot in jail.
But the United States has made it clear that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel.
And they've also linked the prosecution of Israelis by the ICC to the same framework of what would happen if they tried to prosecute Americans.
Isn't this a just prosecution?
I mean, I read the...
In America, the prosecutors draft the indictment and they persuade a grand jury to ratify it.
Sometimes the grand jury insists on changes which they can make.
In the ICC, a panel of three judges receive the application for the indictment.
They write the indictment, the three judges do, and they write an opinion justifying it.
The opinion is different.
It is basically what you and others on this show have been telling us for the past year and a half, going back to October 7th.
The slaughter of innocents, the deprivation of food, water, shelter, and medicine to innocents.
These are war crimes, and these indictments surely are deserved by any measure of justice other than that.
100%.
There's no dispute.
I mean, these are damning indictments.
They ring with authority.
They are fact-based.
They cannot be challenged factually.
But we're not dealing with facts.
We're dealing with perceptions.
And perception creates its own reality, especially when that perception is backed by the weight of the United States government.
And in this case, You know, we reject it.
Keep in mind that the ICC once considered prosecuting American Special Forces in Afghanistan for murdering Afghan civilians.
And they were put on notice that if you ever do that, you know, we will arrest you.
We will arrest your families.
We will make your life a living hell.
And they quickly dropped it.
Like I said, the Congress has passed a law that basically allows the United States to use military force to recover any American personnel who happen to have been arrested by the ICC.
What is the ICC?
Who owns it, runs it, staffs it, stocks it, makes it legitimate?
Is it the UN?
No.
The ICC is not.
The International Court of Justice, the ICJ, It is a body mandated by the United Nations.
It is the highest body in the land for dealing with legal precedent regarding international law.
The ICC is a creation of a, I think they call it the Rome Treaty.
Okay, the Treaty of Rome, which the United States and Israel did not sign.
We didn't sign.
We're not signatory, so we say it doesn't apply to us.
And this was designed to hold to account African warlords, dictators, to hold to account bad Serbs, bad Croats.
Hold to account the lessers.
It was never meant to hold to account the principles.
The ICC was never meant to hold to account the United States or any NATO nation, nor will it ever hold them to account.
It just isn't going to happen, which is why the concept of holding Israel to account is absurd on the face, not because of the lack of legitimacy for the cause, but this court wasn't built.
It wasn't intended, it wasn't structured to go after the Israels of the world, even though Israel deserves it.
Chris, do we have the clip that we ran for Professor Sachs, which is Prime Minister Netanyahu's comments back in April when the word had circulated that he might be indicted.
Listen to this.
This will aggravate you a little bit, but listen to this, Scott.
You have to hear this to believe this.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague is contemplating issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli government and military officials as war criminals.
This would be an outrage of historic proportions.
International bodies like the ICC arose in the wake of the Holocaust committed against the Jewish people.
They were set up to prevent such horrors.
to prevent future genocides.
Yet now the international court is trying to put Israel in the dock.
It's trying to put us in the dock as we defend ourselves against genocidal terrorists and regimes that openly works to destroy the one and only Jewish state.
Branding Israel's leaders and soldiers as war criminals will pour jet fuel on the fires of anti-Semitism Those fires that are already raging on the campuses of America and across capitals around the world.
Does that surprise you, that self-righteous victimization response?
No, I mean, just imagine if the Allies had tried to pull a Nuremberg without actually defeating Nazi Germany.
And imagine Hitler and Goebbels and Goering coming up, and they would make similar statements.
Oh, you know, the German people this, the German people that, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Benjamin, yeah, he's a Nazi.
He's a Zionist, the same thing.
I mean, he behaves as a Nazi.
What he's doing to the Palestinians is just as bad as what the Germans did to the Jews.
I mean, you know, the Palestinians may not be going up a chimney.
No, they're being squashed to death with collapsed buildings that are blown up around them.
I mean, death is death, and this is targeted killing by A group that believes themselves to be supreme and their victims to be human animals.
The Nazis viewed the Jews that way and the Zionists viewed the Palestinians that way.
So it doesn't surprise me that Netanyahu did this.
It's what you would expect from a genocidal maniac.
Let's transition over to Russia and Ukraine.
What did Russia fire at Ukraine today and what is the significance of the Russian use of this weapon?
Well, first of all, we don't know what Russia fired.
When Vladimir Putin gave his address, I think it took everybody but the most read-in intelligence officials by surprise.
He announced a new missile, the Ereshnik.
it means hazel interesting name because hazel is the wood that So the implication is that this is a cudgel that Russia will be using to beat the West into submission.
It's a, as described by Vladimir Putin, it's a medium-range missile, and that's an important term.
Generally speaking, medium-range missiles have a range between 1,000 and 3,000 kilometers, which means it's not an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The Ukrainians had identified it as an intercontinental ballistic missile, and particularly identified it as what's known as an RS-26 Rubiezer Frontier.
What's interesting in saying that is that the United States notified Ukraine that Russia was preparing to launch a missile and shared satellite imagery with the Ukrainians.
Apparently, they didn't share the highly sensitive other intelligence that the United States had, which led them to know that this wasn't an RS-26.
This was an experimental missile by Russia.
But the Ukrainians looked at the image.
And they called it an RS-26, which means that whatever was on the stand at the Kapustan Yar missile test facility looks like an RS-26.
That means it's a road mobile system with six axles.
it uses a launch canister and it has certain dimensions so what I believe this is is a modification of the RS 26 maybe only using a This might only be a one-stage, using the first stage, with a maneuvering warhead bus.
This warhead bus, at least as fired against the Dnipro factory, had six independently targeted missiles, but what's interesting about this is each of these warheads had at least six large submunitions.
So, basically, Six warheads came in, released six submunitions each, and there were 36 saturation impacts on the Dnipro factory.
Now the factory that was struck is an old Soviet air factory.
The UZMASH facility used to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles for So Russia just took that factory out.
no longer functions uh the missile that they used It is a nuclear-capable system that used a conventional warhead, but could be used for nuclear purposes.
And Putin basically said that this missile now can cover all of Europe, and that in the future he will mirror every action by Ukraine in the West.
That any escalation will immediately be responded to.
Immediately be responded.
So anybody who thought that Russia was bluffing, that you could call Russia's bluff, has now been put on notice.
That Russia is not bluffing.
This is a major escalation.
This is bringing in a new category of weapons.
It is a qualitative advance and it has put us dangerously down the path towards nuclear conflict because all it takes is one or two more miscalculations.
I think Putin, by striking the Dnipro factory, has created a buffer of escalatory possibility, meaning that, let's say, Ukraine insanely decides to fire off more storm shadow missiles against Russia.
Putin said that the missile will be used, and he said, but next, if we use it against built-up areas, we'll give warning to the civilians to evacuate.
The implication here is that the next time Russia uses this missile, it'll strike.
Kiev, Benkova Street, the seat of government, and seek to destroy Ukraine's ability to govern itself.
And then after that, depending on what escalation takes place, remember, he said he will hold to account the nations responsible.
He blamed the United States and Great Britain directly.
So we may see him extend this, for instance, taking out the American missile facility, the ballistic missile defense facility.
It just opened up in Poland, or take out the other one in Romania to strike British targets in the region.
So, and once that does, then we create the possibility of, you know, we're in Article 5, now we're in conflict between Russia and NATO, and we all die.
That's how dangerous this is.
We are very, very close to reaching the point of no return when it comes to nuclear war.
Keep in mind that Just within the last 24 hours, Rear Admiral Buchanan of the United States Strategic Command came out and issued a statement in response to the news that Vladimir Putin had signed off on a new nuclear doctrine.
He said that the United States prepared to engage in a nuclear exchange with Russia, that we believe we can win, and that we won't use all our nuclear force because we're going to win and still maintain nuclear deterrence against the rest of the world.
Let me say that one more time so the audience understands what I just said.
The United States is prepared to engage in a nuclear exchange with Russia that we think we can win.
I would have liked to ask him which cities he's willing to give away in this exchange and what population numbers is he talking about?
Is he talking about only 6 million dead?
Well, this Admiral is a lunatic.
Could the White House possibly, or the White House is filled with lunacy as well, have authorized something as provocative and absurd as this?
Well, this is a fair question.
I mean, somebody had to authorize him to make this statement, but it's a grossly irresponsible statement to make at this time.
Let me tell you why.
Because if I'm a Russian listening to that, that tells me that the Americans believe they can fight a limited nuclear war and win it.
That means that they're preparing to win it.
When you say that you're going to retain sufficient stockpiles to continue deterrence posture, that means that you're probably thinking about a preemptive strike against the Russians to take out Russia's capabilities, because that's the only way an exchange works that you can walk away from.
You can't write out a Russian attack.
Russia has enough capability to just flatten every aspect of the United States.
What is this admiral's name again, Scott?
Buchanan.
You're Admiral Buchanan.
Is there any question in your mind but that the use of the Oreshnik was a direct response to American use of attackums and British use of storm shadows reaching into Russia?
There's no doubt in my mind, and Putin said as such.
I also communicated with some Russians.
Apparently the storm shadow attack Struck a Russian command and control facility in the Kursk region, and there were Russian casualties.
Russia is preparing murder charges against the British forces involved in the storm, because there's no legality for their action.
Great Britain is not in a state of war with Russia, and yet Great Britain has facilitated the deaths of Russia using British weapons.
So the Russians are in the process of identifying these people, and they will...
But they didn't destroy the command and control facility.
It's still functioning.
It's still doing its job.
But the Ukrainians used the storm shadow, which is targeted by the United States and Great Britain, to strike a Russian command and control facility in Kursk, killing Russian soldiers.
And this is undoubtedly what triggered Putin's response.
What was gained from the Western American, UK, NATO perspective?
We have to look at the timing of this, Judge.
Remember, the Biden administration had already rejected this scenario previously, back in September.
They did it in a way that publicly humiliated the British Prime Minister.
100 and the reason why They don't have the ability to change the outcome of what's happening on the battlefield.
That the only way this war ends is with the Ukrainians and the Russians sitting down and negotiating an end.
And the other thing is, if you use these weapons, you lead us down, the United States, down a path that takes us dangerously close to nuclear war.
And wisely, the Biden administration said, we don't want to do this.
We don't want to engage in that.
Now, what changed?
They're doing it now.
Why?
November 5th.
There's the answer.
And Judge, this is this interesting constitutional problem that we have here.
Because we have a presidential campaign where the winning candidate ran on a platform that clearly articulated that they wanted to get out of Ukraine, that they didn't want a nuclear confrontation with Russia, and that they were looking to limit the ability of NATO to impose Foreign policy prerogatives on the United States.
What we now have is a presidential administration, a lame duck administration, that's acting in direct opposite to the stated will of the people by their vote.
and they're doing this not because there's a threat that they have to respond to these are decisions of choice being made to directly contradict earlier policy decisions that were made back in in Is the President of the United States actually making this?
There's a case that can be made that this man is of such diminished cognitive capacity that he's incapable of making the complicated decisions that this is actually a coup d 'etat being carried out by Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and here's the problem.
Unelected deep state.
Right.
The class of unelected...
Might these people, whoever they are, Lloyd Austin, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, others unknown and unnamed, be engaged in this horrific political tit-for-tat.
You and your crazy Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, this might be their thinking, negotiated this terrible deal with the Taliban, not with the government of Afghanistan, and it exploded on our watch.
Well, guess what?
We're going to push Ukraine into exploding on your watch.
Might they have done something as thoughtless, heedless, immoral, unlawful, unconstitutional, and killing of innocents as that?
Yes.
They have a name for what they're doing right now.
It's called Trump-proofing.
They are Trump-proofing NATO.
They are Trump-proofing Ukraine.
And they are Trump-proofing the deep state.
They're making this problem so hard to resolve that Donald Trump thinks he wants to do one thing when he comes into office, but he'll be compelled to do something different because his hands will be tied.
It's also predicated on the notion that Russia is bluffing because there are follow-on steps.
And this is supposed to just be the use of storm, shadow, and attack.
This is just phase one of a series of actions.
Look at Zelensky's victory plan.
It was scoffed at prior to November 5th.
Now it's become the official policy.
The first part of the victory plan was give him long-range missiles to strike Russian command and control.
The second part, to extend NATO air defense coverage and to shoot down Russian missiles flying over Ukraine.
The third part, to extend NATO air power in.
Now you created a de facto no-fly zone.
Over Ukraine and then you bring in NATO ground troops and on January 20th, when Donald Trump rolls into the office, NATO and Ukraine are one in the same.
Ukraine is now a de facto member of NATO and Donald Trump has to deal with that reality.
This is what they're trying to accomplish, but it's all predicated on the understanding that Russia is bluffing, that every time you seek to escalate, Russia will back down.
That's the importance of what Vladimir Putin just did.
He didn't respond using Kinzhal missiles that he's already used, caliber missiles, Oryx missiles, anything of that nature.
He responded with a brand new missile that is a game changer because this missile not just can strike any part of Ukraine, but any part of Europe and it can't be intercepted.
And he made that point.
I will hit.
The decisions have already been made.
There won't be a discussion.
You attack, we immediately hit back with this missile or other new missiles that you don't know anything about.
That's what's interesting.
Do the Russians have ICBMs that could reach the mainland of the United States?
they have more ICBMs than you can shake a stick at, including one called the, the, This one is a giant missile.
It carries 18 to 20 independently targeted warheads, each one about between 200 to 500 kilotons.
Remember, the bomb that took out Hiroshima was 12 kilotons.
The one that took out Nagasaki was 20. We're talking about hitting American cities with 200 to 500 kilotons each, 18 of them in one missile, and they've got regiments of these.
The Russians have more missiles than you can shake a stick at.
They're all modern missiles, all incorporate hypersonic technology.
None of them can be shot down, and it's the death sentence to the United States.
I don't know what these people are thinking.
Do these people, Lloyd Austin, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, whoever the unnamed ones were, we're going to take Biden out of it because of his mental degradation.
Do they understand what you're saying?
Do they understand the gravity of what they have triggered?
They believe that Putin is bluffing.
They believe that Putin, this whole nuclear doctrine that they signed off on, you hear it over and over again from Keir Starmer, British intelligence, Americans.
It's just posturing by the Russians.
They don't have the ability to back it up.
They don't want to back it up.
Putin's weak.
Putin's this, Putin's that.
And Putin just came out and said, that's our doctrine.
We'll use it.
And, oh, here's our missile.
It's nuclear capable.
In case we want to implement our doctrine, if you want to push it, the decisions have already been made.
That's the scary part.
Anybody who thinks that Putin's going to be running around frantically making phone calls to deal with whatever escalation is wrong.
The decisions have been made.
The orders have been given.
It's automatic.
It's not up to Russia to do anything different.
Russia will be mirroring.
This is Putin's words, mirroring the actions of the United States, NATO, and Ukraine.
And whatever we do, there will be an immediate mirrored reaction that could bring down the world.
Who else is in cahoots with the U.S. and the British on this?
The French, to some extent.
Rutte, the new Secretary General of NATO, is very much in cahoots.
You saw the British Parliament stand up and give a standing ovation when they voted to give their support for releasing these long-range weapons.
All the Baltic states, Poland, I think only a handful, Italy and Germany, have come out against this.
But almost everybody else has said, yes, this is what we want.
We want these long-range systems done because they think Putin's bluffing.
I'd like to see if they'd give a standing ovation today.
And I want to remind them that, especially the European Parliament, you might be one of the targets that's going to get hit when they start reaching out and touching Europe.
Scott Ritter, this is terrifying stuff, but we need your courageous and candid analysis, and I'm deeply grateful for it.
Can I just add one more thing?
Yes, of course.
I am in the process of preparing, working with people to organize a Just Say No to Nuclear War rally in Washington, D.C. on December 7th and 8th.
I've reached out to the Trump transition team to try and get them involved.
I'd love to at least have you involved if you want to get involved, but at least get your audience involved.
We need to put as many people as possible in the streets of Washington, D.C. to help.
I don't care what your political affiliation is.
As long as you say, I don't want nuclear war, you need to be there because we have an administration right now that's taking us down that path dangerously.
The answer is yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
Thank you.
We're going to make it happen because it has to happen.
Yes.
It's not something I want to be doing in December.
It's the holiday season.
I want to be home preparing my house for the holidays.
But dammit, this administration's taking us to war, a nuclear war, something that everybody thought was unimaginable.
It's happening right now in front of our very eyes.
Thank you, Scott Ritter.
All the best, my dear friend.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
And coming up at 4 o 'clock this afternoon, on the indictment of Prime Minister Netanyahu, And the Russian use of this new superweapon, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
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