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June 12, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
20:46
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Foreign Policy in Chaos.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom at the End of a Long Day, Friday, June 13, 2025.
We have saved it for Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
Colonel Larry, a pleasure, my dear friend.
No matter what we have to talk about, thank you for waiting until the end of the day, and thank you for joining us.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
Why do you think Donald Trump kept up the pretense of being a man of peace while planning this dastardly attack for months with Bibi Netanyahu?
who, I can't get into his head.
I'm not sure I'd find anything if I did.
But I will say this.
This is not what democracies do.
This is what Yamamoto's for Japan.
This is what Saddam Hussein with regard to Kuwait.
This is what these kind of people do.
There's something that's supposed to be sacrosanct with regard to the use of force, though we've become awfully competent at it, not necessarily to win, but to do it, that says you just don't do this if you are a liberal democracy.
And let me give you an example.
In 1991, When we were poised in the desert.
Powell challenged me to write a strategy document.
I did.
One page.
Took it in to him.
He read it.
He said, this is really good, L.W. This is really good.
But let me tell you, leaning back in his chair, why I'm not going to even consider implementing it.
This would mean pulling a subterfuge on not only Saddam Hussein and the region, but also the American people.
I will not do that.
I know it would probably gain tactical surprise.
But I will not do that.
Take your paper.
Colonel, we're not going to bother repeating them, but we've been playing all day Trump's one-liners about he's a man of peace.
Joe Biden is so weak he would start a war against Iran over and over and over again.
And then the statement that he came out with about 5.30, quarter of 6 this morning, acknowledging that he knew about this all along.
And he was just going to get tough with Iran because it wasn't coming to his side in the negotiations.
And if you don't do what we want at the negotiating table, we will kill you.
Professor Sachs said this morning it's the most fascistic statement made by an American president in the modern era.
Concur 100%.
And if he didn't understand what he was saying, It's even more dangerous.
Man, I wonder if he understands what he's saying.
I'm tired of reading it.
I've read that statement aloud many times.
You've seen it, the statement he issued as the sun was coming up.
But he apparently didn't talk to his Secretary of State.
Apparently not.
He was also his National Security Advisor.
I'm not talking about Steve Witkoff, the real Secretary of State.
I'm talking about the one that was confirmed by the Senate.
Chris, that full screen.
Here's what Marco Rubio said last night.
The first two lines are bald-faced lies, Colonel.
Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran.
All right, that's true.
We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.
Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense.
I don't have to read the rest.
Why would he lie like that, and why would Donald Trump contradict it?
Because he's, Rubio, fearful of his own assets, which we were significantly after 9-11.
And in the region, and he's got a lot of them over there, and they're not very well protected in terms of military action against them.
That's the reason, probably.
And secondarily, he thought, and probably was convinced by the president, I would imagine, that he ought to say that.
Didn't realize the nature of the lie he was telling, because I don't think Marco Rubio is well read into the real machinations of this administration.
Colonel, I think you're 100% correct.
And if you look at the time, that statement came out about 11 o 'clock last night.
President Trump's I know everything.
By the way, he literally did say that to the New York Post in an interview earlier today.
But his I know and knew everything statement came out around 530 this morning.
So it's about seven hours later.
One wonders if Trump...
Could be, or he could be, both, or possible.
He could be asserting his ha-ha-ha control over Marco Rubio.
Yeah.
What is the likely involvement of CIA in this, Colonel?
Oh, complicit to the hilt.
Mossad and MI6 also.
This matches Ukraine so closely.
That they have been doing this for months.
They've been putting these drones in place to attack the air defense systems.
These are drones that popped up at the propitious moment and attacked the air defense system, which technically really had no defense against that close an assault and that type of an assault.
So they successfully neutered their air defense system by infiltrating these drones well before the actual attack.
Wow.
Kind of like the cell phones.
Yeah.
How badly, from your sources, your non-public sources that you can reveal to us, not the ID of the source, but the information they gave you, was the damage to Ukraine?
The BBC says unprecedented damage.
Haaretz itself says pretty much the same thing.
To Iran?
To Iran.
To Iran.
I suspect because of the unaware nature, the tactical surprise they achieved, which was the purpose of the deception on Trump's part and Bibi Netanyahu's part, they probably achieved a pretty good degree of above-ground destruction, but I don't think they did too much underground destruction, and that's where the critical assets are.
Do you think that Israel is or was or remains capable I don't think so.
And I think they know that.
I think they're frustrated by that.
So we can look for more of this kind of covert operation that they have carried out in the past where they do it clandestinely.
And they do it basically by bribing people inside Iran with our tax dollars.
Wow.
Were you surprised that Mossad set up some sort of a staging area inside Iran into which they smuggled drones?
That can't be easy to do.
Iran's a big place.
It's not like Israel.
Israel's about the size of Greater London.
Iran's a vast country.
And there are all manner of places where you can camouflage, cross the border, get away with it.
Lots of things on parts of the border take place every day that are not controllable by the Iranian government, and they'll admit that if they're frank.
I don't want to ruin your afternoon, and Prime Minister Netanyahu made many statements.
This is the core of it.
It's only about 40 seconds long, but the essence of it is that this is going to go on and on and on.
And then I'm going to ask you about Iran's offensive weaponry.
Chris, cut number six.
This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.
For decades, the tyrants of Tehran have brazenly, openly called for Israel's destruction.
They've backed up their genocidal rhetoric with a program to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.
It could be a year, it could be within a few months, less than a year.
This is a clear and present danger to Israel's very survival.
Israel will never allow those who call for our annihilation to develop the means to achieve that goal.
Tonight, Israel backs those words with action.
All right.
Some bluster.
I don't know.
How do you read that?
Him using the word genocidal is laughable, if it weren't so bad.
He's been saying that, Judge, for 15 years.
He said the same thing about Iraq when we were contemplating going into Iraq in 2003.
If you do that, it'll save the region.
Everything will be okay.
It'll all be copacetic.
Of course, he meant as soon as you do Iran afterwards and as soon as you do Syria afterwards.
Well, they've done that now.
And Iran is the last target, if you will.
And I've no doubt that he's sincere about wave after wave, if necessary.
But I think he's going to find it increasingly difficult as Iran gets back to its feet, gets new leaders into place and such.
And they're probably doing that right now.
Probably won't take more than about 48 hours.
And this salvo that they're firing right now will probably increase in intensity and duration.
And the Americans cannot stop.
It does.
And here's what I think they might do that would be really traumatic.
They'd go after the GCC states, particularly Saudi Arabia's oil facilities and things like that.
They'd close down the strait.
And though that's now just 20% of the world's oil, it's significant enough that we would shoot oil prices up dramatically.
Probably in the neighborhood that we were contemplating before, and they actually got to $150, $200 a barrel.
And you also would have insurers that wouldn't insure and shippers that wouldn't ship, just like you had in the Red Sea, and you would have a stymied oil flow in the Persian Gulf.
And they could do some other things that would be critical, too, that would impair the Saudis for a long time.
Where does Israel get its oil from?
You don't want to ask me that.
Israel has all manner of sources and they all depend on the complicity of the United States and Israel in combination to either coerce, pay, or cajole people like Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, and others to let the oil flow.
Could Erdogan starve Israel of oil if he wanted to?
That's the president of Turkey.
He could do a good job of starting, but here's what's happening to a certain extent.
You've got the Iraqi Kurdistan that is selling oil both legally and illegally to Israel at a discounted price under pressure from us.
And you've got other things like that going on with rogue oil, and they get plenty of oil because no one has the...
Look at what they did to the yacht in the ship that had Greta Thunberg aboard.
Why is the Greek Navy?
Why is the Italian Navy?
Why are any of the navies in the Mediterranean, including our own, but I know the answer to that question, why are they not protesting this international waters intercept of a ship?
They're not.
And they've got navies.
They've got navies even that can challenge Israel's navy.
But they won't do it because they're making too much money and they're scared of the Embar.
CNN reports that Israel is expected to intensify its attacks on Iran in response to tonight's Iranian ballistic missile attack.
It says Israel will target, here you go, Colonel, economic infrastructure and oil and natural gas facilities as well as ports.
Israel has announced that Iran attacked with 600 missiles.
If Israel destroys Iran's oil capability, what does that do?
$10 for a gallon of gas, Donald Trump, in the United States, in Trump's America?
It certainly pushes the price of oil up dramatically, no question about it.
And we're looking at possibility here, too, of China, Russia, and Iran colluding.
Well, not collusion.
It would be an outright understandable act.
And making it even more difficult for oil to flow, and even raising the price as high as we contemplated in the simulation we did in Beijing in 2009, $300 a barrel.
Where does China get much of its oil from?
Right now, last year, they got 90.4% from, guess who?
Vladimir Putin.
No, Vladimir Putin.
Oh, okay.
Where do you see this going, Colonel?
I think we're in for an interminable conflict, and I'm thinking it might morph into a regional war.
And what will the U.S. do?
We have 90,000 troops there.
Is Hegseth going to send another 100,000?
Do we even have them?
Most of these troops, though, are not combat troops.
Yes.
Ritter said the same thing.
They are very vulnerable.
Very vulnerable.
They do not have air defense.
They don't have any significant security perimeter.
They could make a hasty one.
And you'd put cooks and bottle washers out there, essentially.
But it's a naval headquarters in Bahrain, for example.
It's an airfield that is not very well defended at all in Qatar, the largest in the world.
It's airfields in Saudi Arabia, and we all know how good the Saudis are at defending things.
Look at Yemen.
So it's ripe for disaster, but that's what Netanyahu wants.
He wants them to attack U.S. assets and bring the U.S. in.
Would he attack U.S. assets and make it look like it came from Iran?
Would you put that past him?
Not a bit.
I wouldn't put it afoot past him.
Wow.
I don't think he's going to have to, though.
I think the Iranians are going to be quite angry, justifiably so, and I think they probably are going to widen this conflict.
Will other nations with significant militaries like Egypt or Turkey Doubt it very seriously.
It's just not in their significant interest to do so.
Wouldn't there be pressure on President Erdogan from the, I'll use the old phrase, Arab Street?
From the average Turk.
Judge it.
If these thousands and thousands of women, children, babies dying in Gaza aren't motivation for Erdogan, I don't know what ever would be.
Making too much money.
Wow.
I will give Netanyahu credit.
When he was finance minister, he set up a lot of this, where people are actually making money off of Israel, and Israel off of them, too.
And they don't want to end that.
So Chris just sent me, Flight Maps reported on X, formerly Twitter.
Benjamin Netanyahu's presidential plane was It landed an hour and a half later in Athens, Greece.
Is that credible, Colonel?
Is he fleeing the country?
I think he's probably just making a planned trip.
I don't know.
I can't crawl into the head of the air controllers or whatever.
That is interesting that he's going to Athens, because that would be, unless it's just an intermediate stop, I have no idea why he's going to Athens, unless maybe the Greek government demarched him and he's going up there to read him the Riot Act.
I mean, is he fearful of his own life, fleeing the country whose military he wants to lead?
Well, he would not be fleeing it because of fears of Iranians.
He'd be leaving it because of fears of his own people.
Can you say that again, please, Colonel?
Chris, Chris, can you cut this clip?
He would not be leaving and flying out of Israel because of his fear of the Iranians, but fear of his own people.
How precarious is Bibi Netanyahu as the head of the government?
I've said that he's been in trouble for weeks now, and I think the trouble is only deepening and becoming more profound.
And if these missiles keep impacting in any significant way, they're going to deepen even more.
Israelis do not understand.
They do not understand.
The great majority of them don't understand that they are the reason bombs are falling.
Now, as long as they fall on innocent Palestinians, that's fine with them, 82% of them anyway.
But when they start falling on them, it's an entirely different matter.
Look how fast they unass those homes up there north of the line of contact in Lebanon.
They will leave forthwith.
Colonel Wilkerson, what advice would you give to President Trump if he called you up and asked for it?
Cease and desist and tell Beebe the same thing or you will clamp down on him like he's never been clamped down on before.
We're at a point now.
They got the point.
200 planes flew in.
You achieved tactical surprise.
You did damage.
You assassinated, I want to say murdered, a lot of the key people in the run, both in the nuclear program and in their military leadership.
Be satisfied.
Shut your mouth.
Stop.
And I'll go back to the table if they will come.
What are the chances of Trump doing that, given the Zionist pressure on him?
Zero.
Zero.
He's reveling right now in his, you know, he put down his Secretary of State, he advanced himself as a wartime leader par excellence, even though all he does is use proxies, and he's established diplomatic leverage, however useless it might be.
Andy's spending $50 million tomorrow on his birthday on a parade.
Yeah, I wonder if it'll rain.
I wish it would snow.
Colonel, thank you very much.
I think you know that I conflated your name with another great Colonel, Doug McGregor, and I called you or him.
Colonel Larry McGregor, obviously it's been a long day.
I have nothing but the highest respect, and as you know, since I kissed your head, even affection for you.
If I kissed McGregor, he'd push me away.
If I kissed you and you hugged me.
I have no problem being conflated or confused with Doug McGregor.
Thank you, Colonel.
Thanks for your time.
It's the end of a long day and a long week.
The week did not end up as it began, but here we are doing our best to analyze and describe it.
Deeply and profoundly grateful for your assistance.
We'll look forward to seeing you at your usual time next week.
Thank you.
Take care.
Thank you, Colonel.
And next week, of course, on Monday morning, Alistair Crook at 8 o 'clock, Ray McGovern at 10, Larry Johnson at 1130.
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