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Aug. 6, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
21:14
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : US Troops In Gaza?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, August 7, 2025 Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now Colonel Wilkerson always a pleasure my dear friend I love our chit-chats before we go on air and I almost wish we could air them because they're so warm and often so humorous but nevertheless everybody listening should know that I have such admiration respect for you and as my now notorious public kiss on your head demonstrated affection
for you as well.
Thank you for joining us, Colonel.
I appreciate that.
We'd probably go to jail if they were allowed to hear what we did before this.
Correct.
Correct.
We do speak uh we do speak very candidly um did you speak candidly with um uh secretary colin powell behind the scenes i imagine you did you had to absolutely one of the things he said to me on 28 january 1989 in the pentagon in the e ring and he was just trying to figure out where he was going just got his four star is if you come to work for me you have to tell me the truth as you see it all the time I thought,
well, you know, he's just a general telling me that.
Well, I found out that was absolutely the way he dealt with me.
Wow.
Wow.
Sometimes you would throw me out of the office.
But correct me if I'm wrong.
One does not normally rise in the military by telling the unvarnished truth to one's superiors.
Isn't that correct?
That is absolutely correct.
One learns to complicate things at best.
Right.
You're right.
I'm going to get to the military.
and what Pete Haggseth will do if President Trump orders U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza.
But before we get there, your friend.
and colleague, Colonel Bill Astor, has written an unbelievable piece.
Chris, we ought to post it.
I'm sure the Colonel wouldn't mind.
Right now, it's at antiwar.com arguing that the Empire is failing and flailing.
Do you agree, Colonel Wilkerson?
Yes, I do.
We've had conversations to that effect.
We just had a meeting of all the fellows.
And one of the things I think there is consensus on is that it's a desperate situation for the Empire, desperate in many internationally?
You can go wherever you want, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, wherever you want to go.
All across the map, if you will, all the way from the Arctic, where most Americans don't understand what we're doing, down through the Baltic Sea to Ukraine, where we have a vivid look at what's going on, but most Americans don't understand it, down to Armenia, Azerbaijan, through Georgia and the Caucasus, where we're still fomenting enemies against Russia, and down to the ultimate southern tip with Iran.
And I think a war to be renewed and to be a disaster to end Israel and to come close to, if not ending the empire, at least in its current configuration.
The empire consists of, among other things, seven hundred and fifty military installations in eighty countries around the world.
Colonel, is there a human being, a single human being who can name them all or justify them all?
None.
And guess what, judge?
I just found out from the expert in the United States on the base nation, David Vine, and from my Italian friends around Verona that we're building more.
Where are we building more?
In Italy?
They wanted me to come to Italy and I couldn't because I'm going to Jeff Sachs event up at Columbia, but they wanted me to come over there and talk to the group in Verona and around Aviano and elsewhere that's really angry because Italy's not making any more land that we're going to build more bases in Italy.
Do we have 100 bases in Italy?
Oh, I don't think it's that many.
If you counted the phone booths and things like that, you might get that many, but substitute.
But here's the problem.
And this is what I was going to tell the Italians, what I've told them all along through two editors in Rome that I know.
Listen, these aren't for NATO.
They're only for NATO if you think NATO should fight China alongside the United States.
These bases they're building now are like Ramstein.
They have nothing to do with NATO and nothing to do with the defense of Europe and everything to do with an offensive action against China.
Wow.
Colonel, how can President Trump claim he wants peace with Russia when yesterday he signed an executive order declaring and defining that the Russian Federation poses a substantial threat.
It's hard to say this with a straight face to the national security of the United States.
What threat does Russia pose to the national security of the United States?
Well, indirectly they do, of course, and the indirection is caused entirely by Donald Trump.
Started with Joe Biden.
have to admit that, and that Trump is right, but it's being augmented and exacerbated by Donald Trump.
We are becoming the reason Russia might be an existential threat to us because they have nuclear weapons and so do we.
And Trump is walking down that road just as surely as anyone has since 1961-62.
Colonel, isn't the U.S. a threat to Russian national security?
And before you answer, here's exhibit number one, Chris Cut 18.
If you look at Kaliningrad at it's You know, you can argue back and forth, but it's about 47 miles wide, surrounded by NATO on all sides.
There's absolutely no reason why that A2AD bubble to deter Russia, we cannot take that down from the ground in a time frame that is unheard of and faster than we've ever been able to do.
We've already planned that.
We've already developed it.
This is an American four-star general who commands more troops than any other four-star threatening to invade Russia on the ground.
You tell me which country is the threat to the other.
Obviously.
First thing he needs to check is the flank on the north, which isn't bounded by NATO.
It's bounded by the Baltic.
And he needs to check also, he has about 100,000 men under him, as I understand it now, because he's commander of the U.S. Army in Europe.
He's not the overall commander of the unified command in Europe.
So he has about 100,000 troops.
They'd be gone immediately.
They'd be gone.
That's not even enough to begin to fight.
And if he's thinking about some kind of airborne combined operation on Kaliningrad, he's a fool, just like the fool he was when he was slightly less in rank.
and he was supervising the debacle that occurred as we negotiated our way out of Afghanistan.
He was in charge of that.
And Judge, he's a perfect example of how the military now, since about 9-11, has had absolutely no accountability for generals who failed.
Dennis Lage, General Dennis Lage and I talk about this all the time.
When is a general officer for abject failure in three different theaters of war over the last 20 years going to be held accountable?
None of them have.
They're brought back and promoted.
So he obviously got a fourth star.
either from President Biden or President Trump.
I can't imagine he got it from President Trump.
I think it was from Biden.
All right.
Trump has quite properly ranted and railed against.
against that debacle of the US departure from Afghanistan.
Why should he be rewarded for that failure?
Or is it by revealing an ignorance of the way the military works we went through all the general Dennis Leitch and I and others at Eisenhower went through all the generals in both Iraq from the invasion in 2003 in Afghanistan slightly before that all the way up to the withdrawal from Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
We could not find a single general who shouldn't have been fired.
Wow.
Including David Petraeus.
Wow.
How, how, um.
Can Putin sit down with Donald Trump in light of what Professor Alexander Dugan has called?
And it doesn't take Professor Dugan to say this.
It's rather obvious.
Trump's becoming a neocon, funding a war against Russia, American intel on the ground in Ukraine showing Ukraine.
military how to kill Russians.
How can Putin negotiate with Trump while that's going on?
Trump is killing Russians and Putin's going to talk him?
Well, we're gonna see this come to a head, I'm quite sure, because the three plus hours that Whitcoff spent discounting translation time and such.
And I'm not sure that Putin didn't speak in English some of the time.
But no matter what, Whitcoff got an earful.
He got an earful that is the same message Putin and Sergei Lavrov have been delivering now for almost two years.
The same parameters, the same message.
We will give you not one inch.
You're the one who must surrender a few inches in order to get anything in Ukraine.
And that's exactly what Putin's going to tell Trump to his face.
So one wonders how he's going to spend that when he comes out of that.
So two points here, Colonel.
I was just on The Great Game, which is a very popular and very serious Russian talk show with, you know, the host, Dmitry Symes, the senior.
He used to be a professor at Johns Hopkins.
Goes all the way back to the Nixon Institute, if I remember correctly.
It does go back to the Nixon administration, a brilliant, a sophisticated guy.
Can't come to the United States anymore.
The Biden administration indicted him for some nonsense and seized his farm.
That's another story for another time.
Anyway, he told me that after, this is what the Russian press is saying, after Trump and Putin agreed to talk, after the Kremlin leaked it and then the White House leaked it, the White House added another condition, and that is that President Zelensky be physically present.
But they were laughing at that because I can't imagine Putin being in the same room with Zelensky.
Can you?
I can, but only under a very tight set of circumstances and I don't think Trump will allow that tight set of circumstances but maybe Putin's got something up his sleeve or maybe even Zelensky's got something up his sleeve that we're not we're going to be surprised by I doubt it but and I I'll have to say I doubt this will come out come off that the triumvirate as it were will be together in the same room it could happen but
I doubt it The other thing I wanted to mention to you that Scott Ritter told us yesterday is that Sergei Lavrov, my friend.
has reduced to two the six conditions that the Russians have insisted upon to stop the special military operation.
And they are that Ukraine vacate, meaning militarily and administratively, the four Donbasses and recognize that they are Russia, and that Ukraine commit.
never to engage with NATO.
Now those are basically the two things he's been demanding from the beginning.
There were some others, but they've combined them.
Well, he was throwing a few things out there that he would have to trade.
But those are the two inescapables.
Correct.
Now, I can't imagine that Zelensky could agree to that because if he does, he probably won't make it back from wherever this negotiation is going to occur to Kiev in one piece.
And I don't know that Trump can agree to that.
Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, all those folks that whisper Neo Khan nonsense into his ear are going to explode.
Tell me your thoughts on whether or not it is realistic to expect that Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky will agree to those two Putin demands.
The only way I can see it happening is if Trump suddenly and uncharacteristically reverts to his stance pre-presidency and immediately after the inauguration, where he is absolutely intent on stopping the killing, as he keeps saying, and getting the peace prize or whatever.
And Trump brings the hammer down in front of him.
front of putin if we do have this trilateral meeting on zelensky and both men agree that if zelensky doesn't agree to what they've just agreed to, they'll kill him.
I mean, it's that simple.
Wow.
That's the only way I could see that resolution.
As you understand it, Colonel, and from your knowledge and your sources, is Zelensky still the puppet of ardent nationalists?
The Russians call them Nazis, but these ardent, ardent Ukraine nationalists.
Is he still their puppet?
Within Ukraine, I think that's true.
But I think the bigger entity of which he's the puppet is Washington NATO.
And I think he knows that, but he's comfortableble with that because it's been very rewarding for him.
But Washington and NATO and American neocons, Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, et cetera, would never go along with the two conditions boiled down from the original six that are non negotiable from the perspective of the Russians.
Am I right?
They would if they thought it were existential or near existential for both NATO and the United States, which it is.
So your point is well taken.
And I think my point says to the American people, your listeners and others, if this comes out with no resolution, look at John Mearsheimer's solution.
We either have a stasis, a bloody, bloody stasis in which Zelensky will be assassinated eventually and we'll have chaos in what remains of Ukraine, and maybe the potential for NATO joining the fight with some crazy Europeans starting it, or even us, like Donovan, or we will have a world war that blooms really more.
more rapidly than i predict it will bloom wow i was on with the I'm sure you know him and you'll know why I'm chatting, chuckling in a minute.
The great George Galloway yesterday and Galloway was condemning Prime Minister Netanyahu's threat.
It's now no longer a threat.
It's now their policy to occupy Gaza.
And Galloway said to me, what will the Americans do if Netanyahu wants American?
boots on the ground in Gaza.
He will need that eventually and eventually might not be very short, very long time.
Well, because the IDF's fallen apart.
If Trump ordered boots on the ground in Gaza, not to feed the Palestinians, but to kill them, what should Secretary Heg Seth do?
Well, he won't do anything, I don't think, except go along with it.
But I think the American soldiers will and Marines and whoever goes in there, I think they will do something about it because they will refuse to do what Tony Aguilar has reported so vividly others are doing in Gaza.
They will not do that.
So there'll be a real impasse there.
You will not be able to continue to carry out Netanyahu's wishes wishes, at the same time, you will be at least in part relieving the IDF because it is about to fall apart, judge.
I mean, fall apart literally on the ground in front of BB's eyes.
It's about to fall apart.
That will give them some relief and they can maybe back up and look at their other fronts, which are becoming in peril too, from Syria to Iran to Lebanon.
So it could be a relief valve for BB that'll allow him to survive a little bit longer.
And it might stop the killing en masse that's going on now.
Judge, at these humanitarian points, they're killing 150 to 200 a day.
There were 400.
places for the Palestinians to get food.
There are now, according to Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate, either three or four from 400.
And they're using main tank guns.
They're using main tank guns on them now.
Don't waste 556 ammo.
Just shoot a tank gun.
Shoot a macabre 905 millimeter in there or whatever.
Blow about 40 of them up at one time.
This is unconscionable.
It's been unconscionable for a long time.
What would you, forgive me for asking you this.
I can't resist the temptation.
What would you, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, do if you commanded troops that they were told to go on the ground in Gaza and kill Palestinians.
I'd do what Tony did or tried to do.
He was a single individual.
He had no power to do it.
I'd turn around and say, back off or I'll kill you.
Now, here's something that's happening right now.
I don't for a moment think we'll finally do what we should.
done a long time ago, not just with Gaza, but with the Balkans and elsewhere.
There is a thing called chapter 6 and chapter 7 in the UN Charter.
We rarely, we do the peacekeeping missions a lot.
We rarely do the peace enforcement missions.
We tried in the Balkans and it failed because we had no leaders in France and other countries that had the courage to put the rules of engagement in place to make it a peace enforcement mission.
Have the UN General Assembly call a special session.
It only takes a two-thirds vote, and the Security Council can not open it.
Don't get out of our way.
Wow.
I would love to see that happen.
Colonel, I have to run.
I could continue this conversation all afternoon.
I love it when your blood pressure goes up.
I don't love it for medical reasons.
I love it for histrionic reasons.
Kiss my head and take the pressure off.
Next time we're together in front of everybody, I'll kiss your head again because I love you.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you.
Okay.
And coming up later today at 3 o'clock this afternoon, an interesting mini lecture on the origins of the Israeli state by who else?
Professor John Mearsheimer.
And then at 4 o'clock, when is World War III coming?
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