March 19, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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[CLOSER LOOK] LtCOL. Bill Astore : Running Low: America’s War Readiness Questioned
Lt. Col. Bill Astore joins Judge Andrew Napolitano to critique America's war readiness amid a March 2026 Iran conflict, noting Brent crude hit $120 and federal debt surpassed $39 trillion. Astore exposes Pentagon waste, citing over a trillion dollars in debt servicing against eight failed audits, while precision munitions stocks dwindle due to long production lead times. The discussion highlights diplomatic erosion under figures like Witkoff and Kushner, skepticism regarding Secretary Hegseth's claims versus Iranian defenses, and Tulsi Gabbard's evasive testimony on nuclear threats. Ultimately, the segment argues that mismanaged expectations for a short war have left the U.S. vulnerable as Iran controls the conflict's pace. [Automatically generated summary]
Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
What if Jefferson was right?
What if that government is best which governs least?
What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now hi everyone?
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, March 19th, 2026.
Colonel Bill Astori joins us now.
Colonel, always a pleasure.
Before we get to the military topics about which you have expertise, I just have to mention the latest news this morning and ask you if you want to comment on it.
Brent crude is now above $120 a barrel.
And this morning, the United States federal government's debt crossed $39 trillion.
This was a debt that President Trump at one point said he would eradicate down to zero after eight years in office.
How dangerous are these trends, Colonel?
Yeah, very dangerous because we're spending more to service our debt now than we are on even our colossal trillion dollar defense budget.
So we're spending over a trillion dollars just to float our $39 trillion debt.
And what that means, of course, is that we don't have that money for all the things we'd like to see as a country, whether it be infrastructure improvements, better health care, education, and so on.
Well, this morning, the Secretary of Defense, who calls himself the Secretary of War, asked for another $200 billion.
What the hell do they do with the trillion they have that they need another $200 billion to fund the war?
Or am I jumping the gun here?
Is this $200 billion to replace the munitions that they have used slash wasted in the war on Iran?
Right.
I think it's to fix the laundry service on the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier.
Well, we know how bad that is, unfortunately, for those poor men and women.
Right.
No, no, I think there's just no end to the demands of those in the Pentagon asking for more and more money.
And as we all know, the Pentagon has failed eight audits in a row.
And so basically, we're just throwing more money at a wasteful, corrupt system.
What we need to find a way, although currently it's impossible under so-called war conditions, we need to find a way to cut the Pentagon budget, which is, of course, very unlikely.
This is why we keep having wars, because wars are a guaranteed way to drive up that budget.
You know, instead of articulating what the 200 billion would be for, would be used for in his own inimitable, thuggish way, he said it costs a lot of money to kill bad guys.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I can't imagine any of his predecessors speaking that way, but of course he mimics the style of the president.
Right, right.
And I think, but what that points to is Hegset's bankruptcy as far as any kind of strategic ideas.
You know, all he sees, he sees war is as basically, you know, what he's most qualified for, perhaps, is like maybe leading a platoon out on a patrol.
He's not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense, and he has no conception of military policy other than, as you said, going out and killing bad guys.
Wow.
Can you explain the repeated lust that American presidents have to kill people?
Right, right.
Well, we are a violent country, that is for sure.
And it's very tempting for American presidents, sadly, to even to seek solutions using violence, right?
It's that old idea, was it Madeline Albright said to Colin Powell that what is it, you know, why do you, why do we have this splendid military if you're not prepared to use it?
And so we Americans, when we look across our history, you know, 250 years, just about every year of our history, we've been involved in a war in one place or another.
So there's always that temptation.
You know, even the so-called peace president there, the Nobel Peace Prize winning Barack Obama, boasted about how he became very good at killing people using drones.
So it certainly isn't Trump who has this predilection for violence and seeking solutions simply by using the military.
No, it's not President Trump.
It seems to be all modern presidents.
I don't know if it started with Harry Truman and Hiroshima and Nagasaki or how this attitude of I'll just kill whoever gets in the way of American hegemony rather than using diplomacy.
I mean, what remains, again, I know this is not your field, but you're a very smart guy.
What remains of American diplomacy?
Who would trust American diplomats after these two real estate agents, Witkoff and Kushner, duped the Iranians and used negotiating with Iran as a cover for the Israeli and American preparation and attack?
Yeah, no, that's absolutely right.
And in fact, I wrote an article more than a decade ago, I think, where I said the State Department has just become a tiny branch of the Pentagon.
When you look at the State Department's budget versus the Pentagon, it spends about the Pentagon's 20 times, the budget's 20 times as large as the State Department's.
And some of State Department's functions is basically to sell weapons overseas made by Lockheed Martin and Boeing and RTX and all the rest.
So we don't dedicate much in the way of resources to diplomacy.
And now when we do diplomacy, it's duplicitous.
So no one trusts us.
Right.
Here's Pistol Pete about half an hour ago.
That is overwhelming force applied with precision.
And again, today will be the largest strike package yet, just like yesterday was.
As I've said from day one, our capabilities continue to build.
Iran's continue to degrade.
We're hunting and striking death and destruction from above.
I like his little American pocket square there, American flag pocket square on his suit.
That's how you can tell a true patriot.
Right.
Apparently, if he opened it, I don't know if he has it in every jacket, but I once saw him open up his jacket like this, and the lining of the jacket was the inside lining was an American flag.
That is all legal.
It's a little garish, but it's legal.
How does the average American, Joe Sixpack, to use an analogy from Trump's campaign in 2016, gain from this U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran?
We don't gain at all.
Joe Six-Pack is paying more money every time he pulls up at a gas station.
Probably, as we all know, gas prices are anywhere from 30 to 50% higher this week than they were a couple of weeks ago.
And everything, you know, our heating oil, our natural gas for our homes, all the products and services that are made with petroleum, so many things we don't even think of come from plastics and oil and gas and all the rest.
Our cost of living is going to continue to increase.
So we're all losing, even as a few people, as Trump says, well, America produces a lot of oil and gas now, so we're making money.
Well, yeah, a few of his friends in the oil and gas industry are making money as the rest of Americans pay more and more money for all of the things, even fertilizer and our food prices are going to go up as a result of this war.
You know, I don't get it.
This is going to crest right before the midterms.
I mean, you think it's bad now.
It's going to be worse a couple of months from now, particularly when the summer driving season is on.
I mean, look at the destruction of the oil and gas fields yesterday.
That has yet to be calculated into the international calculus of how oil prices are going to go up.
If it's $120 a barrel today, it could easily be $200 a barrel in two weeks.
Right, right.
And then we tend to forget, because we live so far away from it all, is all of the nasty contaminants and pollution that's released when you attack oil fields and oil refineries.
I remember that a few days ago.
I know you remember, Judge, the attack on Iran and that black cloud of soot and oil and fire and all the rest.
I think, you know, I come from a family of firefighters.
I remember my dad being treated for smoke inhalation.
And this is just where even as we pursue this war, if it continues in intensity, we're basically poisoning our air and poisoning the earth.
Wow.
We have an Iranian spokesperson.
He's speaking Farsi, so they speak very fast.
And the translation is very, very into English is very fast.
We'll play it in a moment, but he's basically contradicting Heg Seth.
He's basically saying we still have substantial defense apparatus, which are able to intercept American missiles and drones.
So, with respect, with deference to the fact that you really got to pay attention to this guy, here he is, Chris.
The Islamic Republic of Iran did not intend to expand the scope of the war to oil facilities and did not want to cause any harm to the economies of friendly and neighboring countries.
However, with the enemy's attack on energy infrastructure, we have effectively entered a new phase of the war.
And the necessity of defending Iran's infrastructure has compelled us to strike energy facilities connected to the United States and American stakeholders.
Honorable people of Iran, your brave sons in the armed forces immediately launched offensive actions after the enemy's malicious act and through a heavy and retaliatory operation, set fire to a number of oil facilities considered to be American interests in the region until the inflicted damage reached the level of the blow we had received.
Once again, we warned the enemy that you made a grave mistake by attacking the energy infrastructure of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and our response is underway and not yet finished.
The brave men of the IRGC Aerospace Force continuing the 63rd wave also struck the military positions of the child-killing Zionist occupying regime in the south of the occupied territories with a multi-warhead Qadr missile, which resulted in various images of the impact.
Additionally, a few hours earlier, two hostile drones were destroyed over Tehran by the Army Air Defense Force systems.
Throughout this war, the advanced drones of the hostile aggressor were often intercepted by the integrated air defense network systems before they could carry out offensive operations.
The offensive and defensive operations of Iran's armed forces continue with full strength, and victory is only from Allah the Almighty, the wise.
All right, aside from the religious comments at the end, I mean, how do we know who to believe?
Heg Seth says they have no, we've totally degraded their defenses.
This fellow says they still have enough defenses to shoot down American missiles and drones and those from the Zionist child killers.
I guess he's talking about the attack on that school.
Right, right.
I think part of what is so disconcerting to us as Americans is we used to, even though we know all governments lie, and we know that in the past,
whether it be the Vietnam War, the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the Iraq war and so on, we usually could bank on the idea that American leaders were a little bit more truthful than the lies coming out from some other country.
I think part of what we've learned or we're learning now is that someone like Pete Hegset, for example, is more likely to be lying than the Iranian spokesperson.
And I think the Iranian spokesman in this case is correct.
I think Iran is held back.
And I think they still have a considerable force that they can use to strike back against Israel or the other American bases in the Middle East.
Yeah, you know, I might have misspoken when he said Zionist child killers.
He might have been referencing Gaza.
I don't think there's any dispute, but that that school where the 170 little girls and their teachers were incinerated was attacked by the U.S., not by Israel.
Intelligence Community Threats00:06:52
What is the significance, Colonel, in your view, of the resignation of the head of American counterterrorism?
Yeah, that's this fellow, this fellow, Joe Kent, who in his resignation letter said Iran poses no imminent threat to our nation.
Right, right.
I think it's very significant in the sense that Joe Kent is strongly, well, he's a strong Trump supporter.
He's also a former Green Beret, extensive combat experience.
He lost his wife to a suicide bomber in Syria.
I mean, this is a man who most definitely has sacrificed for his country.
So in that sense, I think his resignation and the fact that he didn't just quietly go away, but he stood up and said, look, I think this war is wrong.
You know, we're not fighting this war for America.
This is not MAGA, that this is a war that's being driven by Israeli imperatives rather than national security.
I think that resonates very powerfully among the Trump base.
And I think this is why the Trump administration is striking back against him.
So I heard that the FBI is investigating Joe Kent now for allegedly leaking national security information.
Trump himself says he's weak on security.
And I'm sure there'll probably more smears coming.
Right.
One of the smears is because some of us have been saying, well, wait a minute, Joe Kent sees the same saw of the same classified documents that the president, Secretary Hegset, Secretary Rubio, Director Ratcliffe, Director Gabbard saw.
And then the White House said, not in response to me, but a bunch of us have been saying this.
Oh, no, he didn't have a classified security clearance.
Well, isn't it inconceivable that the head of counterterrorism would not have classified security clearance?
That's like a blind surgeon, for gosh sakes.
Right.
Yeah, it is inconceivable.
That's right.
And this is part of the problem with, we simply cannot trust what our leaders are telling us.
You know, I watched some of Tulsi Gabbard's testimony yesterday before the Senate, and it was so discouraging because I supported Tulsi for president in 2020.
It was just so discouraging to see her evasiveness in her lack of honesty in answering many of those questions.
Chris, play the, I'm not sure what the number is, Chris, the edited version of Senator Assof questioning Secretary Gabbard.
Quote, Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated, end quote, correct?
That's right.
And is that in fact the assessment of the intelligence community?
Yes.
So the assessment of the intelligence community is that Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated by last summer's airstrikes.
Yes.
Was it the assessment of the intelligence community that there was an imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?
The intelligence community assessed that Iran maintained the intention to rebuild and to continue to grow their nuclear enrichment capabilities.
Was it the assessment of the intelligence community that there was a, quote, imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?
Yes or no?
Senator, the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.
False.
This is the worldwide threats hearing where you present to Congress national intelligence, timely, objective, and independent of political considerations.
Was it the intelligence community's assessment that nevertheless, despite this obliteration, there was a quote imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?
Yes or no?
It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat.
It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States.
This is the worldwide threats hearing.
Of course, she did not want to give those answers.
Even her one-word answers were mumbled out of a tight-lipped mouth.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's so it's so disappointing to see that because you know, I supported Tulsi and many other people because, you know, we thought we saw before us a person of integrity.
She was, she actually, as you know, Judge, she said, a war against Iran would be a mistake.
It would be unwise.
She ran against regime change wars.
And now, you know, she goes before Congress.
And you can just tell that she's not being forthright.
She's not being honest.
She's tight-lipped.
And she's, I don't know.
I don't know if it's the corruption of power, intimidation from Trump and the toadies that are around her, but maybe future ambitions.
I don't know how they got to her, but they got to her.
Yeah.
Can you get a handle around the volume or quantity of munitions consumed by this war?
I mean, stated differently, is the United States running dangerously low or dangerously out of these munitions?
I think the supply of the PGMs, the precision-guided munitions, those stocks, I would imagine, are fairly low at this moment.
These are weapons that there's long lead times to produce them.
They are expensive weapons.
I think what we have a lot of are so-called dumb bombs, the unguided bombs or the old laser-guided ones, which are not necessarily as precise and need to be dropped by airplanes that are actually either in Iranian airspace or very close to it, putting the pilots at a greater risk of danger.
So, you know, the way in which we've been using munitions, there has to be some shortages, definitely.
Munitions Shortages Explained00:01:26
Wow.
Wow.
Do you think that the Pentagon grossly misplanned and is mismanaging all this?
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if I place all the blame on the Pentagon, but certainly, you know, within, you know, within the Trump Hegaseth and their circle, I think there was a lot of overconfidence, as usual, that the war was going to be fairly short and that therefore we really didn't have to worry that much about stocks of weapons and so on.
I think what this war is showing us is that Iran has a lot more say over the pace of the war, the intensity of the war than the Trump administration or even Israel expected.
Wow.
Colonel Bill Astori, thank you.
Thank you for letting me go all over the place.
I have such respect for your intellect and the academic side of you, and you allowed me to exploit it.
Thank you, Colonel.
All the best to you, my friend.
All right.
Thank you, Judge.
Sure.
We'll see you again soon.
And coming up later today at 1 o'clock this afternoon, Command Sergeant Major Dennis Fritz.
At 2 o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
Batting cleanup at three o'clock this afternoon, Max Blumenthal, Judge Napoleon For judging freedom.