Scott Ritter: The Risk Of Nuclear War; What Gantz Is In DC For

The last week has been news event dense, and Judge Nap has had an All Star lineup of guests on today to sort through things. The last one I listened to today was Scott Ritter. Ritter had a lot of sensible things to say, but I transcribed his words on two topics.

First, Ritter believes the West is flirting with nuclear war. This echoes Doug Macgregor’s view that reckless Western warfare against Russia is forcing Russia into a position in which it’s almost forced to retaliate. In the last post re Straws in the Wind, we argued that there are some signs of hope that sanity will prevail: Germany’s Scholz seems to have had an awakening regarding the madness that Germany is being led into, and is pushing back; in the US the Army Chief of Staff is publicly warning that the US is in over its head against Russia. The House is hanging tough so far regarding sending more money to Ukraine to get Zhou past the November election, and several senators have spoken out on the war.

Ritter warns that our democratic processes have been undermined. Decisions on war and peace are being made without public debate, as should be happening. This increases the risk. Here are his words:

What I would say is that no legislative body has [authorized war on Russia] overtly. I know that in the United States, for instance, we have Presidential Findings. So, the president can sign findings authorizing certain things to take place. You report these to the Gang of Eight--who are the eight most powerful members of Congress. They meet in secret and can't repeat to other members of Congress what they're told, right, so that's not really democracy taking place. The British Prime Minister has the ability to do things with the Special Air Service that avoids parliamentary scrutiny, and I believe the French have similar things. So what we're seeing here is these nations that are ostensibly democracies are using mechanisms within their system which are undemocratic in principle, in reality, and using it to bypass the kind of scrutiny that normally would take place before you send a nation to war.

I just want to remind people, if Germany ever did facilitate the use of Taurus missiles to take down the Kerch Bridge, that's an act of war that Russia would retaliate against. That retaliation would more than likely lead to a direct conflict between NATO and the United States which would lead to a general nuclear war and then we all die. That's the stakes here. This isn't a game. We've allowed Germany and France and the Germans with their Taurus missile--France talking about sending troops over--to hijack the National Security of the United States. We are on a path towards a war that will be global ending, and we don't have Congress talking about it. We don't have the president being honest with the American people. We're pretending that it isn't happening, but it is happening.

Regarding Benny Gantz’s trip to the US from Israel to confer with Kama Sutra and Jake Sullivan—in defiance of Israeli PM Netanyahu—Ritter comes down on my side. (I earlier, cautiously, disagreed with Alastair Crooke’s assessment and suggested that something serious could be afoot.) Ritter stresses that Israel’s war is not going well. I’m quite sure he agrees with Larry Johnson’s assessment that Israel does not have a military that’s capable of digging a well equipped Hezbollah out of its mountain redoubts. That would be a formidable task for even the best militaries. And so Ritter assesses the Gantz mission as follows:

Gantz is somebody who believes in the day after. What that means is, the day after the war ends, how's Israel going to live in this world. The world has turned against Israel, and he's worried about that, too. So he's coming to the United States to say, We need to talk about a post Netanyahu reality here. How do we get to that, because as long as Netanyahu is here we can't do anything. If you want this ceasefire, if you want that, we have to figure out how to make this problem go away. And I think that's what Gantz is talking about.